Anyone see the recent Discovery Channel special on Pompeii?

Anyway, if you didn't here's a brief...debrief:

In August of AD 79, Mt. Vesuvius in Italy erupted, burying nearby Roman cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum with as much as 20 feet of ash and pumace. There was complete devastation in a three-mile radius around the volcano.

Scientists speculate that Vesuvius erupts with this much force about every 2000 years...so as you can see, they think it could very well happen again soon.

The problem is, back in AD 79, there were about 30,000 people in the area; now there are 3.5 million, so the devastation involved with such an eruption could be catastrophic.

Here's the dilemma: if scientists predict an eruption and they order an evacuation, this would be costly and people would lose trust in the government's judgement. If they don't evacuate, millions could die.

So what do you think of this situation? Or do you have any other info to add?

Yeah, I learned about that in my class, but I didn't watch the show.

I think they could do something like recommend people to leave, but it's not neccesary, so that people who are afraid could leave, but people who don't trust the government could stay.

Of course, that would kill a lot of people if a disaster happens, but the people who stayed had a warning, and they chose to stay...

If a threat like this is real (and we've that is quite real), the government should prepare an evacuation plan. Furthermore they should make it clear to the citizens how dangerous an eruption is, so they learn why they have to evacuate if necessary.

That is quite the dilemma...It's hard to say, but when you really think about it, they're actually considering wasting thousandds of people's lives because they don't want to look bad?! --I'm sure the ancient people of Pompeii would have Loved a warning! ,false or otherwise

people who live in Naples aren't worried about it butperhaps they should be.

We all live with some level of risk, even Americans - look at Los Angeles and the San Andreas fault. The cost of relocating is very high for many reasons: you need a new place to live, you lose business connections, you lose networks of friends and family, you lose your job, etc. In the past, people have always been reluctant to move, even in the face of stern warnings, and this trend will continue in the future. If the Italian government is serious about increasing safety, they need to provide a reasonable plan for the residents of Pompeii to relocate permantenty, and do this over a few years. If they issue a quick one-time "evacuate" warning and it turns out to be a false alarm, they will lose all credibility. Unfortunately, citizens rarely thank the government for looking out for their safety and instead criticize the government for creating inconveniences.

I saw this on TV a few days ago.

I didn't know the dilemma about the evacuation though.

My take is that they should evacuate. Who cares if they lose trust in the gov't. As the old saying goes, it's better to be safe than sorry. Or something like that.

I've heard a lot about this too. I think it will erupt soon also, but seeing as how their city was destroyed before and the thousands of people died, I don't think they would doubt a scientist saying it will erupt. I knew if I lived there, I would definitely leave if there was an evacuation notice.

Well it did happend before so the odd of it happening again are qute high, but I really doubt that something that major will happen again very soon anyway.

At least now we have systems in place to detect something like that, so it won't cause anyone to loose their life like Pompeii. But I am sure that something like that could happen again the only problem is detecting when it will actually happen again that is the major problem, after all a volcano could go dormant for centuries and them become active yet again whenever.

But another incident like that could happen again, just in another part of the world.

Wow..i have been studying this topic in School in my LAtin lessons 2 years ago
so...
i think that it cannot happen again
i never really got a reasoin for why the mountain errupted in the first place.. i alwas thought it was like a sudden reaction to pollution or something...similar to the way we peopl suddenly sneeze on occasions when tiny particles of dust are in the atmosphere around us. The point im tryint to make is that i dont think that the mountain Vesuvius will ever errupt again as in its last erruption, it let out everything it had building inside for years...so i think its safe to say that Pompeii- rather whats left of it - is safe for now.