Smoke is a vapor associated with fire, destruction, and darkness. Nephi said that “blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke must come” upon “the face of this earth” (1 Nephi 22:18).
Some people were spared from being “overpowered by the vapor of smoke and of darkness” (3 Nephi 10:13). Deaths and destructions included those “by fire, and by smoke, and by tempests” (3 Nephi 10:14).
Mormon said that a future day would bring reports of “fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands” (Mormon 8:29).