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60 free Ring of Fire trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Ring of Fire is the 40,000-kilometre belt of volcanoes and earthquake zones that surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean, home to around two-thirds of the world's volcanoes and about 90 percent of its earthquakes. This quiz covers the geology and the drama: the subducting plates that built it, the trenches and gaps, the Andesite Line, the four largest Holocene eruptions, the world's highest and most active volcanoes, and the famous disasters from Krakatoa and Mount Pelée to St. Helens, Pinatubo, the Armero lahar, the great Chilean quake of 1960 and the Tōhoku tsunami of 2011. Easy questions ask which ocean it circles and which country holds the record for the biggest earthquake; harder ones cover the plate under the Cascades, why Hawaii is not included and how deep the Challenger Deep goes. It suits geography and earth-science students, teachers, travellers to Japan, New Zealand or the Andes, and quiz nights that want a science round with real explosions in it. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Ring of Fire and the individual volcanoes, earthquakes and regions it contains, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Roughly how wide is the Ring of Fire at its broadest?
About 500 km
It is also called the Circum-Pacific belt, the Rim of Fire and the Girdle of Fire.
Q 02Roughly how long is the Ring of Fire?
About 40,000 km
It is up to about 500 km wide and has existed for more than 35 million years.
Q 03Approximately what share of the world's earthquakes occur within the Ring of Fire?
About 90 percent
The next most active region, running through the Himalayas and southern Europe, is a distant second.
Q 04The Ring of Fire contains roughly what fraction of the world's active or dormant volcanoes?
About two-thirds
The count runs from 750 to 915 depending on which disputed regions are included.
Q 05Which of these is another name for the Ring of Fire?
The Circum-Pacific belt
It is also called the Rim of Fire and the Girdle of Fire, names preserved from the old belief that volcanoes were fires burning inside the Earth.
Q 06Why are the Hawaiian Islands not part of the Ring of Fire?
They are far from any subduction zone
Their volcanism comes from a hotspot in the middle of the Pacific plate.
Q 07Which three plates subduct beneath South America to create the Andean section of the Ring of Fire?
Antarctic, Nazca and Cocos
Subduction has been happening at South America's coast since the Jurassic, more than 145 million years ago.
Q 08The Cascade volcanoes are fed by the subduction of which small remnant of the Farallon plate?
Juan de Fuca
Unusually, there is no oceanic trench off the Cascadia coast, partly because sediment from the Fraser, Columbia and Klamath rivers buries it.
Q 09Why does the Ring of Fire not run across the southern Pacific from New Zealand to South America?
The plate boundaries there are divergent, not convergent
The Pacific–Antarctic Ridge, East Pacific Rise and Chile Ridge are spreading centres, so any volcanism there is unrelated to subduction.
Q 10Which continent is excluded from the Ring of Fire because it sits in the middle of its tectonic plate?
Australia
New Zealand, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines nearby are all included.
Q 11What kind of volcano, like Mount St. Helens, makes up most Ring of Fire peaks above sea level?
Stratovolcanoes
They are built from explosive eruptions of tephra alternating with lava flows, mostly andesite.
Q 12What term did geologist Patrick Marshall coin in 1912 for the southwest Pacific boundary matching the Ring of Fire?
The Andesite Line
It separates islands with different volcano structures and lava types, and was later extended around the whole ocean.
Q 13Which disaster was the subject of Alexander P. Livingstone's 1906 book, an early source for 'great ring of fire'?
The San Francisco earthquake
Q 21The 1982 El Chichón eruption, which killed about 2,000, left what in place of the forested summit?
A kilometre-wide caldera with an acidic lake
Before then the volcano was virtually unknown and no taller than the non-volcanic peaks around it.
Q 22Popocatépetl is the second-highest peak in Mexico after which mountain?
Pico de Orizaba
It lies in the eastern half of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt.
Q 23In which year did the Cascadia subduction zone last produce a magnitude-9 earthquake?
1700
The zone could produce a magnitude 9.0 or greater quake again if the whole fault ruptured at once.
Volcanologist G. P. Scrope had described the chain of Pacific volcanoes as early as 1825.
Q 14Which is one of the Holocene's four largest eruptions, all at Ring of Fire volcanoes?
Mount Mazama, Oregon, about 5677 BC
The others were Fisher Caldera in Alaska, Kurile Lake in the Russian Far East and Kikai Caldera in Japan; Mazama's collapse formed Crater Lake.
Q 15Which country holds the record for the largest earthquake ever recorded?
Chile
The 1960 Valdivia earthquake measured 9.4 to 9.6 and sent a tsunami as far as Hawaii, Japan and New Zealand.
Q 16The tsunami from the largest earthquake ever recorded, in 1960, devastated which Hawaiian city?
Hilo
Waves there reached 10.7 metres; on the Chilean coast they were up to 25 metres high.
Q 17What is the world's highest active volcano, at 6,893 metres in the Andes?
Ojos del Salado
Nearby Llullaillaco, at 6,739 metres, is the highest historically active volcano, last erupting in 1877.
Q 18Villarrica, in the southern Andes, is one of only five volcanoes known to have what in its crater?
An active lava lake
Its lava is basaltic-andesitic, and melting snow often triggers lahars, as in 1964 and 1971.
Q 19Cotopaxi, which has erupted more than 50 times since 1738, is about 50 km south of which capital?
Quito
At 5,897 metres it is Ecuador's second-highest summit, and its mudflows have carved valleys around the cone.
Q 20The 1985 eruption of Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz produced a lahar that buried which town, killing about 25,000?
Armero
It remains the deadliest lahar in recorded history; similar but smaller disasters struck in 1595 and 1845.
Q 24The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens began at 8:32 am on 18 May when an earthquake triggered what?
The largest subaerial landslide in recorded history
The whole weakened north face slid away, uncorking a lateral blast that killed about 57 people.
Q 25The 1980 St. Helens eruption was rated what on the Volcanic Explosivity Index?
5
It ejected 1.3 cubic kilometres of material, exceeding California's 1915 Lassen Peak eruption, and was the most significant in the contiguous US in recorded history.
Q 26Alaska's 1964 quake is the second-largest seismic event ever recorded. What is it commonly called?
The Good Friday earthquake
The state has more than 50 volcanoes that have erupted since about 1760, many in the Aleutian Islands.
Q 27The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century occurred in 1912 at which Alaskan volcano?
Novarupta
Pinatubo's 1991 eruption in the Philippines was the second largest.
Q 28Mount Pinatubo's climactic eruption on 15 June 1991 sent an ash cloud how high?
40 km
Lahars swept through the American Clark Air Base, and around 60,000 people had been evacuated beforehand.
Q 29Which peninsula in the Russian Far East is described as the most volcanic area of the Eurasian continent?
Kamchatka
Its 19 active volcanoes are UNESCO-listed, and the 10,500-metre-deep Kuril–Kamchatka Trench runs just offshore.
Q 30Klyuchevskaya Sopka, at 4,750 metres, holds what distinction?
Largest active volcano in the Northern Hemisphere
It is the highest of the peninsula's many volcanoes.