Volcano Disasters
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Test your knowledge of the world's most devastating volcanic events with our comprehensive free 92-question trivia quiz with answers. From Mount Vesuvius to Mount St. Helens, explore fascinating facts about volcano disasters that shaped our planet. See how many questions you can answer correctly and discover what you know about these powerful natural phenomena.
30 of 92 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which volcano buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79?
Vesuvius
Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in ash and Herculaneum under more than 15 metres of volcanic rock; both lay sealed until excavations began in the 18th century.
Q 02Which 1883 volcanic eruption produced the loudest sound ever recorded, heard thousands of miles away?
Krakatoa
Krakatoa's climactic blast on 27 August 1883 was heard more than 2,000 miles away in Australia, and barometers around the world recorded its pressure wave as it passed.
Q 03Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption began with the largest what in recorded history?
Landslide
Landslide: a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook loose the bulging north face, and its sudden collapse released the pressure on the magma inside the mountain.
Q 04What global climate event was largely attributed to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora?
The Year Without a Summer
The immense amount of ash and aerosols injected into the atmosphere by the 1815 Tambora eruption caused global temperatures to drop, leading to widespread crop failures and the 'Year Without a Summer' in 1816.
Q 05Mudflows from which volcano buried the town of Armero in November 1985?
Nevado del Ruiz
Nevado del Ruiz's eruption on 13 November 1985 was modest, but it melted summit ice into mudflows that ran tens of kilometres down river valleys and buried Armero, killing more than 20,000 people.
Q 06Mount Pinatubo, whose 1991 eruption cooled the whole planet by about half a degree, is in which country?
Philippines
Philippines: Pinatubo, on the island of Luzon, blasted about 20 million tonnes of sulfur gas into the stratosphere, and the haze it formed cooled the globe by about 0.5 °C until 1993.
Q 07The c.1600 BC eruption of Thera buried Akrotiri, a settlement of which Bronze Age civilization?
Minoan
Akrotiri was a Minoan town on Thera (Santorini), its frescoes sealed under ash; the eruption was long blamed for ending Minoan civilization, yet digs show it flourished for some time afterwards.
Q 08The Bronze Age eruption of Thera, today's Santorini, is often suggested as the inspiration for which legendary lost land?
Atlantis
Atlantis, in Plato's telling, sank into the sea in a single day and night; Thera's collapse into a flooded caldera invited the comparison, though the link remains speculation.
Q 09What is the collective term for all fragmented material ejected in an explosive volcanic eruption?
Tephra
Tephra covers everything from dust to boulders; because each eruption's layer is chemically distinct, geologists use buried tephra beds as time markers to date sites across whole regions.
Q 10Which light-colored, highly porous volcanic rock often floats on water?
Pumice
Pumice forms during explosive eruptions when super-heated, gas-rich magma cools rapidly, trapping gas bubbles and resulting in a very light, porous rock that can float on water.
Q 11Which eruption type produces the most explosive, sustained ash columns, reaching tens of kilometres high?
Plinian
Plinian eruptions are named after Pliny the Younger, whose eyewitness letter likened the towering cloud to a pine tree: a tall trunk that spread into branches at the top.
Q 12In 1902 the city of Saint-Pierre on Martinique was wiped out within minutes by which volcano?
Mount Pelée
Mount Pelée's pyroclastic surge swept through Saint-Pierre on 8 May 1902, killing nearly everyone in the city; one of the few survivors, prisoner Ludger Sylbaris, was shielded by his thick-walled cell.
Q 13What chronic lung disease is the main long-term concern from inhaling fine volcanic ash?
Silicosis
Q 21Which active volcano, about 70 km southeast of Mexico City, frequently showers the region with ash?
Popocatépetl
Popocatépetl, 'smoking mountain' in Nahuatl, reawakened in December 1994 after decades of quiet; since then its ash and gas have repeatedly forced nearby towns to evacuate.
Q 22Oregon's Crater Lake fills the caldera left when which volcano collapsed about 7,700 years ago?
Mount Mazama
Mount Mazama emptied its magma chamber in one cataclysmic eruption and caved in; the basin that remained now holds the deepest lake in the United States.
Q 23Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed in a 1991 eruption of which Japanese volcano?
Mount Unzen
Silicosis, a scarring of the lungs best known among stone-cutters and quarry workers, is the worry when ash is rich in crystalline silica; in the short term ash mostly aggravates asthma and bronchitis.
Q 14What is the name for a linear volcanic vent, metres wide but kilometres long, that pours out lava with little explosion?
Fissure
Fissure eruptions open along a crack rather than from a single cone, sending up a long wall of lava fountains; the largest have flooded whole regions with basalt.
Q 15The 1783 Laki eruption, which caused widespread famine and climate impacts, occurred in which country?
Iceland
Iceland's Laki eruption poured out lava and poisonous gas for eight months; most of the island's livestock died on fluorine-tainted grass, and the famine that followed killed a fifth or more of its people.
Q 16Which US national park sits atop a supervolcano that has had three giant eruptions in the past 2.1 million years?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone's last giant eruption, some 631,000 years ago, left a caldera about 45 miles long; the same underground heat now drives the park's geysers.
Q 17The 'Ring of Fire', a zone of frequent earthquakes and eruptions, encircles which ocean?
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is rimmed by subduction zones, where one plate dives beneath another; that 40,000-km horseshoe holds most of the world's volcanoes and most of its earthquakes.
Q 18What volcanic type has a broad, gently sloping cone built from fluid basaltic lava?
Shield volcano
Shield volcanoes are named for their profile, like a shield laid on the ground; their runny lava seldom explodes, so eruptions destroy property far more often than they kill.
Q 19Which Tanzanian volcano erupts black lava that weathers to white?
Ol Doinyo Lengai
Ol Doinyo Lengai, the Maasai 'Mountain of God', is the only volcano known to erupt natrocarbonatite, a lava so cool that by day it flows black, like mud or oil, rather than red-hot.
Q 20A release of which gas from Cameroon's Lake Nyos suffocated over 1,700 people in 1986?
Carbon dioxide
The Lake Nyos disaster was a limnic eruption, where a sudden overturn of deep lake water released a massive cloud of carbon dioxide, which flowed down the valleys and caused widespread asphyxiation.
Mount Unzen's 3 June 1991 pyroclastic flow killed 43 people, including the Kraffts and American volcanologist Harry Glicken; the Kraffts' footage later became the basis of the documentary Fire of Love.
Q 24In 1982 a British Airways 747 lost all four engines in the ash cloud of which Indonesian volcano?
Galunggung
British Airways Flight 9 flew into Galunggung's ash on 24 June 1982 and glided from 37,000 to about 13,500 feet before its engines restarted; Captain Eric Moody had told passengers, 'We have a small problem.'
Q 25Which volcanic gas causes acid rain and forms 'vog' (volcanic smog) with atmospheric moisture?
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide reacts with oxygen and moisture to make the acid haze Hawaiians call vog; blasted high into the stratosphere, the same gas forms droplets that reflect sunlight and cool the planet.
Q 26In what country would you find Mount Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes?
Italy
Italy's Mount Etna towers over eastern Sicily; Greek legend placed the forge of Hephaestus beneath it, or else the giant Typhon, buried there by Zeus and blamed for its eruptions.
Q 27Which Sumatran eruption about 74,000 years ago is believed to have caused a 'volcanic winter'?
Mount Toba
Mount Toba's eruption left the basin now filled by Lake Toba, about 100 km long; the theory that its volcanic winter nearly wiped out early humans is now disputed.
Q 28Which volcano's April 2010 ash cloud shut most of Europe's airspace for six days?
Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull erupted beneath its ice cap: meltwater meeting magma set off explosions of fine ash, and prevailing winds drove the plume south-east across northern Europe, stranding millions of travellers.
Q 29Which Washington volcano, cloaked in more ice than any other peak in the lower 48, threatens Tacoma's suburbs with mudflows?
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier's ice and weakened rock make it prone to lahars; tens of thousands of people live in its lahar-hazard zones, and schools in towns such as Orting hold evacuation drills.
Q 30Lava from which Congolese volcano, famed for its lava lake, poured through the city of Goma in 2002?
Mount Nyiragongo
Mount Nyiragongo's lava is unusually runny and fast; in January 2002 flows from its flank ran through the middle of Goma, on the shore of Lake Kivu, and buried part of the city.