Volcanoes - fire-breathing mountains, a place where you can look into the bowels of the Earth. Among them are active and extinct. If active volcanoes are active from time to time, then there is no information about the eruptions of extinct volcanoes in the memory of mankind. And only the structure and rocks that make them up allow us to judge their turbulent past.
Intermediate position is occupied by dormant or dormant volcanoes. They are characterized by a lack of activity for many years.
Sleeping volcanoes
The division of volcanoes into dormant and active is very conditional. People may simply not be aware of their activity in the not so distant past.
Sleeping are, for example, the famous volcanoes of Africa: Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro, Rungwe, Menengai and others. There have been no eruptions for a long time, but light trickles of gas rise above some. But knowing that they are located in the zone of the Great East African graben system, it can be assumed that inany moment they can wake up and show themselves in all their power and danger.
Dangerous Calm
Sleeping volcanoes can be very dangerous. The saying about the still pool and the devils in it fits well with them. The history of mankind remembers many cases when a volcano, long considered dormant or even extinct, woke up and brought a lot of trouble to people living in its vicinity.
The most famous example is the famous eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed, in addition to Pompeii, several other cities and many villages. The life of Pliny the Elder, the famous ancient military leader and naturalist, was cut short precisely in connection with him.
Interrupted sleep of volcanoes
Volcano Ruiz in the Colombian Andes has been thought dormant since 1595. But on November 13, 1985, he denied this by erupting in a series of explosions, one stronger than the other. Snow and ice located in the crater and on the slopes of the volcano began to melt rapidly, forming powerful mud-stone flows. They poured into the valley of the La Gunilla River and reached the city of Armero, located 40 km from the volcano. A stream of mud and stones fell on the city and the surrounding villages in a raging mess 5-6 m thick. About 20 thousand people died, Armero became a huge mass grave. Only those residents who climbed the nearest hills at the beginning of the eruption were able to escape.
Emission of gas from the mouth of the Nyos volcano caused the death of more than 1,700 people and a large number of livestock. But he was considered extinct for a long time. It even formed a lake in its crater.
Volcanoes of Kamchatka
The Kamchatka Peninsula is the centera large number of active and dormant volcanoes. It would be wrong to consider them extinct, because here is the boundary of the collision of lithospheric plates, which means that any activity in tectonic movements can wake up the formidable forces of nature that have fallen asleep.
Bezymyanny volcano, located south of Klyuchevskaya Sopka, was considered extinct for a long time. However, in September 1955, he woke up from sleep, an eruption began, clouds of gas and ash rose to a height of 6-8 km. However, this was only the beginning. The prolonged eruption reached its maximum on March 30, 1956, when a powerful explosion sounded that demolished the top of the volcano, forming a deep crater with a diameter of up to 2 km. The explosion destroyed all the trees at a distance of up to 25-30 km in the area. And a giant cloud, consisting of hot gases and ash, rose to a height of 40 km! Small particles fell out at great distances from the volcano itself. And even at a distance of 15 km from Bezymyanny, the thickness of the ash layer was half a meter.
As with the eruption of the Ruiz volcano, a stream of mud, water and stones was formed, which swept to the Kamchatka River, which is almost 100 km.
The dormant volcanoes of Kamchatka are very dangerous, because they look like the infamous Vesuvius, Mont Pele (Martinique), Katmai (Alaska). They sometimes experience explosions, which in more densely populated areas would be a real disaster.
An example is the eruption of Shiveluch in 1964. The power of the explosion can be judged by the size of the crater. Its depth was800 m and a diameter of 3 km. Volcanic bombs weighing up to 3 tons scattered over a distance of up to 12 km!
Such powerful eruptions in the history of Shiveluch happened more than once. Near the small village of Klyuchi, archaeologists managed to dig out a settlement covered with ashes and stones several centuries ago, even before the Russians came to Kamchatka.
Threat to humanity
Some scientists believe that dormant volcanoes can cause a global catastrophe that will destroy humanity. At the same time, they talk about long-extinct giants, such as Yellowstone in North America. The supervolcano, which left a caldera 55 km by 72 km after its last eruption, is located in the "hot spot" of the planet, where magma is close to the earth's surface.
And there are quite a lot of such giants, sleeping or close to awakening, on Earth.
Sleeping volcanoes (list)
| Sleeping volcanoes | Mainland | Height |
| Elbrus | Eurasia | 5642 m |
| Vesuvius | Eurasia | 1281 m |
| Ubehebe | North America | 752 m |
| Yellowstone | North America | 1610-3462 m (various parts of the caldera) |
| Katla | oh. Iceland | 1512 m |
| Uturunku | South America | 6008 m |
| Toba | oh. Sumatra | 2157 m |
| Taupo | New Zealand | 760 m |
| Teide | Canary Islands | 3718 m |
| Tambora | oh. Sumatra | 2850 m |
| Orisaba | South America | 5636 m |
