---
title: 'How To Kill A Volcano'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=TQEVini21nk'
video_id: 'TQEVini21nk'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 171
---

# How To Kill A Volcano

> Source: [How To Kill A Volcano](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TQEVini21nk)

## Summary



## Transcript

Volcanoes are one of the most powerful
forces on Earth. Their lava can destroy
cities and their ash clouds can blot out
the sun.
>> [music]
>> And there is basically nothing we can do
to make sure a volcano will never erupt
again,
>> [music]
>> except wait for it to die. So, while we
wait, what is it exactly that kills a
volcano? Hi, I'm Cameron and this is
Minute [music] Earth. There are three
main ways a volcano can die, and the
first is if its supply of magma fizzles
out. The pushing together or pulling
apart of tectonic plates can cause magma
to form. But when those plates fuse
[music] together, the magma forming
activity stops, snuffing out the
volcano. Poland's Kaczawskie Hills and
Foothills has a whole national park
devoted to volcanoes that suffered this
[music] fate. Locals call it the land of
extinct volcanoes. The second way a
volcano can die is if it gets dragged
away from its magma supply. Sometimes
weird conditions in specific places can
melt the mantle, sending up a plume of
melting mantle rock known as a hotspot
that pools beneath the crust and can
birth a volcano. That hotspot itself
doesn't ever move, but the Earth's crust
above it does. So, the volcano will
eventually leave its magma supply
behind. But since the hotspot itself is
still there, when one volcano dies in
this way, a new one might form next to
it, and then a new one forms next to
that, and so on. The Hawaiian Islands,
for instance, are the newest volcanoes
[music] formed by a hotspot that has
left a trail of dead volcanoes that
stretches all the way to Russia. The
third way a volcano can die is if it
gets clogged. Like if conditions in the
mantle change and the magma flow slows
down, the magma that's already in the
volcano's vents can cool, hardening into
a giant plug.
>> [music]
>> 50 million years later, that plug might
be all that's left of the volcano. Or,
if the volcano's vents somehow get
damaged, the magma might not be able to
escape. In these cases, the remaining
magma will often find its way to a
different spot nearby where it can
escape. [music]
That's likely what happened when, in a
spectacular eruption, the largest ever
actually, a volcano called Toba clogged
itself. Evidence suggests that the magma
from its chamber got rerouted to nearby
Sinabung, which is still active today.
Of course, it's really, really hard to
tell exactly what's going on underneath
a volcano, so we're not always sure what
has happened to a volcano. In fact,
sometimes it's hard to tell whether a
volcano is actually dead. Uturuncu in
Bolivia hasn't erupted [music] in
250,000 years, so scientists assumed it
was long gone. But recently, it started
rumbling again, suggesting the
possibility of future volcanic activity.
>> [music]
>> It turns out that Uturuncu and other
quiet volcanoes like it might not be
dead after all. Instead, they could be
taking magnifcently [music] long naps.