EARTHQUAKES & VOLCANOES

The Best Streaming Videos on Earthquakes and Volcanoes

As with science topics writ large, Netflix and Amazon have a wealth of educational resources that won’t bore you or your kids. Not that it would be easy to make earthquakes and volcanoes boring, what with their massive power and pyrotechnics. Why just read about them when you and watch and hear earthquakes and volcanoes in action?

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  Ring of Fire

  One of nature’s most spectacular and perilous wonders, volcanoes—with a danger radius of twenty miles, temperatures that can exceed 2,000 degrees, and lava traveling up to 150 miles per hour—are capable of consuming entire forests or towns and triggering tsunamis, flash floods, and earthquakes. Of hundreds of active volcanoes in the world, over three-quarters are part of the explosive Ring of Fire.

  Length: 38 minutes

  Rating: NR

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  NOVA: Deadliest Volcanoes

  Follow along as scientists probe the world’s most powerful volcanoes, including the super volcano that slumbers beneath Yellowstone National Park.

  Length: 53 minutes

  Rating: TV-PG

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  Life on Fire: Phoenix Temple

  Around the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua, life has struggled for thousands of years to reemerge from the ashes.

  Length: 53 minutes

  Rating: NR

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  Life on Fire: Icelandic Volcanoes

  Through spectacular aerial footage of this country, which is an accumulation of lava and ash, a maze of craters and faults, the episode tries to discern which volcano will awaken next.

  Length: 53 minutes

  Rating: NR

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  Kilauea: Mountain of Fire

  Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, is the world’s most active volcano. Its latest eruption began in 1983, and it hasn’t stopped since. Kilauea is also the driving force in a spectacular process of creation—the cataclysmic meeting of 2,000-degree lava and seventy-five-degree ocean water.

  Length: 50 minutes

  Rating: TV-PG