History Main / ChekhovsVolcano

* ''WebVideo/PiratesSMP'': The main island of the Faction Isles, i.e. the one inhabited by the four pirate factions, is located on top of a volcano. [[spoiler:Martyn finds [[MacGuffin the L.O.O.T. Shard]] of the SMP world in the magma chamber]] on Day 132, and [[spoiler:the Sun God's destruction of it at his request]] causes an eruption.

** "[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheFortuneteller The Fortuneteller]]" has Aang and Sokka discover a volcano is ready to explode while hiking up there for other reasons. Apparently the townspeople used to monitor it, but stopped doing so once a fortune teller moved in and they figured she'd just tell them if the volcano erupted. To Sokka's great annoyance, her fortune was still technically correct because she only predicted that the town would not be destroyed - she didn't say whether or not the volcano would actually erupt.

* ''WebVideo/PiratesSMP'': The main island of the Faction Isles, i.e. the one inhabited by the four pirate factions, is located on top of a volcano. [[spoiler:Martyn finds [[MacGuffin the LOOT Shard]] of the SMP world in the magma chamber]] on Day 132, and [[spoiler:the Sun God's destruction of it at his request]] causes an eruption.

Please note that since every active volcano can potentially erupt, and every volcanic eruption was preceded by a volcano existing for millions of years, this is a virtually OmnipresentTrope in Real Life volcanic eruptions. As such, [[Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease please avoid posting real life examples.]]

%%[[folder:Real Life]]
%%* Italy is the only volcanically active region in Europe. Since its history is long, erupting volcanoes are very well-documented.
%%** Vesuvius, which turned the entire city of Pompeii to ashes. It erupted in late 1943 with enough force to provoke an effective local ceasefire in [=WW2=], as both the Germans and the Allies struggled with the practicalities of staying alive in what threatened to become a disaster area. Creator/SpikeMilligan related that his artillery unit was tasked with evacuating Italian civilians from threatened areas, as humanitarian relief took precedence over fighting the Germans. (who apparently used the respite to regroup a safe distance away and prepare new defences).
%%** Also in Naples, and in a sense far more worrying than Vesuvius, are the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields Phlegraean Fields]], a very large volcano that shows signs of a possible eruption in the not too distant future.
%%** Sicily has Etna, which erupts frequently, and Stromboli off the coast is in a nearly constant state of eruption.
%%* In the United States:
%%** Mount Rainier is feared to be this. Largest Volcano in the lower 48, one of the broadest in the world in terms of glaciers and crags and area. Tacoma and Seattle, with about 3.5 million people, lie nearly entirely on old mudflows from the volcano that are less than 200 years old.
%%** In the same volcanic neighbourhood as Mount Rainer is Mount St. Helens, which practically became a unit of measurement in the severity of volcanic eruptions after it went off in 1980 and killed 57 people.
%%** The volcanoes of the Hawaiian islands erupt (well, ooze) frequently, meaning the islands are slowly growing bigger (and volcanoes that are now underwater may someday reach the surface, as more lava builds up higher). To complete the frequent comparisons with Hawaii, the French island of La Réunion has the Piton de la Fournaise volcano. It's easily accessible, erupts on average once a year, and its average level of danger is exemplified by how the first reaction of locals and tourists when an eruption is announced is to organize eruption-sighting tours.
%%** The geysers, hot springs, and "paint pots" of Yellowstone National Park are all caused by geologic activity from a massive caldera that spans the whole region. Pray it never, ever explodes.[[note]]The general consensus among volcanologists is that it's not likely to for at least a few hundred years, and more like a few thousand.[[/note]]
%%*** The Yellowstone hot spot is located in Wyoming. The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is based out of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, some 250-plus miles to the south.
%%*** The Yellowstone Hot Spot is actually just the latest in a long line of hot spots extending back to the Southwest over several states. The North American plate moves and the hot spot gradually shifts.
%%* Although many supervolcanoes or megacalderas are extinct now, there are still some active ones, not just Yellowstone. Taupo in New Zealand is another still active one.
%%* According to the documentary The Last Day of the Dinosaurs, the asteroid that caused the mass extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous period possibly caused this. Allegedly, the seismic catastrophes created by the impact may well have caused long-extinct volcanoes to erupt again.
%%* The leading contender for the cause of the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction (also known as [[ApocalypseHow The Great Dying]] and an event that puts the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction to shame) is the eruption of the Siberian Flood Basalts, the ''largest'' volcanic event known to have occurred on Earth.
%%* In Indonesia:
%%** The Toba catastrophe theory, which not only reduced humanity to a few thousand individuals (fortunately, that wasn't enough back then), but may also have been the true cause of the last ice age, or at least hastened its arrival, which it was coincidentally followed by. In fact ''all'' supervolcanic eruptions can lead to an ice age.
%%** Krakatoa is still feared to be this, or more precisely Anak Krakatau, 'Child of Krakatoa'. After the original volcano blew itself apart in 1883, a new volcano started growing out of the caldera the old one left. These fears proved to be valid when Anak Krakatau erupted on December 22, 2018, causing the volcano to collapse to a small caldera barely above sea level, and producing a deadly tsunami.
%%** Tambora, which spewed so much dust into the atmosphere that it lowered temperatures for several years and made 1816 'The Year Without a Summer'.
%%* Inverted with permafrost. Due to its involvement in climate change, it is not really permanent at all, and it contains a huge amount of carbon dioxide and methane (both greenhouse gases) frozen within it, assuming if the above was true.
%%* The Thera eruption, which wiped out the Minoan settlements on Santorini some 3600 years ago, and possibly caused a tsunami that destroyed coastal communities and agricultural areas on Crete 200 km away. This eruption might have been the basis for the Atlantis myth.
%%* The largest volcano known to mankind, Olympus Mons, poses no threat to anyone but possible future Mars explorers. Estimates for how long it's been inactive range from 2 million years ago to back in Jurassic times; astrogeologists suspect that its activity cycle is much less regular than that of Earth's volcanoes, as Mars has no plate tectonics to dictate when pressures build up within its magma chamber. Hence, if and when it ''does'' erupt, there won't be much prior seismic activity to give an advance warning.
%%* Last but not least Io, the innermost of the [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter four Jupiter's largest moons]]. Despite being just a bit larger than our [[UsefulNotes/TheMoon Moon]], it contains around 400 active volcanoes and each space probe that has imaged it has found something volcanic going on there.

If ever a volcano appears in a work of fiction, it's going to erupt. The existence of a volcano is, in itself, a ChekhovsGun. [[LawOfConservationOfDetail There's no sense in having it around]] ''unless'' it [[StuffBlowingUp explodes]], because otherwise the story is robbed of a clear dramatic conflict. (Unless you're just planning to have an awesome climax fight over the [[LavaIsBoilingKoolAid roiling magma]] which ''all'' dormant volcanoes are filled with. Or, if Mt. Fuji is involved.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Bug}}'' has one in [[LethalLavaLand Arachnia's]] background. [[spoiler: Bug pushes [[BigBad Queen Cadavra]] into it when he beats her, causing it to erupt]].

* The plot of ''[[WesternAnimation/GarfieldSpecials Garfield In Paradise]]'' involved one.