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Most of the world's earthquakes strike along one Pacific horseshoe

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The Ring of Fire hosts about 90% of earthquakes and three-quarters of active volcanoes.

Verified · NOAA Ocean Exploration

Trace a line around the rim of the Pacific Ocean and you map the planet’s most restless zone: the Ring of Fire. This horseshoe-shaped belt runs roughly 40,000 km (25,000 miles), from the tip of South America up through North America, across to Japan, and down into New Zealand.

Around 90% of the world’s earthquakes—and the overwhelming majority of the largest ones—happen here, along with about 75% of Earth’s active volcanoes.

The reason is subduction. Around the Pacific, dense oceanic plates dive beneath lighter ones, grinding past each other to build stress that releases as massive earthquakes. The same descending rock melts at depth and feeds chains of explosive volcanoes above.

That single geological process ties together the region’s earthquakes, its eruptions, and the tsunamis that subduction megathrust quakes can unleash—which is why so many of the most powerful events ever recorded cluster around this one ocean.

~90%
of world's earthquakes
~75%
of active volcanoes
40,000 km
length of the belt

Sources & references

2 references

Well-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.

1 NOAA Ocean Exploration government “The Ring of Fire stretches for nearly 40,250 kilometers in a horseshoe from South America, along North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, and into New Zealand. Much of the volcanic activity occurs along subduction zones.” oceanexplorer.noaa.gov ↗
2 National Geographic Education Educational resource “Roughly 90 percent of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, and the ring is dotted with 75 percent of all active volcanoes on Earth.” education.nationalgeographic.org ↗
✓ Last reviewed Jun 6, 2026

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