"It is reasonable to assume that the earthquake precedes the volcano," it was said. A volcano eruption "was nature's natural event, a pimple which had come to a head...It may aptly be compared to boiling water in a tea kettle. The steam finds an outlet through the spout, and if there were no spout a violent explosion would follow." Hence earthquakes and volcanos were nature's way of releasing tremendous stresses (masses of liquid heat in the case of a volcano) that built up deep inside the earth.
"Four out of 5 earthquakes occur around the edge of the Pacific Ocean and many of world's active volcanos are located in the same belt," it was reported. Seismologists named the belt encircling the Pacific Ocean the circum-Pacific belt (or the 'Ring of Fire').
The other chief belt was a belt extending across southern Asia and through the Mediterranean Sea. The 'Ring of Fire' was "where vast plates of the earth's crust grind against each other, triggering earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The crust of the earth is a living, breathing thing and the solid crust on which we stand is about 60 miles thick.
"Eruptions occurred when a section of the ocean floor had been pushed under the continental plate. Solid material brought down from the surface boiled in intense heat beneath the earth's crust. As we go down into the earth, the temperature increases. At a depth of about 20 miles, it is hot enough (1000 to 1100 degrees Centigrade) to melt most rocks." The mentioned solid material "will become lighter. When the pressures build up beyond the total weight of the plates, it forces its way upward to create volcanic activity in the form of ash, vapor and molten rock known as lava. This movement of molten rock under the surface of the earth sometimes is itself the cause of earthquakes. But most earthquakes are tremblings or vibrations of the earth's surface. What causes these tremblings is usually a 'fault' in the rocks of the earth's crust. Mountain ranges are built by this deformation (the process by which rocks are folded, faulted or compressed by earth stresses) of the earth's crust." The largest part of the earth, the center, had been described as "a molten mass of liquid rock and metal."
It was understood "the earth is neither a well-rounded sphere nor a solid ball. There is no band of solid rock or iron under the topsoil. The cover of the earth is a haphazard array of gigantic slabs of rock and ore, oil and shale. If the outer cover was solid, the pressures from within would have split and exploded the earth into fragments a long time ago. The so-called haphazard core is designed precisely to surrender to the hot pressures in the form of erupting volcanoes and earthquakes." One volcanologist voiced "the surface of the earth falls and rises about a foot twice every 24 hours." He described these as "rock tides" because they followed the tides of the sea and varied during the lunar month. Another seismologist added, "A volcanic eruption or an earthquake occurs when you reach a level of stress that's greater than the system can endure...The tides are very likely to be additional title, tiny bit of stress that's needed to trip the whole system."
Tides rose and fell daily according to the mixing forces of gravity from the moon and sun upon the revolving earth. When both bodies are lined up directly with the earth, the gravity of moon and sun combined to create maximum tides called "spring tides". It was mentioned, "The concentration of earthquakes is heavier in the Orient and the reason is that the Pacific crust moved in that direction. As a result, the type of earthquake in Asia is different from that in North America. On the Oriental shore of the Pacific earthquakes are caused by the crustal blocks crunching together and one being forced under the other, while in North America the earth is being pulled apart and the blocks are sliding past one another rather than crunching together."
