Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 79 CE, and suddenly every emperor in Rome wanted to be compared to a volcano. Not the destructive part—the unstoppable part.
Power doesn’t whisper. It erupts. And for thousands of years, humans have looked at volcanoes and seen themselves—or at least, the version of themselves they desperately want to project. Kings, dictators, gods, and corporate CEOs have all borrowed the volcano’s visual language: the dramatic buildup, the explosive release, the scorched earth that follows. It’s theatrical. It’s terrifying. It’s exactly what you’d pick if you needed a metaphor that screams “don’t mess with me” without actually saying it.
When Mountains Literally Rewrite Maps and Nobody Can Stop Them
In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded with the force of roughly 800 megatons of TNT. The eruption killed 71,000 people directly, triggered a global climate disaster, and caused 1816 to be known as “the Year Without a Summer.” Crops failed across Europe and North America. People starved. And here’s the thing—nobody could do anything about it.
That’s the core of volcanic power: inevitability.
You can’t negotiate with magma. You can’t draft legislation against pyroclastic flows. When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the sound was heard 3,000 miles away—the loudest sound in recorded history. Volcanic power is the ultimate “because I said so,” except the volcano doesn’t even bother to speak. It just acts, and the world adjusts.
The Dictator’s Favorite Geological Metaphor for Obvious Reasons
Turns out authoritarians love volcano imagery. North Korea’s Mount Paektu, an active stratovolcano, is central to the Kim dynasty’s mythology—Kim Jong-il was supposedly born there under a double rainbow. The volcano isn’t just a mountain; it’s a symbol of the regime’s inevitible power and divine legitimacy. Never mind that the actual birth happened in the Soviet Union. Details.
Volcanoes don’t apologize. They don’t explain themselves. They simply exist as forces beyond human control, which makes them irresistible to anyone trying to cultivate an image of untouchable authority. The Roman god Vulcan controlled fire and metalworking from beneath Mount Etna, which has been erupting for roughly 500,000 years. If you’re a ruler trying to seem eternal and unstoppable, aligning yourself with something that’s been exploding since before Homo sapiens existed is—wait—maybe it’s less about actual power and more about the performance of it.
Why We Still Build Cities Right Next to These Things
Naples sits in the shadow of Vesuvius. Three million people. Tokyo is surrounded by volcanic peaks. Jakarta, Quito, Manila—all built within spitting distance of active volcanoes. This isn’t ignorance. It’s calculated risk.
Volcanic soil is absurdly fertile. The ash from eruptions contains minerals that make agriculture thrive. So humans gamble: we’ll take the rich soil and occasional devastation over barren safety. That’s its own kind of power dynamic—volcanoes offering a Faustian bargain that entire civilizations accept. You get the bounty, but you live under the constant threat of annihilation.
The Part Where Science Finally Catches Up and It’s Still Terrifying
Modern volcanology can predict some eruptions. Sometimes. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines was successfully evacuated in 1991, saving thousands of lives. But here’s the thing—prediction isn’t control. We can watch magma chambers fill. We can measure seismic activity. We can issue warnings.
But we can’t stop it.
The power remains entirely on the volcano’s side. We’ve just gotten better at running away. In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland erupted and grounded 100,000 flights across Europe for six days. A single volcanic burp disrupted global air travel because ash destroys jet engines. One mountain in Iceland reminded the entire modern world that nature still sets the rules.
Volcanoes remain the ultimate symbol of power not because they’re loud or dramatic—though they’re both—but because they operate on a scale where human authority becomes irrelevant. You can’t sanction a stratovolcano. You can’t drone-strike a caldera. You can only watch, measure, and hope you’re not in the way when it decides to remind everyone who’s actually in charge.
