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They are not directly connected (or even involve the same tectonic plates!) So, that eruption at Mayon in the Philippines is not causing the eruption in Kusatsuin Japan or triggering earthquakes in Alaska. Tectonics doesn’t really work that way, it’s too big a scale.

However, what happens in Chile doesn’t really change what is happening in California, or Japan or New Zealand. It is a large ocean underlain by multiple oceanic plates that are interacting with lots of continental and other oceanic plates.

Sure, there are a lot of tectonic boundaries along the edge of the Pacific. The whole thing, though, is really just an evocative image for writers. Maps of this supposed ring of doom show it skirting around the Pacific Ocean from southern Chile, up the coast of South America to the west coast of North America, up over Alaska and Kamchatka, swinging south to get Japan and the Philippines … then takes a weird jog to the west to include Indonesia because and then finishing heading back east to hit the Kermadecs and finally New Zealand. Let’s start off with the basics: the “ Ring of Fire ” is not a thing, geologically-speaking. However, this is all normal for these parts of the world, so let’s not get all worked up about it.

The supposed “Ring of Fire” - the chain of volcanoes and earthquakes that sits at the edge of the Pacific Ocean - appears to be in the news a lot right now because of the eruptions in the Philippines and Indonesia and earthquakes in Alaska and California. “ The Ring of Fire is really active! ” Yup, that’s what the headlines say.