Last week, North Korea announced that it will cease all nuclear testing and will shut down its main testing facility at Mount Mantap. Although some believe the decision came because of easing tensions between the country and the world, others think Mount Mantap may have come down with a bad case of “tired mountain syndrome.”
But what exactly is tired mountain syndrome, and how does a mountain “catch” it?
The hermit country’s latest nuclear test, conducted in September 2017 at Punggye-ri, was at least 17 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, according to The Washington Post.
In fact, the explosion registered as a magnitude-6.3 earthquake, and before-and-after satellite shots showed visible movement at Mount Mantap — a 7,200-foot-high (2,200 meters) mountain under which deeply buried tunnels house most of the tests. Some geologists think that the mountain is cracking under the pressure.
