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Drying Mud, Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, 2006

Mud baking in the hot Indonesian sun nearly reached the rooflines in a village in Sidoarjo, East Java. In 2006, a fracture deep within the Earth, likely caused by local natural-gas drilling, triggered a massive release of hot mud that lasted for months and buried the region.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Gods Must Be Restless: Living in the Shadow of Indonesia’s Volcanoes," January 2008, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by John Stanmeyer