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"Try this blam oldie but goodie."

It would seem that both volcanos and boloids can cause major earth distress. This is one reason why IMHO we really should make a conscientious effort not to overpopulate the earth. When bad sh** happens people mega-die. I have been studying this whole world disaster issue for a while, read Winchester's book Krakatoa (a good read, although I disagree with his 535 conclusion), and "Impact Earth: Asteroids, Comets and Meteoroids: the Growing Threat", by Austen Atkinson, and a number of others.

Regarding Krakatoa, Winchester quotes a prolific but somewhat questionable source who describes a great volcanic event in AD 416, which Winchester thinks was probably Krakatoa. Is there any correlation with this event and the movement of the West Goths in 417 and 419, and the Vandals in 420 who crossed the Pyrennes and moved across Spain to cross into North Africa in 427? With reference to 535, Winchester, without any historic record of a huge volcanic event conjectures that there was one because of the severe breakdown in civic society and lack of court records. This, of course, could just as easily have been cause by a major boloid event as recorded worldwide by tree rings, and not by evidence of the right kind of ash in Greenland ice cores.

Regarding the year 1628 BC, this correlates well with the destruction of Thera/Santorini. An event that I am trying to find more about is the 1500 BC, plus or minus 50 years major eruption of Mt. Etna. A huge bowl called the Valle de Bove was scouped out of the side of the mountain by this event. I wish I could narrow down the date.

The Tungusku boloid of 1908 is well known, but hardly anyone knows that in May 1931, a major boloid exploded over Brazil's Amazon forest, with the strength of 4-8 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, destroying 1,300 sq. K of forest. Only the presence of an educated Catholic priest kept the forest tribe whose world was decimated from committing suicide to appease the angry sky gods.

Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, who was mentioned in another comment, was one of Rome's leading historians and essayists. About 534-536 he wrote "...who will not be disturbed, and deeply curious...if something mysterious and unusual seems to be coming on us from the stars? He continues, "How strange it is, I ask you, to see the principal star (the sun), and not its usual brightness; to gaze on the moon...shorn of its natural splendour? All of us are still observing...a blue-coloured sun...we marvel at bodies that cast no midday shadow...and this has not happened in the momentary loss of an eclipse, but has been going on equally through almost the entire year...whence can we hope for mild weather, when the months that once ripened the crops have been deadly sick under the northern blasts? For what will give fertility, if the soil does not grow warm in summer?" This paragraph and the one above it are both from "Impact Earth."

In 1783, Iceland experience a great effusion of Lava from the Laki Fissure. The resulting ash and fluorine gas destroyed 90% of the livestock and starved one fifth of the population. In europe a blue fog was experience for months and crops failed. Banjamin Franklin, who was our ambassador in Europe, commented on this at the time and attributed the problems in Europe to the Iceland event. In 1815 the great explosion of Tambora caused the "year with no summer" which was well recorded in several New England states, causing widespread crop failure.

So it would appear that both volano and boloid can really mess up ones day. Since both are quite unpredictable, it pays to be prepared.