Golly, the cable news networks haven't had a volcano to obsess about since Mt. St. Helens. As I recall, the death toll in that one was 1 old man who refused to leave. Now if Mexico City was to blow, that would be pretty cool.
I think it was 51 or 52 people who died. BTW, the old man did die...his name was Harry Truman.
57 dead from St Helens eruption.
You apparently haven't been seeing all the recent doom-and-gloom programs about the Yellowstone Caldera. The truth is, the human race lives every day in the shadow of some devastating natural disaster: volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, asteroid collisions...what am I leaving out? I'm amazed to learn, late in life, that it's the responsibility of Republican administrations to save us from all of them.
Forget St. Helens. She's nothing compared to what Mt. Rainier can do.
We're doomed!
Mexico City's nearest volcanoes are 30 or 40 miles away. I climbed almost to the top of Popocatepetl. If the wind was blowing the wrong way it could certainly cause serious problems.
With that major eruption about 1800 BCE, perhaps that was the cause of the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt when there was famine, chaos, and the Hyksos invaded.
There were several really large caldera events prior to the end of the ice age about 18,000 years ago. One, Sakura-jima in Japan left a 15 mile diameter crater about 22 Kya.