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We can still see the devastation of the Mt. Toba eruption. On the Malay peninsula, many hundreds of miles away and a location with no volcanic activity, the volcanic ash is literally hundreds and hundreds of feet thick. Any kind of similar event will have catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

However, Toba is a VASTLY bigger volcano than Merapi. Indeed, a fairly large lake is the entire caldera of Toba. When Toba erupted circa 75,000 years ago, it spewed out not 15 cubic miles of volcanic ash, but over TEN times that, effectively blocking out sunlight on the Earth's surface for nearly a year.

That's why Toba is classed as a supervolcano.

>>>We can still see the devastation of the Mt. Toba eruption. On the Malay peninsula, many hundreds of miles away and a location with no volcanic activity, the volcanic ash is literally hundreds and hundreds of feet thick. Any kind of similar event will have catastrophic consequences for the entire world.<<<

Yeah, it would suck on so many levels it’s hard to imagine, especially when you’re living up here in Alaska. However... humanity DID survive the last eruption of Mt. Toba. If it happened this time around, a fair number of us have a lot more knowledge of things, and I think, for humanity, at least, it would be a huge strain and there might be some locally severe circumstances, but the species would do all right. Going back to a 17th century - or, for that matter, a 7th century - state of being would be hugely awful, but we’d have the knowledge from now to bring us back pretty quick.

Or God may have other plans. Who the hell knows? LOL

"We can still see the devastation of the Mt. Toba eruption."

Toba was the last super-volcano eruption on earth, 74,000 years ago. There were as few as 10,000 people left on earth after Toba. That event is still detectable in our DNA.