When mount St. Helens blew its wad I had gritty ash an inch deep all over shit and I live 2 states away. I didn't go see it right away and wish I would have. Took the kids to see it 15 years after the fact and it is AWESOME!
Mount St. Helens was the geologic equivalent of a champagne cork popping off.
Vesuvius (actually its neighbor under Naples Bay) would be a really nice 20 lb Tannerite blast. Lots of dead Italians, but probably a net positive for the EU balance of trade. Good TV. They'd do "Hands Across America" or "FarmAid" or something again.
Yellowstone or one of the big African caldera's would be a slate wiper. Not a lot of initial deaths. But probably 3 - 4+ billion over 10 years when you consider America is the world's breadbasket. And everyone on the planet will be reduced to eating bark, shellfish and worms for at least 4 generations... yeah. It would be bad.
And it will happen. But in our near future? Meh, who knows. Humankind has lived in a real 'Goldilocks' zone of planetary evolution. We have a very, very mild planet and climate, etc. right now. We are lucky as all hell.
We will see another ice age soon. A supervolcano or three. A meteor impact. A pole shift. A Cascadia Tsunami. And a local supernova that gamma's us out of existance isn't out of the realm, either.
20K - 100K years is a blip in geologic time. Homo Erectus has been really lucky... right place, right time. Good planetary alignment. Damn lucky.
That luck will run out. It won't be stupid socialist climate Change Hoax. It will be the Universe swatting us like an insect. If we are lucky, we are going to be ready to move off-planet. But that will take a couple of centuries at best. IF we can marshal the resources to do it, instead of spending it on free cheese and socialism.
My bet is that the race is extinct in 5,000 years. To be replaced by an ascendant race of cockroaches, squirrels and probably lawyers. Can't get rid of any of them.
Sirhr
