In Pompeii, I remember looking at the casts they made of people's bodies who were buried by Vesuvius. It was a strange sensation.
Then, when NOVA made that great episode "In The Path of A Killer Volcano" about Pinatubo, the scene that really stuck out at me was the guys at Clark AFB who had a video recorder, running out to jump in their car.
The video recorder was recording as they ran, but they weren't aiming it at anything...it was just bouncing up and down randomly showing the pavement and grass.
But you could here the panicked heavy footfalls as they ran, and their labored breathing. When they got to their car their doors were locked.
The camera was still pointing at the ground, and the sound that stuck out was someone saying "Come on...come on!" or something like that, and the sound of the car door handle being frantically and rapidly jiggled up and down as the person waited for the car to be unlocked.
Then, the person with the camera panned it towards the volcano, and all you saw was a solid, vertical wall of ash seemingly a flat wall, going straight up, and boiling like the gasses of Hell.
I don't know if my memory of seeing that some decades ago is accurate, but that is how I remembered it.
I have been fascinated by the intersection of human civilization and volcanic activity, and have zero desire to ever be in the vicinity of one.
These graphics below illustrate the points you made in your post: (note that the graphics are from different sources, and convey different volcanic metrics, but...you can get the idea)
I also found it interesting, that Tambora, the one that had perhaps the most worldwide effect in modern history, was not regarded as very explosive, but it threw enough particulate matter into the air to cause that famous year without a summer, and crop failures all over the world.
Also, of the most significant ones in terms of explosive activity, three of them happened in the United States in the Western part of the country.
Yes. It is our puny cars and methane from animals causing "climate change".