[flying Elvis]

Chicken Little would fit right in on FR at times:

Katla has erupted 20 times in the last 1000 years and somehow European civilization has survived.

Katla 1955 (small subglacial eruption)
Katla 1918 12 October 24
Katla 1860 8 May 20
Katla 1823 26 June 28
Katla 1755 17 October ~120
Katla 1721 11 May ~100
Katla 1660 3 November ~60
Katla 1625 2 September 13
Katla 1612 12 October
Katla 1580 11 August
Katla ~1500
Katla 15th century
Katla 1416
Katla ~1357
Katla 1262
Katla 1245
Katla ~1179
Katla 12th century
Eldgjá-Katla ~934
Katla ~920
Katla Late 9th century or early 10th century

[Windflier]

Katla has erupted 20 times in the last 1000 years and somehow European civilization has survived.

Sure they did, but they paid a high cost in famine, population dislocations, and other ruination.

They also didn't have a materially advanced culture, dependent on massive interconnections and high technology, like we do today. Look at what just a few days of air travel disruptions did to Western Europe.

I've read that the last time these two volcanoes erupted, it went on for two years. At least one of those years has been dubbed, "the year without a summer". The 1793 eruption caused the global temperature to drop so hard, that the Mississippi froze clear down to New Orleans.

Yes, people will survive such a cataclysm, but it's gonna be painful.

[Verginius Rufus]

The 1918 eruption was quickly followed by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires. The 1755 eruption was just before the great Lisbon earthquake (mentioned in Candide and in Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The Deacon's Masterpiece").

[little jeremiah]

None of those other eruptions happened when people and stuff flew all over the place in airplanes; nor was everything a finely tune JIT economy where everything depends on everything else working just right, just in time, and having to move very quickly.

Just sayin.