On Jan 12 this year, the Philippines received a rude and loud reminder of their precarious position on the geologically active Ring of Fire when the Taal Volcano started to erupt.

Scientists have since continued to monitor the volcano anxiously while the Filipino government has started to issue orders to residents to evacuate and prepare for the worst.

This isn’t the first time that Southeast Asia and the rest of the world has been rocked by a volcanic eruption.

In 1816, just after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, bizarre and disastrous weather would wreak havoc across the globe.

The usually warm spring was cold and saw Western Europe flooded; Italians and Hungarians had snowfall with odd colours.

Crop failures resulted in famines and in Eastern United States, a thick fog refused to disperse and farmers found the ground frozen solid long after winter.

This seemingly apocalyptic “Year of the Summer” inspired the poet, Lord Byron, to write, “The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; morn came and went – and came, and brought no day.”

People in Europe and America had no idea that their woes had been caused by a cataclysmic event thousands of kilometres away in Southeast Asia.

Mount Tambora, a supervolcano on Sumbawa island in Indonesia had erupted in 1815.

A supervolcano is distinct from other volcanoes because of the large volume of material ejected into the atmosphere during an eruption.

While most disaster movies depict the danger of volcanoes as being the slow, hot magma setting everything on fire, what is even more dangerous is what’s in the air.

Volcanic winter

Volcanic ash will stay airborne for days and toxic gases, like sulphur dioxide, undergo chemical reactions in the stratosphere, obstructing sunlight and dragging temperatures down to an icy chill.

The period after such a powerful eruption is called a volcanic winter, and it has far-reaching global effects.

Acid rain devastates plant life which is the keystone of the natural food chain.

The Mount Tambora eruption released nearly 160 cubic kilometres of material into the air, consisting of rock, ash and gas.

It was the largest recorded eruption ever and it is estimated some 90,000 people were killed by it.

Horrendously, this was not the deadliest volcanic eruption in human history.

In 1600, the Huaynaputina volcano erupted in Peru, possibly causing a famine in Russia that killed two million people.

Eruptions that took place in ancient history have also had massive consequences, with the Xia Dynasty in China collapsing and the Minoan culture disappearing possibly due to volcanic eruptions.

A volcanic eruption 70,000 years ago nearly caused human extinction; with only a few thousand individuals surviving to be the ancestors of all humans today.

Explosive caldera

As if supervolcanoes aren’t scary on their own, the one type called an explosive caldera should send a shiver down your spine.

After a massive eruption, the empty magma chamber inside a volcano can no longer support its own weight and collapses, forming an explosive caldera.

While the volcano may appear to have been destroyed, the volcanic activity inside continues without a way to release the magma.

The magma and gases will continue to build, with pressure increasing to the point a massive explosion is inevitable.

Below the Yellowstone National Park in Western United States is one of the world’s largest active volcanic calderas which last erupted 650,000 years ago.

When it did, most of the continent was covered in a two-metre layer of ash and rock.

Scientists and national agencies keep an eye out on active volcanoes around the clock, planning and preparing for the worst.

Evacuation plans and eruption countermeasures have been better than they have ever been, but there’s little that can be done for a lot of people if a supervolcano erupts right now.

Luckily, scientists say that the chance of such a disastrous explosion will not be imminent in the next thousand years.

Still, while Malaysia may not have any active volcanoes of its own, one must wonder what could possibly happen to the country should a massive volcanic eruption take place in its neighbours?

Would the country’s crops fail? Would famines then happen? How could air transport continue with volcanic ash in the air? What other consequences would Malaysia face?

After all, if the 1816 Tambora eruption could wreak havoc on faraway Europe, what would that mean for Malaysia?

One can only hope and pray that this will never come to pass in their lifetime.