Supervolcano "wrecking" late 17th C. Europe w/o an extinction level event?

In 1793-4 the Laki fissure eruption in Iceland produced a volcanic disaster second in modern times only to the Tambora eruption of 1815. Tambora produced the Year Without a Summer, and Laki produced a similar summer.

If we take a geological POD, and transfer both the Tambora and Krakatoa eruptions to the 1790s, coinciding with the Dalton Minimum, and to a location to maximize damage to Europe, would it work? (Maybe the Laacher See caldera?)

Would it be possible for this event to wreak regional havoc enough to "wreck" Europe in the late 17th C. without completely killing off humanity? (I'm leaving the definition of "wreck" open to allow maximum leeway in answers.)

Doh! title should be 18th, NOT 17th C. (>.<)

I don't know much geology but I don't see why not. Both of those eruptions were devastating and caused real damage to their regions. I think this would engender a "Fall" ala Peshawar Lancers type event. I personally love geologic PODs so i hope this gets more comment.

How much wreckier can you reasonably expect the seventeenth century to get?

Problem is, I don't think so, except if you're willing to take huge planetwide changes into account as well. Human populations are incredibly hard to destroy. Look at things like Tsmbora, where you got famine and terrible privartion, and ten years after, it's business as usual. Look at the Thirty Years' War, hell, look at WWII. Perople in 1945 confidently predicted that the Ruhr area would never recover, and that it would take a century for Warsaw to be a functioning city again. Planners expected famine conditions in Western Europe until the 60s and 70s. The Black Death killed anything up to 60% of the population in places, possibly as high as 40% overall, and what happens? Very little, in cultural terms. If you want to destroy the culture of Europe, you'd need a real ice age. Anything less than glaciation up to the Pyrenees will just screw up lives. And that kind of change is going to also shift weather patterns worldwide, with huge impacts on places like Mesopotamia, the Ganges valles, Northern China, Egypt and Mexico.

That said, a weather event like this could be enough to shift the balance in favour of Southern Europe. It could decimate the populations of Scandinavia, the British Isles and Northern Central Europe badly enough to limit their military potential significantly. An Ottoman Ukraine, a French Netherlands and an Austrian Germany? I guess it's possible.

Wait, the 1790s were in the late 18th century... While the Thirty Years' War was in the 17th.

How would the colonial empires of Europe be affected? How would the indigenous populations of the Americas fare?

carlton_bach said:

How much wreckier can you reasonably expect the seventeenth century to get?

Click to expand...

I'm thinking something maybe just a step below the fall.

carlton_bach said:

Problem is, I don't think so, except if you're willing to take huge planetwide changes into account as well.

Click to expand...

Globally bad, regionally catastrophic is alright.

carlton_bach said:

Human populations are incredibly hard to destroy. Look at things like Tsmbora, where you got famine and terrible privartion, and ten years after, it's business as usual. Look at the Thirty Years' War, hell, look at WWII. Perople in 1945 confidently predicted that the Ruhr area would never recover, and that it would take a century for Warsaw to be a functioning city again. Planners expected famine conditions in Western Europe until the 60s and 70s. The Black Death killed anything up to 60% of the population in places, possibly as high as 40% overall, and what happens? Very little, in cultural terms.

Click to expand...

Indeed, that's what I was looking for - somewhere on the narrow path between regional extinction and global extinction. Say 80-90% in Europe, 50-60% in Asia, and 30% elsewhere, for a rough total of 60% of the world population?

carlton_bach said:

If you want to destroy the culture of Europe, you'd need a real ice age. Anything less than glaciation up to the Pyrenees will just screw up lives. And that kind of change is going to also shift weather patterns worldwide, with huge impacts on places like Mesopotamia, the Ganges valles, Northern China, Egypt and Mexico.

Click to expand...

I don't wan't Europe gone, but disrupted enough that it's not in control/on top while allowing the New World colonies to survive (note that's emphatically not unscathed, but survive.)

carlton_bach said:

That said, a weather event like this could be enough to shift the balance in favour of Southern Europe. It could decimate the populations of Scandinavia, the British Isles and Northern Central Europe badly enough to limit their military potential significantly. An Ottoman Ukraine, a French Netherlands and an Austrian Germany? I guess it's possible.

Click to expand...

Note that I want to "wreck" all of Europe.

mojojojo said:

How would the colonial empires of Europe be affected? How would the indigenous populations of the Americas fare?

Click to expand...

See above.

How would flora and fauna be effected by such an event

mojojojo said:

How would flora and fauna be effected by such an event

Click to expand...

I would expect some die offs, but not quite sure what and how much. Or how much for people, for that matter - part of my asking is to get an idea of how much damage can be done to Eurasia and keep the New World colonies viable.

That does put me in a mind to wonder if quinoa and amaranth might make a bit of a come back. Of course they wouldn't replace wheat and corn, but they might be more common.

How's this look?

Edit: just for clarity, this is based on the Laacher See caldera.



Red: 3-6 feet of ashfall
Orange: 1-3 feet of ashfall
Yellow: 6-12 inches of ashfall

Too much? Not enough? Just right?

Nobody else?

Sa'id Mohammed said:

Expect to see early independence for American colonies and a second chance for native populations to rise up.

Click to expand...

Indeed, that was part of the aim.

Supervolcano "wrecking" late 17th C. Europe w/o an extinction level event?

If we take a geological POD, and transfer both the Tambora and Krakatoa eruptions to the 1790s, coinciding with the Dalton Minimum, and to a location to maximize damage to Europe, would it work?

Click to expand...

OK, I'm confused. (Not unusual) Do you want a late 17th Century event, which would mean the late 1600s, or a late 18th Century event, meaning the late 1700s?

By the 1790s the American colonies are already independent, so that's not a factor in the scenario. In either time, North America would likely see a huge influx of refugees from Europe and the 17th C. colonies would swell in size, overwhelming Native populations. Independence would not be an option; if Great Britain becomes uninhabitable, the Royal Family would likely move to North America. In the 1600s, probably the French royals would also move to North America, with interesting consequences.

Cash said:

OK, I'm confused. (Not unusual) Do you want a late 17th Century event, which would mean the late 1600s, or a late 18th Century event, meaning the late 1700s?

Click to expand...

Yes, my bad for the title. Should have been 18th not 17th C.

Cash said:

By the 1790s the American colonies are already independent, so that's not a factor in the scenario.

Click to expand...

Most are not at this point yet - New Spain, Brazil, Haiti, etc. aren't free yet.

Cash said:

In either time, North America would likely see a huge influx of refugees from Europe and the 17th C. colonies would swell in size, overwhelming Native populations.

Click to expand...

Alrighty, let's do some number crunching...

Rough esgtimates of colonial populations ca 1790:
Canada: 350,000
US: 3 million
New Spain: 6 million
Brazil: 3 million
Haiti: 400,000
Elsewhere: 1 million
Indigenous: 2 million (optimistic estimate )

Estimated European populations before/after volcano (assuming 80-90% fatalities):
Europe: 190/28 million
Britain: 10/2 million
France: 30/4.5 million
German States: 25/1 million
Spain: 10/2 million
Poland: 12/2 million
Russia: 40/10 million
Italy: 18/1.5 million
Netherlands: 2/.5 million
Scandinavia: 5/1 million
Ireland: 5/1 million
Portugal: 3/.5 million
Autro-Hungaria: 25 million/2 million
Ottomans: 25/5 million

Does that sound roughly good?

So, give a rough estimate, double the European population of the new world?

Lot's of folk w/o colonies to head to. Refugees absorbed into colonies and other countries?

Cash said:

Independence would not be an option; if Great Britain becomes uninhabitable, the Royal Family would likely move to North America. In the 1600s, probably the French royals would also move to North America, with interesting consequences.

Click to expand...

Let's see - looking at the map - the Spanish, Portugese, British, Ottoman, Russian, Scandinavian, and various Italians are likely to survive.

If you're talking an 80-90 percent die-off in Europe, then the continent is essentially abandoned, with one to six feet of ash covering most of the continent. This does not include whatever long-term climate effects follow the eruptions.

The royals and other elites of Europe, along with whatever other populations can manage to find a berth, will be heading for North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Depending on the time frame for the disaster -- how long, how bad, how organized is the response -- Britain alone could mobilize enough ships to move a substantial number of people to North America, with some perhaps being there temporarily before moving on to other places (earlier colonization of Australia/New Zealand?) -- hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million. (too optimistic probably) Spain and Portugal would also have extensive sea lifts; France less so, but still substantial -- as well as moving people south to West Africa.

Elsewhere in Europe, there would be massive population migrations eastward to escape the ash fall and the colder climate. That would set up a series of migration patterns that could see Cossacks and Poles doing a reverse Ghengis Khan into Asia and the Greeks and Turks moving into Afghanistan and India.

Ironically, this could set up a Golden Age for North and South America while the rest of the globe convulses in famines, wars, and disease. Unless the eruptions set the stage for a Little Ice Age. That would cause real difficulties in northern North America (read Canada, New England).

carlton_bach said:

The Black Death killed anything up to 60% of the population in places, possibly as high as 40% overall, and what happens? Very little, in cultural terms.

Click to expand...

I disagree slightly with this statement, as I have always been under the impression that the Black Death a crucial cause of the redistribution of land that allowed for the development of enough of a middle class to start purchasing oriental goods in enough quantities to justify epic voyages of discovery. In my mind the long term cultural effects on the Black Death were significant, but paradoxically positive for European civilization.

Your larger statement, that humanity perseveres through catastrophe, is true enough. I don't see a permanent abandonment of the European continent by any means, it would begin to recover. But it would be a very different kind of place.

Cash said:

If you're talking an 80-90 percent die-off in Europe, then the continent is essentially abandoned, with one to six feet of ash covering most of the continent. This does not include whatever long-term climate effects follow the eruptions.

Click to expand...

The numbers are up for change - nothing's set in stone.

Cash said:

The royals and other elites of Europe, along with whatever other populations can manage to find a berth, will be heading for North and South America, Africa, and Asia.

Click to expand...

True, although I'm sure there'll be some new kings/queens before all is said and done. Oh what fun - a good succession crisis or two thrown into the pot, with rival claimants to throwns in different colonial locations.

Cash said:

Depending on the time frame for the disaster -- how long, how bad, how organized is the response -- Britain alone could mobilize enough ships to move a substantial number of people to North America, with some perhaps being there temporarily before moving on to other places (earlier colonization of Australia/New Zealand?) -- hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million. (too optimistic probably) Spain and Portugal would also have extensive sea lifts; France less so, but still substantial -- as well as moving people south to West Africa.

Click to expand...

Good stuff.

Cash said:

Elsewhere in Europe, there would be massive population migrations eastward to escape the ash fall and the colder climate. That would set up a series of migration patterns that could see Cossacks and Poles doing a reverse Ghengis Khan into Asia and the Greeks and Turks moving into Afghanistan and India.

Click to expand...

Ah, more good stuff, thanks.

Cash said:

Ironically, this could set up a Golden Age for North and South America while the rest of the globe convulses in famines, wars, and disease. Unless the eruptions set the stage for a Little Ice Age. That would cause real difficulties in northern North America (read Canada, New England).

Click to expand...

Hmmm... Not sure which way I'll go there. I'll have a think.

tormsen said:

I disagree slightly with this statement, as I have always been under the impression that the Black Death a crucial cause of the redistribution of land that allowed for the development of enough of a middle class to start purchasing oriental goods in enough quantities to justify epic voyages of discovery. In my mind the long term cultural effects on the Black Death were significant, but paradoxically positive for European civilization.

Your larger statement, that humanity perseveres through catastrophe, is true enough. I don't see a permanent abandonment of the European continent by any means, it would begin to recover. But it would be a very different kind of place.

Click to expand...

Something I'm looking at in researching the ash aspect is that Europe's soil will be either concreted over or much enriched.

Osakadave said:

Something I'm looking at in researching the ash aspect is that Europe's soil will be either concreted over or much enriched.

Click to expand...

Perhaps one way in certain regions, and the other in other regions. Perhaps concretion effect more common in the central 'red' region and a beneficial soil enrichment as a long term effect in the orange and yellow regions. That could very well lead to some kind of mid 19th century recolonisation effort from the Americas, before the Russians and/or Ottomans get there first.

Some quick other thoughts: What will the relations between France and Haiti be in this situation? France might will spend much more resources sending ships and men to the New World for the evacuation, but they'd be in a relative position of weakness. The issue of slavery might be somewhat less relevant in this situation, what with boatloads of French peasants arriving in the Caribbean.

Also, technologies immediately delayed: lithographic printing and the smallpox vaccine.

The fate of the ailing Dutch East India Company will be interesting. Will the Dutch be evacuated to South Africa?

Oooh, a sudden thought: a vigorous Persia under the Qajars might take advantage of the chaos and expand at the expense of both the Ottomans and the Russians, both of whom would be much more greatly affected by the eruption than the Persians.