Mt. Toba isn't quite clear cut. I studied volcanism in collage, and Toba was without a doubt a major event. However, it was not an extinction level event. Lots of animals migrated to safer areas where survival was possible, and Homo sapiens also survived in some areas, notably India. It was a huge, world shaping event, and it coincided with a severe ice age. Again, a lot of surging special were well beyond the prevailing winds' paths as the eruption occurred in what is now Indonesia, and an eastward dispersal of ash had far fewer disastrous consequences as it traveled east, with the lightest impact wast of Indonesia. That was a huge caldera. Rodney pointed out that the show's caldera was Yellowstone sized, which would be much smaller, though still catastrophic.
In both real life cases, there would have been ample time to temporarily place survivors in better locations until they could all be rescued, but hey, it's science fiction, and some suspension of reality very often happens.
One of the prime examples would be the idea of getting a yellow dwarf star to go supernova when it not only doesn't have the mass to allow that to happen, and removing mass couldn't cause it in any case. The best example of an assisted supernova would be the ubiquitous type 1A, where a binary star is below the Chandrasekhar limit, but gains matter from a paired star by its gravity's pull until the mass threshold is passed. It also has to involve completed fusion of hydrogen, helium, oxygen, silicone and finally iron, which has a fusion property of using more energy in fusing than it emits, which is the mechanism for the star's sudden implosion. Still, it was a fun story and I don't feel the need to suck the fun out of it when I watch it with others. Again, science fiction is a lot more fun when they get as much real science as the story will bear, and the viewer can then choose to suspend reality in exchange for the story.
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mihaicosmin2007
8 years ago
The eruption might not have been extinction level per see, but it could have been powerful enough to destroy their way of life.
Getting through an ice age and stuff like that does tend to do a lot to a civilization, much more than just relocating to a different planet. They may run out of food, chances are many of them will die, their life expectancy would probably halve or something.
So while it might not have been an extinction level event in the short run, I am pretty sure Rodney assessed the outcome quite well, considering his lack of volcanology knowledge. Had they stayed there, it would have been quite a huge problem for them, and they may not have been prepared for such an sudden change of climate.
We have examples in our history where civilizations did go extinct when a geological event occurs, on much smaller scales than a super-volcano eruption. Rodney had an educated guess, not that he was 100% accurate, and this is not a writer's slip, they actually have other characters point out the flaws in his argument. The inhabitants of the planet doubt Rodney, probably because they knew the life could survive, but not their civilization.
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