Since the late 1700s, volcanoes have caused more than 250,000 deaths. Most of these occurred during four disastrous eruptions.

The largest of the four occurred on April 10–11, 1815, at Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island, now a part of Indonesia. Fifty cubic km (12 cubic miles) of magma were expelled in Plinian ash clouds and pyroclastic flows. Ash layers greater than 1 cm (0.4 inch) thick fell on more than 500,000 square km (193,000 square miles) of Indonesia and the Java Sea. Before the eruption Tambora was a stratovolcano some 4,300 metres (14,100 feet) high; following the eruption, approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 feet) of the summit cone were missing, and in its place was a collapsed caldera 6 by 7 km (3.7 by 4.4 miles) wide and 1 km (0.6 mile) deep. About 10,000 people were killed by the explosive eruption and the tsunamis caused by massive pyroclastic flows entering the sea. Agricultural losses from the thick ash deposits resulted in famine and disease, leading to an additional 82,000 deaths.

The second largest eruption of the 19th century also occurred in Indonesia. Krakatoa (Krakatau), a composite volcano on a small uninhabited island between Sumatra and Java, erupted explosively on August 26–27, 1883. The eruption was similar to the Tambora outburst but smaller, involving about 18 cubic km (4.3 cubic miles) of magma erupted in Plinian ash clouds and pyroclastic flows. Krakatoa was a smaller volcano than Tambora, and, when the eruption had emptied part of its magma chamber, it collapsed to form a caldera that was partly below sea level. Twenty-three square km (8.9 square miles) of the island disappeared, and where a volcanic peak 450 metres (1,475 feet) high once stood was water as deep as 275 metres (900 feet). The largest explosion on the morning of August 27 produced an ash cloud that was reported to have reached a height of 80 km (50 miles), and the detonation was heard as far away as Australia. A tsunami over 30 metres (100 feet) high followed the explosion and apparent caldera collapse, killing about 36,000 people on the adjacent shores of Java and Sumatra.

On May 8, 1902, there occurred a violent eruption of Mount Pelée, a stratovolcano on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean Sea. Although less than 1 cubic km (0.24 cubic mile) of magma was erupted, much of it formed a high-velocity pyroclastic flow that swept down a steep valley to the port of Saint-Pierre. Within minutes the town and virtually all of its inhabitants (some 29,000 people) were incinerated.

The second worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century occurred on November 13, 1985, when a relatively small eruption of Mount Ruiz, a stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, killed 25,000 people. This volcano is tall enough, at an elevation of 5,400 metres (17,700 feet), to have a glacial ice cap. When a brief explosive eruption dumped several million cubic metres of hot pyroclastic fragments onto the ice surrounding the summit crater, a sudden surge of meltwater sent massive mudflows down canyons on both the east and west sides of the volcano. Much of the town of Armero, built on a low plain beside the Lagunilla River 50 km (30 miles) east of and nearly 5 km (3 miles) in elevation below the summit of Ruiz, was buried by the mudflows. Twenty-two thousand of its inhabitants were killed.

About 70 percent of the people who died from volcanic eruptions in the past 200 years perished in those four outbursts. The remaining 30 percent were killed in many other less-devastating eruptions. As world population increases, however, so does the risk of greater loss of life from volcanic eruptions. This was made all too clear by the tragedy at Armero. In 1845 a mudflow from Mount Ruiz killed approximately 1,000 people on farms near the site where the town of Armero was later built. In the 1985 mudflow, which was smaller in volume than the 1845 mudflow, more than 20 times as many people were killed.