Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Our society lacks good self-preservation mechanisms - Less Wrong
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Toba supereruption and genetic bottleneck probably strongest example of near-miss.
The genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was not as "near" as all that - in part since there were Neanderthals around at that time as an additional backup mechanism, complementing the surviving humans. Plus, of course, Homo floresiensis! ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory estimates we got down to the last 5,000-10,000 backup copies of the human genome.
Figures from before the eruption appear to have not been dramatically higher:
There just weren't that many homos around at the time.
The proposed genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was long ago - when the human population may have been very small anyway. Today, we have six billion humans. There are better defenses against such things - in terms of stocked underground bunkers. So: a modern volcanic eruption would have to be vastly more destructive to kill all humans. The probabilities involved are miniscule, and shrink with every passing day. It is only because of a "Pascal's wager"-style argument that people can be made to consider such risks.