List of Disasters

Basic Information

Natural Disaster Types

• Drought
• Earthquake
• Famine
• Firestorm
• Fire whirl
• Flood
• Meteor impact
• Pandemic
• Storm
• Tropical cyclone
• Tsunami
• Volcanic Eruption

Man-Made Disaster Types

• Air Disaster
• Arson
• Genocide
• Global Warming
• Maritime Disaster
• Oil Spill
• Power Outage
• Radioactive Contamination (See Also: Nuclear Meltdown)
• Riot
• Space Disaster
• Structural Collapse
• Terrorism
• War

Fictional / Hypothetical / Speculative Disaster Types

• Alien Invasion
• Big Crunch
• Big Rip
• Collapse of Causality
• Ice Age (specifically a sudden-onset ice age)
• Kardashev Cusp
• Nemesis (star) - passes near and brings possibly dozens of comet impacts
• Robot War
• Verneshot
• Zombie Apocalypse

Historical Disasters

• 2010 Haiti Earthquake
• Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• Great Chicago Fire
• Galveston Hurricane of 1900
• Hurricane Katrina
• Peshtigo Fire
• Tunguska event

• News: Ancient tsunami 'hit New York'

Sources

Bibliography

1. List of disasters at the Wikipedia

2. Man Made Disasters at Wikipedia

Game and Story Use

• Having to deal with an impending or ongoing disaster or its aftermath during a historical campaign always adds a nice level of tension to an adventure.
  • And while the player characters won't know about the upcoming disaster, the players themselves might. This not only establishes the tension, but also gets them to worry what else might go wrong during the adventure…
• If the disaster is worldwide and bad enough, it could transform the campaign into an After The End scenario.
  • For the effects of the disruption of electricity and services, not to mention the collapse of civilization, see Post Apocalyptic Decay.