Tropes about natural and artificial disasters. If there is a Disaster Movie about it, it goes here.
Note that this is for specific disasters. For tropes about disastrousness in general, see the Apocalyptic Index.
Tropes:
- Big Blackout: A mass power outage affecting a city or region.
- Big Disaster Plot
- Cataclysm Climax
- Chekhov's Volcano
- Citywide Evacuation: An entire town becomes emptied of its inhabitants when they flee from a big disaster.
- Colony Drop
- Crack in the Sky: When sky itself breaks, something really bad is about to happen.
- Depopulation Bomb: A bomb that wipes out an entire population.
- Detonation Moon: The Moon is destroyed.
- Disaster Dominoes
- Disaster Relief Game
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud
- Earthquakes Cause Fissures
- Emergency Broadcast: An official alert message sent by the authorities through TV or other media to warn the public of impending local disasters.
- Emergency Presidential Address: A national leader gives a special speech to discuss government response to an ongoing disaster.
- The Famine: A severe food shortage results in many people starving to death.
- Fantastic Fallout: When the land is permanently damaged by the use of magic.
- Fantastic Nuke: A magical spell or weapon that resembles the destructive power of a nuclear bomb.
- Fixing the Resource Scarcity: A specific resource is running out, and catastrophe will ensue if it's not replenished.
- Fog of Doom
- Gaia's Vengeance: Mother Nature punishes humanity for damaging the environment.
- Gendercide: Exterminating an entire gender.
- Giant Wall of Watery Doom
- Global Warming: Also commonly known as "climate change", which refers to artificial alteration of natural weather patterns as a consequence of manmade air pollution from burning fossil fuels.
- Going Home for the Disaster: A crisis is coming. Everyone needs to go home.
- Gone Horribly Right: A solution works so well that it ends up becoming a new problem.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: A solution that fails spectacularly.
- Government-Exploited Crisis: The government responds to a crisis in an antagonistic or exploitative way.
- The Great Fire: An enormous fire which grows big enough to burn down large swathes of natural wilderness or human settlements.
- The Great Flood: An enormous flood typically caused by heavy rains or tsunami waves, drowning many lives as a result.
- Hair-Trigger Avalanche
- Hostile Weather: Severe weather disasters, including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
- Living Whirlwind: A wind-based natural disaster is sentient.
- Meteorite of Doom: Meteorites threaten or cause disasters.
- Natural Disaster Cascade: Something is causing a chain of natural disasters at the same time or close to the same time.
- The Night That Never Ends
- No FEMA Response: In times of crisis that requires national aid, the government will either ignore it or Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice.
- The Plague: An outbreak of a deadly infectious disease that spreads until it reaches epidemic or pandemic levels.
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: Lethal force is enacted to keep a plague from spreading.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster
- Ringing in the Catastrophe: The looming disaster is heralded by a wave of frantic emergency calls.
- Snowed-In
- Snow of Ash: A fiery disaster like a volcanic eruption or a forest fire leads to ash falling from the sky, looking eerily like falling snow.
- Solar Flare Disaster
- Sphere of Destruction
- The Stars Are Going Out
- Star Killing
- Synthetic Plague: A deadly bioweapon of artificial origins.
- Tourism-Derailing Event: A disaster or misfortune that compromises the integrity, reputation and/or safety of a touristic destination.
- Track Trouble: A railroad accident occurs because the tracks were either broken or destroyed.
- Upsetting the Balance: When a character causes a disaster by messing with a universal balance.
- The Virus: A disease or curse that transforms its infected victims into dangerous monsters, killing or turning other people into more of them.
- World-Wrecking Wave: A magical wave envelopes the world and causes everything to become deteriorated and corrupted.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The undead and feed on the living in a global pandemic that destroys most of human civilization.