A disaster is a perceived tragedy, being either a natural calamity or man-made catastrophe. It is a hazard which has come to fruition. A hazard, in turn, is a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or that may deleteriously affect society or an environment.

In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These risks are the product of hazards and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability are not considered a disaster, as is the case in uninhabited regions.

Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

A disaster can be defined as any tragic event with great loss stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions.

• 2012@ (13)
• Human Extinction (13)
• Large Near Earth Object Impacts (13)
• Nuclear Winter@ (2)
• Supervolcano Eruptions (2)

See also:

• Science: Earth Sciences: Natural Disasters and Hazards (587)
• Science: Earth Sciences: Paleontology: Extinction (31)
• Society: Future: Predictions (39)
• Society: History: By Topic: Disasters (24)

• Challenges of Nanotechnology Misuse Cited in Leslie's 'The End of the World'
  foresight.org
  From the Foresight Institute (which specialises in nanotechnology). (September 15, 1996)
• Tsunami Project
  tsunamiproject.blogspot.com
  The powerful earthquake and tsunami that hit Asia on December 26, 2004 was not the last in the masterminded sequence. The location of the next, and the final one is known. What we are still looking for, is only the date of this event.
• Exit Mundi
  xs4all.nl
  A variety of apocalypses: meteors, black holes, technological disasters, weird physical phenomena, religious writings, robots, and aliens.