News outlets cannot provide wide coverage of all Earth’s natural disasters. For this reason, epic events can fall through the cracks. Recent times saw the southern hemisphere’s worst weather-related crisis, the birth of a century-long oil spill, and one of the biggest evacuations in history.

Other disasters are easier to miss because they happen so quietly. Some examples include losing a forest older than humanity and the worldwide invasion of the nurdles.

10 Nurdles

They sound adorable, but nurdles are anything but cute. These sprinkles are used by the plastic industry as raw material and turned into bottles, bags, and basically anything plastic. However, nurdles are turning out to be beach bums.

While the ocean’s plastic bag problem distracted the media, the pellets quietly invaded coastlines around the world. The problem was recently noticed when storms scooped countless nurdles from the sea and decorated the coasts around the United Kingdom. Then the news reported nurdle containers lost overboard near South Africa. As awareness grew, so did the scope of the problem.

A 2016 inquiry found that the event in South Africa was not a one-time blunder. The UK alone loses around 53 billion nurdles every year. Unfortunately, they are easy to spill. The pellets escape during handling, transportation, and production. Many get into drains and drift out to sea, where they wreak damage on marine life that confuses the sprinkles for food.^[1]

9 The Heat Streak

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) started tracking Earth’s heat around 139 years ago. Recently, the numbers revealed something disturbing. Although the last few decades saw a steady rise in the planet’s temperature, the last five years (2014–18) were the hottest on record.

The warmer climate spawns nasty weather and makes seasonal patterns unpredictable. Storms and summers are more intense. Snowfall disappears or falls in weird places. For this reason, 2018 lashed out with devastating wildfires, heat waves, excessive rain, and hurricanes. NOAA recorded 14 weather-related events in the United States alone that claimed 247 lives and $91 billion in damages.^[2]

The heat waves that boiled America, Europe, and Australia were particularly worrying. They broke temperature records, which is not good news considering that higher numbers have been predicted for the next few years. The reason for the seemingly unstoppable rise in global heat? That old gremlin—greenhouse gas emissions.

8 Alaska’s Deadly Melt

Alaska’s annual spring melt is a dodgy time for the locals. Many rely on frozen waterways as a means for transportation. Scientists keep a close watch on the temperatures to make sure that nobody uses the lanes when the seasons change and spring weakens the ice.

Alaska is the fastest-warming state in America, but in 2019, this fact brought tragic consequences. Temperatures suddenly spiked, and before anyone knew it, one of Alaska’s hottest springs was upon them. A record-breaking melt followed and thinned the waterways long before anyone suspected it.^[3]

Two vehicles plunged through the ice. One incident claimed the lives of two men, while the other killed a family of three, including a young child. The dangerous ice also disrupted the livelihoods of communities still reliant on their traditional hunting lifestyles.

The worst disruption was surely experienced by the people of Shishmaref island. The melt damaged the coastline so much that the entire town moved to another location.

7 Deadly Dust Storm

Dust storms can interfere with transportation, visibility, and sometimes health. But normally, they do not kill a large number of people. That changed in 2018.

Northern India was settling in for the evening when an enormous dust cloud enveloped an area spanning the western state of Rajasthan, Delhi, and the eastern state of Uttar Pradesh. When the sand settled, over 100 people were dead.

Dust storms are normal for the region, but this one surprised even Rajasthan’s disaster management team. Its secretary, salted with 20 years of experience, had never seen dust storms wreak such damage. When meteorologists analyzed the event, they discovered why the storm had such an unusual size and strength.

That night, a massive thunderstorm system arrived and pummeled the Earth with downbursts. The latter are wind columns driven downward, and they produce among the most powerful gusts on record. The 2018 storm’s fatalities were caused by the intense winds that toppled large buildings, injuring and killing those within.^[4]

6 Climate Change’s First Mammal Victim

In 2009, a fisherman saw a rat on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. It would be the last sighting of the Bramble Cay melomys. First spotted in 1845, a healthy population of the creatures lived on the tiny island of Bramble Cay and nowhere else. By 1978, there were still hundreds of the rodents.

Twenty years later, rising sea levels had destroyed 97 percent of their habitat. The rare animals struggled to adapt to this change. By the time researchers decided to catch a few, they were too late. In 2014, they searched what remained of Bramble Cay but found no trace of its unique occupant.^[5]

In 2016, the Australian government declared the Bramble Cay melomys extinct. The loss of this species comes with a distinction. Since rising sea levels are linked to climate change, the melomys was likely its first mammalian victim. Inherently, the rats were doomed because they had nowhere to flee. Similarly, if shorelines continue to creep inland, other island animals could suffer the same fate.

5 Epic Evacuation

In 2019, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) noticed a blip on their screen. They recognized trouble when they saw it. The approaching cyclone, named Fani, promised to be devastating as it headed for the Bay of Bengal.

India is no stranger to such storms. In 1999, one made landfall in the same place and killed 10,000 people. For this reason, IMD took Fani seriously. In what became India’s biggest evacuation and one of the largest in human history, over a million people fled to safer grounds. This time, the loss of life totaled 16.

Bangladesh fared worse. When Fani raged over to India’s neighbor, it wrecked over 1,000 houses. It also submerged dozens of villages, killing five and injuring 63.

Despite all the damage, improved early warning systems gave civilians a better chance of survival. Indeed, the subsequent evacuations (also around a million for Bangladesh) made the difference between 10,000 people dying in 1999 and 21 in 2019.^[6]

4 Southern Hemisphere’s Worst Disaster

On March 14, 2019, hurricane Idai hit Mozambique. It made landfall near Beira as a monster storm. The resulting storm surge triggered floods that swept away roads and buildings.

The catastrophic event did not stay in Mozambique. The same forceful floods razed infrastructure in Malawi and Zimbabwe. As many as 1,000 people were thought to have been killed in Mozambique alone.

Although hurricanes, also known as cyclones and typhoons, hit countries around the world, the strength of this storm was almost unprecedented for the region. When the UN World Meteorological Organization analyzed the event and the damage, it released a statement saying that it was likely “the worst weather-related disaster to hit the southern hemisphere.”^[7]

Predicting hurricanes is not a precise science, which is scary enough considering how deadly they are. Worse, scientists agree that their numbers and strength are likely to increase due to global warming.

3 The 15-Year-Long Spill

Oil spills are bad enough when they last a few weeks or months, but one has been making a nuisance of itself for 15 years. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan destroyed an oil rig owned by Taylor Energy in the Gulf of Mexico. The company managed to fix some of the leaking pipes. However, the spill continued, and today, the fumes are almost unbearable off the coast of Louisiana.

For years, Taylor Energy, the Coast Guard, and the government attempted to stop the leak. Nothing worked. Nobody is even sure how much oil is escaping, although some estimates claim 100 barrels a day.

Needless to say, the situation is an ecological nightmare. Everything that lives in the Gulf of Mexico travels through this region. One reason why all attempts met with failure is that a mudslide hid the pipes deeply under sludge.

The place has become a high-risk area as well as a major engineering problem. If no solution is found, it will not stay a 15-year-long leak. There is enough oil to continue gushing into the ocean for the next 100 years.^[8]

2 Daintree Disaster

Something is dying in the shadow of the Great Barrier Reef. The reef’s plight is well publicized. In a nutshell, global warming and bleaching has already destroyed half of its coral. It continues to receive funding and high-tech rescue plans, such as 3-D-printed coral and robots delivering coral babies to the reef.

Running parallel to this natural wonder is a rain forest called Daintree. This is the world’s oldest rain forest. Its trees and vines arose around 150 million years ago on the supercontinent Gondwana, making Daintree older than humanity.

Covering 450 kilometers (280 mi) in northern Queensland, the forest holds more than one-third of all Australian mammals, half its bird species, 60 percent of the country’s butterflies, and 41 percent of the freshwater fish species. Although most people are not aware of the place, it is listed as the “second-most priceless” World Heritage area of over 173,000 sites.^[9]

Decades of deforestation weakened Daintree, which is also directly threatened by climate change and heat waves. Some of its species are vulnerable to heat and have begun to disappear. Researchers fear that the hot weather could trigger a mass extinction and even destroy the irreplaceable wonder.

1 The United Nations Report

In 2019, the United Nations released a preliminary report on Earth’s biodiversity. It drew on the wisdom of 15,000 research papers to produce an 1,800-page report. In particular, it looked at extinction and human factors like population growth and greenhouse gas levels.

Nobody expected good news, but the document showed that things were worse than expected. Ominously, it warned of a massive biodiversity loss because of human activities. Factors like warming oceans, climate change, and deforestation are annihilating species at a breakneck speed.

The trend points to a frightening reality. In the past, there had been five mass extinctions. The report suggested that the Earth was already in the throes of the sixth. It was not just the animals. The report concluded that half of the world’s rivers and 40 percent of the oceans showed severe degradation. Around 75 percent of the land showed the same negative human-related impact.^[10]

Humankind hasn’t always understood the basic design of nature and the world around him. We know now that lightning is caused by static electricity generated through friction from the innumerable water and ice particles in a thundercloud. But that understanding took hundreds, even thousands of years to be fully realized. Before we had this answer, we still had the question, “What makes lightning?” Before the introduction of scientific reasoning the answers to that question and those like it were only found in mythology and legends. Here are ten examples from all around the world of mythologies devised to explain destructive natural forces.

SEE ALSO: 10 Historical Events With Hilarious Forgotten Details

10 Tsunami From A Sea Spirit

The Moken, a people living on a few scattered islands near the coasts of Myanmar and Thailand, have a legend hundreds of years old. In the legend the sea spirit Katoy Oken sends forth “monster waves” (Tsunamis to us, Laboons in their language) to purify the people spiritually and physically. The people felt the earth shake, knocking coconuts from the trees. They knew this was the ‘wave that eats people’, awoken and sent by Katoy Oken. They collected the fallen coconuts and went out to sea, hopeful that the man eating wave would go to the island and ignore the boats. Shortly thereafter the boats are slightly jostled and a village elder calls out to his people to look to shore. The water had retreated from the beach. What followed was a wave that reached as high up as the tops of the coconut trees. Katoy Oken’s wave had purified the island, but no Moken were consumed.

The legend survived in Moken storytelling for hundreds of years. In 2004 a magnitude 8.9 earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that reached across multiple countries. The waves killed 175,000 people in the region and another 125,000 went missing, presumed dead. One island of about 200 Moken was right in the wave’s path. When they saw the water recede from the beach all of them fled to higher ground immediately, because they remembered Katoy Oken and his people eating wave. Of the 200 Moken there, only a single one perished in the 2004 Tsunami.^[1]

9 Namazu Shakes The Earth

In Japanese mythology the Namazu is a catfish so giant he causes earthquakes with his tail. Originally he acted as a premonition of danger, warning people before a flood or heavy rains or other damaging event. But as time went on the Namazu became one of the Yo-kai, a creature of misfortune and disaster. Namazu is usually said to be contained by the god Kashima under a colossal capstone, but Kashima isn’t always diligent about his duties or grows tired and Namazu is said to be able to shake his tail despite Kashima. His uncontrolled tail causes earthquakes and tsunami.

Overtime Namazu became known as a punishment for human greed. His earthquakes destroyed the properties of the rich, forcing a redistribution of wealth. In more modern twist of the legend, Namazu is shown less as a force of nature and more of a symbol of cowardly civil servants who would rather hide than fulfill their responsibility to help in disaster relief.^[2]

8 A God’s Baby Trapped Underground

In the Maori creation myth the Sky Father Ranginui and the Earth Mother Papatuanuku were separated to create the earth and the sky and allow the light to enter the world. Still, their separation grieved them greatly and their children, on seeing this, decided to turn their mother over so she wouldn’t have to look at her partner who she could never again be with. However the youngest of her children, Ruaumoko, was still suckling on his mother’s breast when his older siblings turned their mother to face the earth and he was trapped underneath her.

Now in the dark and the cold, Ruaumoko was given fire to stay warm and became the patron deity of volcanoes and earthquakes. When he wakes, he causes terrible eruptions and must be soothed back to sleep by the lullaby of his mother. In another version of the myth Ruaumoko was never even born and its his twisting and stirring in his mother’s womb that causes earthquakes.^[3]

7 Battling Aztec Gods End The World

In the Aztec creation myth the duel god Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl created itself from nothing and because it was both male and female it was able to produce children. These children represented the four cardinal directions: Huizilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Xipe Totec. These children then created the world. They realized that the world would need an energy source to sustain it, a sun, but a sun was too powerful for them to create. Instead one of them would have to become the sun. Which of them was the sun changed from era to era, but each time one of these four children became the sun, a natural disaster would strike the world and a new era would begin. This is known as the Myth of the Five Suns.

The first sun was Tezcatlipoca, but he was knocked from his place by Quetzalcoatl and in retaliation Jaguars were sent to eat the inhabitants of the world. During the second sun their bickering continued and Tezcatlipoca turned the newly created humans into monkeys, but Quetzalcoatl sent hurricanes and floods to wipe them out. The third sun was the younger god Tialoc and when Tezcatlipoca again caused trouble (stealing Tialoc’s wife) Tialoc caused humanity to turn into turkeys, dogs, and butterflies. Quetzalcoatl tried to eliminate these new lifeforms by raining fire and ash down on them. The forth’s sun was Tialoc’s sister, but Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatipoca were jealous of her. This time they turned the population of earth to fish and caused a great flood. The fifth and current sun, the god Nanahuatzin, is our age and it is said it will end in an earthquake.^[4]

6 A Vengeful Earth Mother

Across the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia live an indigenous people who revere The Earth Mother or Pachamama. In ancient Incan mythology she is a fertility god, a personification of nature, that helps to nourish and protect animals and plants. In the past, offerings to her included animal and even human sacrifices, but present day offerings are usually limited to dried Llama fetuses, rice, or peanuts buried.

Though known as a fairly gentle and easygoing personage, Pachamama is also said to be responsible for earthquakes, landslides, and lightning which she employs in her anger. These are directed at those who fail to care for the earth or its creatures in a kind way. This vengeful side of hers is reinforced by her frequent depiction as a dragon or a serpent.^[5]

5 Freedom Fighter Trapped Between Mountains

Bernardo Carpio is a mythological figure from the Philippines that is sometimes represented as a giant, but other times is a normal human with abnormal strength. In the tale Bernardo is a kindhearted and courageous person who joins the resistance movement. Which resistance and when depends on the time period the tale is being told, which is mostly remembered through oral tradition, but the common version has him joining against the Spanish. His joining the resistance is a huge boon to their cause, because Bernardo posses superhuman strength. As a child he pulled nails from the floorboard with his bare hands and felled trees with his father while hunting.

Eventually a local shaman used his powers to trap Bernardo between Mt. Pamitinan and Mt. Binacayan. The shaman’s powers and the weight of the earth were too much even for Bernardo’s immense strength, but he refuses to give up. Still trapped to this day, Bernardo keeps trying to free himself and every time he does it causes an Earthquake in the region.^[6]

4 Kagutsuchi’s Corpse Made Volcanoes

A Shinto god or Kami, Kagutsuchi was born from the creator gods Izanami and Izanagi.However as a fire kami, Kagutsuchi’s birth killed his mother in overwhelming flame and heat and she was sent to Yomi, the land of darkness. Izanagi was grief stricken and went to Yomi to retrieve his dead wife, but Izanami could never leave. She had already eaten food in Yomi, which trapped her there. When Izanagi lit a fire it was revealed to him that Izanami was rotting and riddled with maggots. She lashed out at her former husband and he fled Yomi. Once outside he took revenge on his child that had robbed him of his wife and sliced Kagutsuchi to pieces.

From Kagutshchi’s body and the blood dripping from his father’s sword other gods came into existence. Among them Takemikazuchi-no-kami and Futsunushi-no-kami, famous swordsmen and Kuraokami-no-kami a rain god. From his body parts also arose mountain gods, namely volcanoes. From eight pieces of his corpse rose eight volcanoes, which spew flame and heat just like Kagutsuchi did in life.^[7]

3 Plagues from “The Crouching Darkness”

In Ireland, before the introduction of Christianity, worship of a pantheon of gods was more widespread. One powerful deity worshiped was a god named Crom Cruach which means “crouching darkness” or “bent gloom”. One description of his worship paints the picture of a terrible and feared god who required human sacrifices. The Metrical Dindshenchas, a series of ancient oral stories put onto page by medieval monks included these verses about Crom Cruach:

He was their god, the wizened Bent One with many glooms; the people who believed in him over every harbour, the eternal Kingdom shall not be theirs.
For him ingloriously they slew their wretched firstborn with much weeping and distress, to pour out their blood around the Bent One of the hill.
Milk and corn they used to ask of him speedily in return for a third of their whole progeny: great was the horror and outcry about him.
The stirred evil, they beat palms, they bruised bodies: wailing to the demon who had enslaved them they shed showers of tears, prostrate their pouring.

Though morbid in his worship rites, Crom Cruach is sometimes considered a fertility god. If his worshipers failed to please him or failed to offer the sacrifices to him he was thought of as the source of poor harvests, blights, and plagues. In one story, the worshipers of Crom Cruach brought along an idol of him and insisted on sacrifices from the Gael people, namely their firstborns who Crom Cruach’s worshipers insisted must be bashed against the idol as a sacrifice otherwise Crom Cruach would put a pestilence on their harvest and blight their livestock.^[8]

2 Storms Stirred Up By The Thunderbird

The Thunderbird is a reoccurring mythological figure in multiple Native American cultures. In general this giant bird was empowered with the ability to control the weather and its beating wings produced thunderstorms, rain, and gales, but each tribe had their own variations of the myth. Usually rather than the cause of disaster, it used natural forces like thunder and lightning to defend and aid people.

To the Winnebago people the Thunderbird wasn’t singular, but a species and many could be found soaring the skies in their legends, but this species also had the ability to shape shift into human warriors. The Passamaquoddy people likewise believed it was a shapeshifter who could control lightning, but would never use those powers against humans, only villains. The Quillayute people believed it was a benevolent helper sent by The Great Spirit to help after natural disasters. One of their stories depict the Thunderbird arriving at a time when the Quillayute were desperate for food. It arrived from out of a thunderstorm of its own creation carrying a whale. It gave the people the whale as food, before disappearing again into the rolling storm-clouds.^[9]

1 Senseless Cause Of Disease and Pestilence

In Ancient Mesopotamia many gods were worshiped. They believed that the gods and humans were co-workers in maintaining the balance and harmony of the world, but if both men and gods valued peace than why did humans suffer? As a way to explain the senseless death and suffering that humans faced, the people of the Babylonian city of Kutha invented a god that had an uncontrolled temper. His name was Nergal or Erra. Originally those names represented two different gods, but over time they became so closely linked that they began to both refer to the same mythological figure.

Nergal is a god of calamity who senselessly lashes out, not to punish a sin or correct an injustice, but only because of his ill temper. In his wrath he was blamed for of diseases, plagues, and pestilence, but would also inflict senseless death on the battlefield as well.

In one story Nergal, for no reason in particular, decides to attack Babylon, but the city is defended by another god named Marduk. Nergal arrives, pretending to just be visiting the city casually, and expresses feigned shock over how Marduk is dressed. Marduk is embarrassed and says he just doesn’t have the time to get new clothes. Nergal offers to protect the city for him so that Marduk has the time to better outfit himself. When Marduk leaves, Nergal inflicts his wrath on the city—killing people indiscriminately in the streets.

Nergal is called before the other gods to explain his actions and in his defense he simply states the kind of god he is, “When I get angry, I break things.”^[10]

The sinking of the Titanic, the collision of the SS Mont-Blanc, and the Hindenburg explosion are all well-known transport disasters that are always remembered and talked about. They’ve become icons, have been made into movies, and have ensured their place in history, never to be forgotten. But there are many more disasters out there that each one mattered just as much for the people involved. Each one made our world a safer place.

10 The Iolaire

On January 1, 1919, two months after the end of World War I, British sailors who’d survived the perils of both the ocean and the war were returning to their families on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, only to tragically perish within miles of reaching home.

The Iolaire (which means “eagle” in Gaelic) was built as a luxury yacht in 1881. During the war, it was equipped with guns and performed anti-submarine and patrol work. The Isle of Lewis and Harris saw a fifth of its population of 30,000 killed in World War I; the crew of the Iolaire were the lucky ones, eager to celebrate the New Year with their families.

Before anyone could celebrate, the ship struck the rocks known as the Beasts of Holm. It was only meant to carry 100 people, but there were almost 300 aboard, with only 80 life jackets and two lifeboats. It was expected to dock in Stornoway Harbour, but due to low visibility, it struck the rocks at the entrance of the harbor and quickly sank, less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mi) from shore. While 205 perished, 40 were saved by a brave man who improvised a rescuing implement from a rope, and 39 more were able to make it to shore on their own.

A naval inquiry was held in private on January 8, its results not being released to the public until 1970. It reached the conclusion that due to the fact that no officers survived, “No opinion can be given as to whether blame is attributable to anyone in the matter.” Numerous other inquiries, both official and unofficial, were held, none of which settled the matter. The weather wasn’t very bad, but those in charge should have taken safety precautions, like slowing down while approaching the harbor and having more lifeboats.

The site of the wreck is marked today by a pillar that reminds everyone who enters Stornoway Harbour of the cruel irony that befell those who survived the war and were so close to enjoying peace.

9 USS Akron

Following the example of the Hindenburg, the US built two helium-filled airships, each 239 meters (784 ft) long and carrying enough fuel to travel 16,900 kilometers (10,500 mi). One of them was named the USS Akron and was commissioned by the US Navy in 1931. Its mission was to provide long-distance scouting in support of fleet operations, and after a number of trials, the airship was equipped with reconnaissance aircraft and a system designed for in-flight launch and recovery of Sparrowhawk biplanes.

On a routine mission, disaster struck. During the early hours of April 4, 1933, off the coast of New Jersey, a storm began, which caused the airship to strike the water with its tail. The Akron quickly broke apart. What’s intriguing is that it carried no life jackets and only one rubber raft, which dramatically diminished the crew’s chances of survival. Of the 76 onboard, 73 drowned or died of hypothermia.

Although the weather was certainly a factor, Captain Frank McCord is also considered responsible, for flying too low and not taking into account the length of his ship when he tried to climb higher. It is also believed that the barometric altimeter failed due to low pressure caused by the storm.

Akron’s sister ship, the USS Macon, was also lost off the California coast in 1935. Fortunately, that time, only two people perished. These events prompted the US to end its rigid airship program.

8 Junyo Maru Tragedy

The Japanese are remembered for being extremely cruel to their captives during World War II, especially to prisoners of war, who were moved around the Pacific in rusted ships and used for forced labor. The problem with these ships was that they were not marked with a red cross in order to be identified as prison ships per the Geneva Convention, which made them vulnerable to being sunk by Allied aircraft or submarines. The largest maritime disaster in World War II occurred because of this.

On September 18, 1944, the Junyo Maru was torpedoed in the Indian Ocean by the British submarine HMS Tradewind, which couldn’t have known what cargo the ship was carrying. Of the 6,500 Dutch, British, American, Australian, and Japanese slave laborers and POWs onboard, 5,620 died as a result. The Junyo Maru was sailing up the west coast of Java from Batavia (now called Jakarta) to Padang, where its prisoners were to be taken to work on the Sumatra Railway.

Conditions onboard were indescribably bad. Many people were literally packed into bamboo cages like sardines. Those in charge put their life jackets on as soon as they left, whereas the POWs could only count on two lifeboats and a few rafts.

Even more tragically, the approximately 700 POWs who were pulled from the water were still taken to work in the Sumatra Railway construction camps. Only about 100 survived.

7 MV Wilhelm Gustloff Disaster

Nazi Germany designed a state-controlled leisure organization in order to show its citizens the benefits of living in a national socialist regime. Working-class Germans were taken on tours for holidays aboard the MV Wilhelm Gustloff and the program, nicknamed Strength Through Joy, became the largest tour operator in the world in the 1930s.

This all ended when World War II began. In 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff became part of Operation Hannibal, the German evacuation of over one million civilians and military personnel due to the advancing Red Army in Prussia. Over 10,000 people, 4,000 of whom were children, were crammed onto the ship, all of them desperate to reach safety in the West. The ship was only meant to carry 1,800 people.

The Wilhelm Gustloff set off on January 30, 1945, against the advice of military commander Wilhelm Zahn, who said it was best to sail close to shore and with no lights. Instead, Captain Friedrich Petersen decided to go for deep water. He later learned of a German minesweeper convoy which was heading their way and decided to turn on the navigation lights in order to avoid a collision in the dark. This would soon prove to be a fatal decision. The Gustloff was carrying anti-aircraft guns and military personnel but wasn’t marked as a hospital ship, which would have protected her. Soviet submarine S-13 needed no second invitation to torpedo the shiny target three times.

Ample rescue efforts were made, which saved approximately 1,230 people. Over 9,000 perished in the cold waters of the Baltic Sea, the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking.

6 Gillingham Bus Disaster

On the evening of December 4, 1951, 52 Royal Marine cadets, boys between 10 and 13 years old, were marching from a barrack in Gillingham, Kent, to one in Chatham to watch a box tournament. Their military uniforms were dark clothes and had nothing on them to make the cadets visible. The entrance to the Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard had a malfunctioning light, which made it impossible for the driver of an approaching double-decker bus to see the boys. He plunged right through them before stopping.

The driver, John Samson, had 40 years of experience behind the wheel, but inexplicably for the foggy weather, he didn’t have his headlights on. He claimed to have been traveling at no more than 32 kilometers per hour (20 mph). According to the only adult who was with the boys, Lieutenant Clarence Carter, Samson was going at least twice as fast.

Regardless of the bus’s speed, 17 boys died on the spot, with seven more sent to the hospital. Never before had there been such a tragic loss of life on British streets, and the victims were given a grand military funeral at Rochester Cathedral. Thousands of locals attended. The incident was ruled an accident despite the driver not turning on the headlights or braking until he was a few meters away. Samson was later fined £20 and had his right to drive revoked for three years.

Every such disaster is followed by improvements in order to prevent further loss of life. This time, it was decided that British military marchers will wear rear-facing red lights at night.

5 Harrow & Wealdstone Rail Crash

October 8, 1952, is remembered by Londoners as the day of the worst peacetime rail crash in the UK. It was only exceeded by the Gretna Green disaster during World War I in 1915, when 227 Scottish soldiers headed for the front perished. The Harrow & Wealdstone rail crash involved three trains—a local passenger train from Tring, a Perth night express, which was running late because of foggy conditions, and an express train from Euston.

The driver of the Perth train passed a distant yellow signal, which means “caution,” without slowing, possibly because he couldn’t see it due to the weather. He also passed a later semaphore, which indicated “stop.” He only hit the brakes when it was already too late. Meanwhile, the train from Tring was waiting at the Harrow & Wealdstone Station for its passengers to embark. The Perth train impacted at approximately 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph). The disaster wouldn’t stop there. The fast-moving express from Euston approaching on a different line hit the debris from the initial impact and derailed.

In total, 16 carriages were destroyed, 13 of which were compressed into a pile only 41 meters (134 ft) long, 16 meters (52 ft) wide, and 9 meters (30 ft) tall. The human casualties would total 112 (102 immediately after the accident and 10 more later at the hospital), and 340 were injured.

Although the exact causes and persons responsible were hard to determine, it is believed that a combination of fog, misread signals, and out-of-date equipment caused the horrific crash. All the equipment was working, and the drivers were experienced men; all they needed was an updated system to back them up. The accident sped up the process of introducing the Automated Warning System of the British Railways. The system works by giving a driver who passes a caution or danger signal automated feedback, whether he saw the signal or not, and automatically applying the brakes.

4 USS Thresher Sinking

The USS Thresher was the first in a new fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarine. It was commissioned in 1961 and went through numerous sea trials to test its new technological systems. As if foreshadowing the disaster that was to strike later on, these trials were interrupted by the failure of the generator while the reactor was shut down, which caused the temperature in the hull to spike, prompting an evacuation. Another setback occurred when the Thresher was hit by a tug and needed extensive repairs.

On April 10, 1963, the sub was conducting drills in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Cod, when it suddenly plunged to the seafloor and broke apart. All 129 passengers were killed—96 sailors, 16 officers, and 17 civilians. During the investigation into the accident, a leak in one of the joints in the engine room was discovered, which caused a short circuit in the electrical system and made it impossible to resurface the Thresher. The sub had no other choice but to sink and implode due to increasing water pressure.

The disaster mobilized the US Navy to put more effort into SUBSAFE, a program designed to rigorously control the quality of nuclear submarine construction.

3 MV Derbyshire Sinking

The MV Derbyshire is the largest British bulk carrier lost at sea. Built in 1976, it was a majestic ship built in 1976 at 281 meters (922 ft) in length, 44 meters (144 ft) in width, and 24 meters (79 ft) in depth. It had been in service for only four years when it set sail toward its doom on July 11, 1980, carrying 150,000 tons of ore.

On September 9 or 10, Typhoon Orchid struck the Derbyshire in the East China Sea, just as the ship was approaching its destination. At the time, it was carrying 44 people, all of whom perished during the journey from Canada to Japan, where the ship was meant to transport its cargo.

What sets this disaster apart from others is that the ship seemed to be lost forever, with initial searches for the wreckage turning up nothing. The absence of any mayday call or distress signal beforehand was also intriguing to the families of those lost. A formal investigation was conducted seven years later in 1987. It concluded that no structural or other failures were to blame; the weather conditions were responsible.

The grieving families were not convinced, and they decided to from the Derbyshire Families Association (DFA) to work together toward the truth. They managed to raise enough funds to finally find what remained of the Derbyshire in 1994, lying on the seabed more than 4,000 meters (13,000 ft) down in the abyss. DFA members continued to push for a number of investigations, which resulted in increased ship safety over the years. While the 1970s were plagued by bulk carrier sinkings, with 17 lost each year. The numbers are much lower today.

2 Bihar Train Accident

Were it not for the British rule over India, which aimed to improve the transport system among other things, the Bihar train accident would have never happened. On June 6, 1981, a train with around 1,000 passengers crowed into nine coaches was traveling through the Indian state of Bihar, 400 kilometers (250 mi) away from Calcutta. It was the monsoon season in India, which meant that heavy rains made the tracks slippery, and the river below was swollen.

It is believed the tragedy that followed was caused by the driver, who saw a cow along the tracks and braked hard. Cows are sacred animals in the Hindu religion, and he was a devout follower. Due to the rain, the tracks were too slippery, and the wheels failed to grip, causing the carriages to plunge into the Baghmati River below, sinking fast. Rescue efforts were hours away, and by the time they arrived, almost 600 people had died, and another 300 remain missing.

1 Ufa Train Explosion

The 1980s were difficult times for Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who was trying to hold together the Soviet Union and maintain the Communist Party’s commanding role. At the same time, a series of disasters couldn’t hide the fact that the country’s infrastructure was old and dangerous. One of these disasters happened on June 4, 1989.

Two Russian passenger trains with hundreds of people onboard were passing one another near the city of Ufa, close to the Ural Mountains, when they met an extremely flammable cloud of gas leaking from a nearby pipeline. Sparks released by their passing blew both trains to pieces. Seven carriages were reduced to dust, while 37 more were destroyed, along with the engines. More than 500 people perished, many of whom were children returning from a holiday on the Black Sea. The force of the explosion was estimated to be similar to 10 kilotons of TNT, which nearly equaled that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The fireball formed was 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) long and destroyed all trees in a 4-kilometer (2.4 mi) radius.

The pipeline going along the rail lines was full of propane, butane, and hydrocarbons, and the pressure within was high enough to keep it in a liquid state. On the morning of June 4, a drop in pressure was observed, but instead of checking it out, the people in charge increased the pressure. Consequently, clouds of heavier-than-air propane formed and left the pipe, traveling along the rails. All they needed was a spark.

As with many disasters, the Ufa train explosion happened because finishing something quickly at minimal cost was more important than long-term consequences. The pipeline had more than 50 leaks in three years, and the Soviet Ministry of Petroleum didn’t want to admit their negligence. Worse, railway traffic controllers didn’t have the authority to halt trains on the Trans-Siberian railway, even if they smelled gas.

Teo loves animals, chocolate, and constantly finding out more about this magnificent and diverse world.

Modern stadiums are the Coliseums of our time and have been witness to some of the greatest athletic and sports achievements. They have also, however, seen numerous tragedies within their walls and undoubtedly have the many ghosts of those tragedies interwoven into the framework of their structures. Here are just 10 of them.

10 Roof Collapse At Stanford-Cal ‘Big Game’
San Francisco Field, 1900

The (American) football game between Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley on Thanksgiving Day 1900, the 10th contest between the two colleges, was much anticipated, as it always was. This time, it was being referred to as the “Big Game.” Stanford’s stadium in San Francisco’s Mission District was little more than a field, with no adequate stands for the many fans who would attend. Makeshift stands were hastily built in the days leading up to the contest.

Fans who weren’t willing to pay the $1 charge to sit in the grounds perched themselves anywhere they could to get a view of the action. One of these places was atop the Pacific Glass Works building opposite the field, a vantage point which offered an unobstructed view of the game. People were hired to keep fans off the roof of the plant, which was not built to withstand any weight at all. However, it was rumored that they accepted “fees” in exchange for entry onto the roof. (They probably couldn’t have stopped the onslaught of fans, anyway.)

It was estimated that 400 people were on the structure when it finally did collapse around 20 minutes after the game commenced. Inside the building below were 15 tons of molten glass and a furnace with a surface temperature of almost 500 degrees. A workman inside told reporters that he saw a young man fall and hit the furnace, and the heat made him “curl up like a worm.”

The accident claimed 22 lives, and almost 100 more suffered serious injury. It was the worst sporting disaster in US history. San Francisco Field is no longer there, and there is no monument to mark the disaster. A university building now stands on the site of the tragedy.

9 Ibrox Stadium Disasters
Glasgow, 1902 & 1971

All stadiums will have a ghost or two roaming their stands, but the Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow must have more than its fair share, having been witness to two major disasters during the 20th century.

On April 5, 1902, during a football game between England and Scotland, a stand collapsed under the weight of the fans, killing 25 people and injuring over 500. It had rained heavily the night before the game, and the newly built wooden stand was weakened considerably. The incident took place five minutes into the second half of the contest. The game itself was continued to the end for fear that stopping and canceling the match would lead to a mass exit by the fans, potentially causing further injury or worse. The incident is regarded as the first disaster of its kind in British football.

Almost 70 years later in 1971, another major incident occurred when 66 fans were crushed to death on Stairway 13 as they exited the stadium. It appeared that a young child fell, which instantly caused a pileup on the stairway. More than 200 people were also injured. To make matters worse, two people died the same way on the same stairway in 1961. Despite continuing concerns being raised, they were not addressed until the tragedy in 1971.

8 Corralejas Bullring Stadium Collapse
Columbia, 1980

When the hastily prepared three tier-stands at the Corralejas bullring in Columbia collapsed on January 20, 1980, the tragic loss of life was enough to halt the traditional festivities for two decades.

The makeshift stands were erected in the immediate lead-in to the festival each year and then taken down again afterward. Heavy rain had battered the area, and during the bullfighting that afternoon, a sudden thunderstorm hit the area. People in the stands quickly rushed to escape the rain. With the ground underneath already reduced to a mud bath, the stand gave way.

Some people leaped from the stands in an effort to save themselves, while others ran in any direction they could, including the bull ring itself, which contained four large and angry bulls. Many people, including young children, were trampled to death in the panic. In total, 222 people lost their lives, with hundreds more injured.

Around 40,000 people were in the stadium or at nearby concession stands when the disaster occurred. The aftermath was complete carnage. One witness described seeing “blood everywhere” and corpses left where they had fallen.

7 Incidents At Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium

Although there haven’t been any mass disasters at the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, two strange incidents, one of them fatal, occurred within 10 years of each other.

On May 2, 1964, just before a baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Indians, the worst disaster in the stadium’s storied history unfolded. May 2 was Safety Patrol Day, and 20,000 free tickets had been given out to children as a reward for a year of hard work helping their classmates get to and from school safely.

As the national anthem was being sung, eager and excited young fans were crowding onto the escalator between the lower and upper decks, up to four people on a single step, in an effort to get to their seats. The gate at the top, however, only allowed one person to exit onto the concourse at a time. A bottleneck quickly formed, a mass of bodies piled up, and the children fell back onto each other—while the stairs continued to move underneath them.

By the time anyone knew that something was drastically wrong, a young girl had lost her life, and 46 others were seriously injured. An onlooker stated, “It looked like someone had gone through here with a hatchet.”

On December 19, 1976, only minutes after a football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts had ended, a small plane crash-landed in the upper tier of the stadium. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the scene sent shivers down people’s spines. Had there been any kind of delay in finishing the game, chances are that the death toll would have been in the triple digits. The pilot, 33-year-old Donald Kroner, was arrested and charged with violating air safety laws as well as destruction of property.

6 Hillsborough Stadium Disaster
Sheffield, England, 1989

April 15, 1989, was undoubtedly the darkest day for English football and a low point for the game in general. At Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, (home to the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club), 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death during an FA Cup semifinal game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The tragedy occurred at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium as too many fans crammed onto the terrace. It all happened live on national television.

Since the 1970s, a dark element had crept into the game, namely violence. As one decade gave way to another, this explosive ingredient was becoming increasingly widespread, at least on the terraces. Consequently, crowd control in the 1980s was primarily geared toward halting hooligans.

As a consequence of this, fans were segregated, sometimes by high fencing that resembled cages. This was hardly an image that was beneficial for the sport. In fact, English clubs were eventually banned from playing in Europe, such was the severity of the violence that sometimes followed soccer matches involving teams from the English leagues.

While there was no evidence of “crowd trouble” that Saturday afternoon in April 1989, the caging around the terraces was the reason that fans couldn’t simply spill over onto the field to safety. In the aftermath and the subsequent investigations and inquiries over the years since the tragedy, the South Yorkshire Police have come under much criticism. Accusations have ranged from their priorities that day seemingly being geared more toward traffic flow around the stadium (as opposed to crowd control) to actual covering up of evidence.

5 Estadio Nacional Disaster
Peru, 1964

What was regarded at the time as the worst disaster in Association Football history began on May 24, 1964, when the referee disallowed what would have been an equalizing goal for the home team. Argentina was leading Peru 1–0 with a little over five minutes remaining when the call was made. The fans reacted angrily to the decision, and by the time the ensuing riot was over, 263 people had lost their lives. A week of national mourning was declared by the government, with Lima being described as a “disaster region.”

Many fans were crushed in the mayhem as they tried to flee the stadium while those intent on getting to the referee surged onto the field. Terraces were set on fire, and the whole stadium was awash with tear gas deployed by the police in an effort to calm things—which in reality, only added to the overall confusion and panic. Police on horseback soon entered the stadium in an effort to restore order. The field itself resembled a war zone. Some of the rioters took the violence to businesses and private homes in the immediate vicinity of the ground. Many buildings suffered serious damage.

Needless to say, the match itself was abandoned.

4 Bradford City Fire
Valley Parade, England, 1985

On the afternoon of May 11, 1985, the football ground in Valley Parade, Bradford, witnessed the horrific deaths of 56 people, as well as a further 265 injured. The afternoon had begun as a celebration for the Bradford City Football Club and their fans, who saw the team presented with their first trophy in over 50 years. Before the end of the first half of their showdown with Lincoln City, however, the main stand had become a blazing inferno.

The stand, which had not been upgraded from its original wooden structure, was the victim of a lone cigarette butt discarded by a fan in the crowd. The fire engulfed the entire stand with alarming alacrity. Fire services arrived only four minutes after the fire began, but by then, the stand had been completely obliterated.

Fans ran onto the field in a panic, some in flames, which resulted in people being trampled. Dead bodies were found on the field and at the back of the stands near the turnstiles. An elderly couple was also discovered dead in their seats after the fire was put out.

3 ‘Black Saturday’
Philadelphia, 1903

When it opened in 1887, the Philadelphia Base Ball Park (commonly called the “Baker Bowl”) was considered to be the cutting edge of ballpark design. Brickwork had been used throughout instead of wood (although wood was still very much part of its structure), and the stands themselves seated thousands of people. The home of the Philadelphia Phillies was essentially the first “modern” baseball stadium.

Prior to a game against the Baltimore Orioles on August 6, 1894, a fire in the stands burned the modern wonder to the ground. Although there were no deaths and only minor injuries, it was a precursor to the tragedy that awaited it nine years later. The stadium was rebuilt, this time entirely of concrete and steel, and opened again in 1895.

On August 8, 1903, with the stadium now officially called the National League Park, the Phillies were preparing to face off against the Boston Beaneaters. Just before 6:00 PM that evening, a bizarre incident resulted in 12 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Two men who were more than a little under the influence, were walking past the stadium and enduring insults and taunts from a group of teenagers who were following them. As they walked past the children, one of the men suddenly reached out in retaliation and grabbed one of the teenage girls by her hair, stumbling as he did so and falling on top of her.

The commotion hadn’t gone unnoticed by those in the stadium, especially given the shouts of help from the children below. A crowd began to gather on a balcony overhead, which wasn’t designed to hold that amount of people. It was only supposed to be used as a way into and out of the stand.

It was estimated that around 300 people were standing on the balcony when it came crashing to the ground. Hundreds of people were piled up to four-deep on the ground below. People from the stand kept pushing toward the balcony to see what was happening, and more fell. By the time some kind of order had been restored, 12 people were dead and over 200 were seriously injured.

2 Deaths And Cover-Up At Luzhniki Stadium
Moscow, 1982

Although the official death toll was put at 66, numerous investigations as well as eyewitness accounts into the disaster at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow put the total more in line with over 350, which would make it the worst disaster ever witnessed at a football association game.

On October 20, 1982, Spartak, the Russian team, was battling it out with Haarlem, the Dutch team, to earn the right to progress to the final 16 in that year’s UEFA championship. Spartak was down 1–0 late in the game, and due to the severe Russian winter conditions, many fans decided to leave the contest early to get a head start on their journey home.

However, when the Russian side pulled level with a late goal, many of the eager fans turned to head back into the stadium. The dark tunnels and steps of the grounds were iced over, which made footing difficult. When the fans going back into the stadium met the fans coming out, a problem soon developed. Many people were crushed underfoot, as the militia on guard at the game refused to open side entrances.

Once it became apparent that something had gone terribly wrong, the authorities appeared to “usher” the foreign fans away, opening up alternative exits for them. This was something that the powers that be wanted to keep very much behind their side of the Iron Curtain. The cover-up became more apparent when the Vechernaya Moskva (Moscow Evening Paper) made only this most basic mention of the events: “An incident occurred yesterday at Luzhniki. After the football match, some spectators were injured.”

Perhaps even more worrying is the fact that the dead were said to have been buried in a mass grave. Their relatives were given less than an hour to pay their last respects before they were told they were not to talk of the incident, “especially to foreigners.” If they did so, they could face a lengthy jail sentence.

Only when communism fell in the early 1990s did the pieces of the story begin to be put together of that fateful evening in icy-cold Moscow.

1 2022 World Cup Stadium Deaths
Qatar

If reports are to be believed, the stadiums that will host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar are already haunted by the alleged 1,200 workers who have died while building them. If this figure is indeed accurate, it is a cause for concern for FIFA and many activists worldwide, who fear that workers are not only being exploited, but are working in unsafe conditions, to say the least.

While there have always been deaths while building stadiums or any colossal building, most projects suffer one or maybe two deaths at most. To have a death total in excess of 1,000 six years before the event kicks off is unprecedented. In addition to the stadiums themselves, the construction of amenities and transport links to them has also caused workers to meet untimely ends.

In a World Cup already marred with controversy amid corruption scandals and allegations of vote rigging, it’s hardly the image that Qatar or FIFA would like to project.

Marcus Lowth—writer at Me Time For The Mind, which you can also find on Facebook.

Animals have an uncanny ability to know when a natural disaster is about to strike. Sometimes, they run away or hide, and their humans have no way of finding them in time to evacuate. More often than not, a pet owner has no choice but to leave their animals behind in order to save themselves.

At the end of every natural disaster – whether it be a flood, earthquake, tsunami, fire, or tornado, local shelters have to gather abandoned pets and attempt to reunite them with their owners. Many pets go unclaimed, and other times, people learn that their pets are not among the survivors. But in these next ten stories, pets are reunited with their owners in the most amazing ways.

10 Cadie the Cat

Judy Pugh was an elderly woman sitting in her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama when a tornado hit. A wall fell on top of her, which held her body down as the rest of her house was sucked up into the twister. Neighbors called her name and lifted the wall off of her, and the storm continued to move on and ravaged the rest of the town. Pugh had three pet cats, and finding them after the storm was her only concern.^[1]

She managed to find two of the cats soon after. but sadly, she could not find her third cat, Cadie. Her family suspected that the 10-year old feline was carried away in the twister. Despite the fact that over a month had passed since the storm, she did not give up hope. Pugh continued to show up to the wreckage of her home and search for the cat every single day. A local TV station found Ms. Pugh standing by the wreckage and interviewed her. In the middle of the recording, Cadie the cat silently emerged out of the remains of Pugh’s house. He found his way home home after all.

Cadie was skinny, dirty, and could not even muster the strength to meow. Pugh walked over to him, gingerly scooping his tiny body into her arms. “I have everything in the world, now,” Pugh said as she began to cry. She cuddled her pet close to her chest. The TV microphone picked up the loud purring emanating from the tired cat.

9 The Farm in Plum Grove

Lester Morrow had no choice but to abandon his farm animals in Plum Grove, Texas during Hurricane Harvey. He was able to bring his dog with him, but they had no time to hitch a trailer behind their truck, and left behind several horses, donkeys, goats, and a potbelly pig named Patty.^[2]

When Morrow returned to his farm, he was recording the devastation on his cellphone, starting at the end of his long driveway. There was still a lot of water on the property, and he commented about the trash and debris that floated onto his land, when he saw in the distance that Patty the pig was so happy to hear Morrow’s voice, she was wading through the water to greet him. He immediately began sobbing, and recorded the animals who had survived the storm.

Many of his horses had broken legs, and over a dozen animals had died, but several of them managed to break down a fence and stand on the porch of the house in order to survive. He posted the video on YouTube to share with friends and family, and it went viral. He made a GoFundMe campaign to help his animals, and he raised $14,000.

8 Ban

On March 11, 2011, Japan was hit by an 9.0 magnitude earthquake that was followed by a tsunami that hit the northern part of the country. Three weeks after the disaster, the Japanese coast guard was still flying over the ocean to search for bodies that may be floating in the water. A mile away from shore, they spotted a dog walking around on top of the roof of a house that was floating in the water. Somehow, it had survived the tsunami. They lowered a man down from a helicopter to rescue the dog, who was later identified as “Ban”. The dog was wrapped in blankets, given food and water, and the rescue team carried him out on a stretcher.^[3]

Ban was reunited with his owner, who wished to remain anonymous in the media, so she wore a medical mask in the video of when they reunited to conceal her face. Ban still recognized her, and jumped up, wagging his tail and snuggling into her chest as she hugged him. “Thank goodness…I’ll never let him go,” she told the press.

7 Izzy

In 2017, wildfires spread across Santa Rosa, California, destroying thousands of homes in its path. The Weaver family was forced to evacuate, and they could not find their dog, Izzy, in time to escape. On October 10th, Jack Weaver and his brother-in-law Patrick Widen returned back to Weaver’s property to see if there was anything left. He began recording on this cellphone, and even from far away, he could see that their home was completely burned to the ground. Even though it was a long shot, they began whistling and calling Izzy’s name, in hope that he somehow escaped the flames.

Their disappointment was almost immediately replaced by joy, because Izzy the shaggy Bernese Mountain dog began walking towards them. Not only did he survive, but the loyal dog was waiting in the ashes of his former home for his master to return. It was totally unexpected, and the brothers began screaming out of joy as their reaction was captured on film.^[4]

6 Rica

Charles Trippy gained Internet fame by daily vlogging every single day for several years. He had continued to do this for so long, he even holds a Guinness World Record. When Florida was expected to be hit by Hurricane Irma in 2017, their town was ordered to evacuate. Charles and his family decided to take their chances by staying at home with their dogs and an electric generator. Since vlogging on YouTube is his job, Trippy recorded the experience of living in a town that was almost completely empty before, during, and after the storm.

Just as Charles and his wife Allie were driving home from with supplies from the hardware store to officially hunker down for the night, they spotted a tiny 4-week old kitten standing in the middle of the street. They got out and took her into their car and refused to leave the baby behind. That night, the amount of damage and flooding caused by the storm was worse than they imagined, and they were lucky that their house survived. They knew that if they had not rescued the kitten, there is no doubt that it would have died. They decided to name her Rica, which is short for Hurricane.

5 Junior

A tornado hit Granbury, Texas in 2013. A man named Jerry Shuttlesworth was living in a trailer park. Without a basement or a place to hide, he had no choice but to shut himself in the laundry room with his dog, a pitbull named Junior. The tornado directly hit his trailer, and Shuttlesworth described it like the home was being crushed down, and then sucked up. He flew into the air, and the wind flipped him upside down. He was desperately trying to hold on to Junior, but the tornado ripped the dog out of his arms.

The tornado dropped Shuttlesworth about 20 feet away, but the dog had completely disappeared in the twister. He laid on the ground with broken bones, looking up at the tornado. He described seeing debris circling in slow motion above his head, and it was so surreal, it was unlike anything he had ever seen in his life. After getting rescued and getting Internet access, Shuttlesworth posted a photo of Junior as a missing pet on Facebook.

By no small miracle, the local animal shelter found him. They called the news, and the best friends were reunited on film. He told the reporters that he was going to treat Junior to a meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken. “I think he flew through the air. Y’know, dogs weren’t meant to fly. But he had an angel with him.”

4 Snoopy and Abbey

After Hurricane Harvey, Texas shelters were filled to the brim with pets in cages, waiting for their owners to find them. In August of 2017, reporters rode along with The Humane Society of Dickinson, Texas. They were responding to phone call from people who were displaced from their homes, and pleaded for them to find their missing dog and cat. They arrived to the flooded neighborhood, whistling and calling the names of the pets, and found two dogs.^[5]

They were a poodle named Snoopy and English bulldog, Abbey. A kind stranger saw the two dogs swimming through the water together. She rescued them and brought them to her house, which was above the flood line. A man named Ryan Johnson showed up to claim Abbey and Snoopy from the shelter. He knew that they belonged to his father-in-law, who was having nightmares and losing sleep over the fate of his dogs. “He can finally sleep tonight,” Johnson said.

3 Odin

Ronald Handel lived on a ranch in California. He owned two Great Pyrenees mountain dogs who took care of their 8 goats. It was their job to protect the goats from predators in the California mountains. In 2017, when the wildfires were approaching in the distance, Handel scrambled to get his daughter and the dogs into the car so they could evacuate.^[6]

One of the dogs, Odin, refused to neglect his doggy duty. He laid down with the goats, and stared at Handel, as if to say, “I’m not leaving.” Handel waited as long as he could for Odin to come around, but they had to leave. He describes a horrific scene of the fire being so close behind him and his daughter as they drove, it sounds like a scene out of an action movie. They could see parked cars a few yards behind them filling with flames, and heard explosions from propane tanks, and the shriek of grinding of melting, twisting metal.

After the flames were put out, Handel and his young daughter did not expect to find anything when they returned to their property, but Odin was still there. He and the goats were slightly burned in a few spots, but he had managed to bring them all to safety, despite the fact that everything else around them was burned to the ground. He was limping, and very tired, so Handel knew that Odin had been on an adventure of his own to save his friends. If only dogs could talk.

2 Mei-Chan

After the 2011 tsunami in Japan, Fuji TV was filming the damage from the disaster, and they spotted a Brittany Spaniel. She walked up to them urging them to follow her. She walked over to an English Setter who was laying on the ground, clearly injured and unable to move. While the men sounded sad and concerned for the dogs, and they sent a message to “please help” to the Nippon SPCA, the witnesses failed to do anything to help the pups themselves.^[7]

The video made its way to YouTube, called “Stay together dogs”. It went viral, and people around the world were heartbroken and started sending money to the Nippon SPCA to help their rescue efforts. However, the video started a controversy, and the SPCA began to receive threatening phone calls from people accusing them of not working hard enough to save the dogs. Owners of dog food companies created raising money for their own campaigns to save the “stay together dogs”. People were very invested in the fate of the pups.

The dog’s owner saw the video, and recognized her dog, Mei-chan. The second dog, Lee-chan, also belonged to her. It took eight months for the Nippon SPCA to finally find Mei-chan, and she was reunited with her owner.

1 T2

In 2002, a retired K-9 police officer named Perry Martin adopted a ginger kitten and named it T2. Hurricane Jeanne hit Florida in 2004, and everyone lost their power, and they could not turn on the air conditioning in the summer heat. Martin started leaving his windows open to let some air in. The 2-year old cat climbed through a window and out into the hurricane aftermath. Martin searched for a long time, and notified all of the local shelters, but after enough time passed, Martin accepted that he would never see T2 again.^[8]

In 2018, a local animal shelter found a skinny stray cat and brought him in. The scanned him for a microchip, and called up Perry Martin. When they told him that they had the cat that had gone missing 14 years earlier, he did not believe them, but sure enough, he was reunited with his cat, who was now an elderly 16 year old. They have no idea where T2 was for 14 years, or how he managed to survive, but during media interviews, he looks very content curled up in Perry Martin’s lap.

Shannon Quinn (shannquinn.com) is a writer from the Philadelphia area. You can find her on Twitter @ShannQ

The human mind seems to be programmed to think that things did not happen unless one can personally recall it happening. Historians must fight an uphill battle with the general population to convince them that the terrors and tragedies that haunt modern life are often but repetitions of historical events that have already destroyed lineages, families, and communities. These are calamities that, if they happened today, would have graced the pages of tabloids, clogged up Facebook feeds, and inspired a million differently colored ribbons and GoFundMe campaigns.

We think that we’re the generation who has had it the hardest, the most dangerous, the most terrifying—not so. Here are ten modern disasters you probably remember and their older, often deadlier, counterparts.

10 The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami And The 365 Alexandria Tsunami

Most of us remember the tragic 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the giant waves that hit highly populated areas that fronted onto the Indian Ocean, killing up to 280,000 people in their path. It killed the old and the young and the curious, too, who didn’t know that when the ocean recedes rapidly and exposes the sea floor, it is a good idea to run.

The massive earthquake event of AD 365, centered as it was on the Mediterranean island of Crete, must have truly seemed like the wrath of the gods. The island was immediately reshaped by the two tremors, the second of which has been estimated to have been a magnitude of about 8.0 or above. Every town on Crete was destroyed, and countless were killed.

This earthquake sent a huge wave hurtling toward Alexandria in Egypt, killing 50,000 people in the city and surrounding areas, along with communities in West Cyprus, Libya, and Sicily. The fertile farmland was flooded with salt water, and the buildings of Alexandria’s Royal Quarter began to slowly be overtaken by the sea. The ruins of the former heart of the city are now fully and permanently underwater.^[1]

The earthquakes and resulting tsunami permanently reshaped coastlines and islands in the Mediterranean and caused not only death but a grim economic burden on the civilizations of the time. The devastation was simply enormous, as Greco-Roman author Libanius wrote:

Earth [ . . . ] Like a horse shaking off his rider, she has already destroyed many cities—many in Palestine, all of them in Libya. The greatest cities in Sicily lie in ruins, as do those of the Hellenes, except one [Athens]; beautiful Nicea has been felled and our own, the all beauteous one [Antioch] has been shaken and cannot trust in the future.

9 The 1967 Silver Bridge Disaster And The 1807 Eitaibashi Tragedy

While you may not immediately know the name of the Silver Bridge, it was a suspension bridge that passed between West Virginia and Ohio at the West Virginian town of Point Pleasant. Point Pleasant was made famous by the legend of Mothman, a giant winged creature which many believed came to warn the township of the impending collapse of the Silver Bridge.

In December 1967, as commuters working in Ohio were driving home to Point Pleasant and West Virginians were going to Ohio for some Christmas shopping, a link of the suspension chain broke, and the bridge collapsed. The collapse was sudden, pitching vehicles into the water and killing 46 people. It was a terrible tragedy that shook the small community and also entered the public psyche due to its connection with the Mothman legend.

In 1807, the Eitaibashi Bridge, which spans the Sumida River in Tokyo, was already over a century old. It was a wooden bridge that connected an area of temples with the city of Tokyo. There was confusion and dispute over who was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the bridge, and as a result, it was not properly cared for. Each side was looked after by a different community.

In 1807, excited residents of the Fukugawa side rushed to a festival that was being held on the Edo side. The weight of the throng caused the old bridge to collapse, depositing 1,400 people into the river, where they drowned.

To compound the tragedy, more and more eager festivalgoers pushed from the back of the crowd, unable to see what had happened. A stream of people fell in the river until an official with a sword physically prevented the crowd from pushing more unfortunate souls to their deaths.^[2]

8 The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake And The 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake

When Westerners think “big, scary, city-destroying earthquake,” the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake possibly springs to mind. There are still people alive who remember their relatives talking about it, and there are a lot of accessible photos on the Internet that show the incredible damage to buildings in the San Francisco area. At least 700 people died, fires raged, and the magnitude of the earthquake has been estimated more recently at 7.9 on the newer moment magnitude scale.

Make no mistake, the earthquake was devastating, tragic, and history-changing. But in the business of sheer destruction, it was eclipsed by the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake.

Early in the morning in the provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi, China, an estimated magnitude-8 earthquake struck. The outcome was catastrophic, and more than 800,000 deaths were attributed to the tremor and resulting floods and fires. Sixty percent of the populations of these provinces are believed to have been killed. Whole families, towns, and communities were wiped out, along with mountains and river courses. Huge crevices opened in the ground, and landslides decimated villages.^[3] As a result of the devastation, many of the survivors rebuilt with wood and bamboo instead of stone, making their villages and communities safer for future earthquakes.

The Shaanxi earthquake is the deadliest ever recorded, and yet it sparks much less interest than the San Francisco quake, despite the fact that many hundreds of thousands more people died. This may not have been the case had there been photography in the 1500s. Hopefully, lifesaving lessons have been learned from this disaster, and an earthquake will never cause destruction on this scale again.

7 The 1917 Halifax Explosion And The 1626 Wanggongchang Explosion

If you ever go to the beautiful city of Halifax in Nova Scotia, do yourself a favor and go on a harbor cruise. There, you will get an informative tour of the harbor, which explores what happened in the 1917 explosion that flattened much of Halifax in the actual spot where the tragic events began.

On December 6, 1917, two ships partook in a tragic “trying to get around you” dance in the harbor that resulted in a collision. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, was carrying munitions for use on the World War I battlefront. When the ships collided, the Mont-Blanc initially burned, and thousands watched as the thick smoke filled the air. It was an interesting distraction from an ordinary day.

Then the ship blew up, killing 2,000 people and injuring and blinding 9,000, including those who had stopped their daily activity to watch. The explosion was so big it caused a tsunami that added to the wide-scale destruction. Houses even lost windows in the town of Truro, 100 kilometers (60 mi) away.

In 1626, the Wanggongchang Armory in Beijing was packed full of weapons, including gunpowder. It was secured behind thick walls and seemed virtually indestructible. Then, oddly, a plume of smoke was noticeable above the armory.

Then came a bang that was felt 150 kilometers (90 mi) away and vaporized everything in a 2-kilometer (1.2 mi) radius. About half of Beijing was destroyed by what eyewitnesses say was a mushroom cloud of death. Body parts and building materials rained down on survivors in a pink mist.

The cause of the explosion has been theorized to have been everything from a tornado to an earthquake to an intergalactic nuclear warhead. The strange mushroom cloud and the severity of the blast (equated to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima) have inspired many a conspiracy theorist.^[4] Bodies were found stripped of clothing, three survivors were claimed to have flown up to 100 kilometers (60 mi) through the air unharmed, and one amazingly lucky person survived the blast at the actual factory.

6 The 1981 Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse And The AD 27 Amphitheater Collapse

While not everyone may know about the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, anyone who’s studied engineering or sat in on engineering lectures because they’re a nerd would absolutely know about it. There have been numerous television shows and much media coverage of the tragedy, which has led to the collapse being remembered well and remaining in the popular psyche.

The atrium of the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri, had three tiers of suspended walkway around the inside on the second, third, and fourth floors. On July 17, 1981, a tea dance was in full swing, and people were dancing on the floor of the atrium as well as on the suspended walkways. Without warning, the fourth-floor walkway crashed onto the second-floor walkway, which crashed to the ground, killing 114 people. It is the deadliest structural disaster in the United States to date.

But the AD 27 collapse of a wooden amphitheater in Fidenae, Italy, was far beyond anything that any modern average Joe could comprehend. The amphitheater was, by all reports, cheaply built in a rush. When the wooden structure collapsed, 20,000 people died, and more were maimed and injured.

Modern medicine and infrastructure would struggle to cope with such a disaster. One wonders how Rome, only 8 kilometers (5 mi) away, coped with a tragedy of this scale.^[5]

5 The 2016 Ghost Ship Fire And The 1942 Cocoanut Grove Fire

In 2016, the world was rocked by the news of the tragic fire in the Ghost Ship collective. There is a special poignancy awarded to tragedies that happen in places that are meant to be fun and give relief from the stressors of everyday living.

The Ghost Ship was a bohemian artists’ residence and performance space that had been created inside an old warehouse in Oakland, California. Filled with flammables such as art supplies and electrical cords, the lower floor had rented mobile accommodations, and the upper floor had a space that was used for concerts and dance parties. It was at such a dance party on December 2, 2016, that a fire broke out in the poorly ventilated and fire safety–noncompliant building. Thirty-six people were killed and two injured in the dark, confusing, and illegal structure as the floors collapsed in on each other.

As tragic as the Ghost Ship Collective fire was, the sheer enormity of the death toll of the 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire is horrifying.

In the midst of the war-torn early 1940s, on November 28, 1942, to be exact, anyone who was anyone at all in Boston was at the Cocoanut Grove. Featuring two stories—a first floor of dining and dancing and a bar in the basement called the Melody Lounge—the Cocoanut Grove was the popular choice for the discerning night owl.

After a worker accidentally set an artificial palm tree on fire in the Melody Lounge, a huge fireball and cloud of toxic gas traveled quickly through the basement area and up the stairs. Panicked guests swamped the revolving exit doors and were crushed against the glass by the weight of those pushing from behind.

Of the estimated 1,000 people in the building that night, 492 people died, and hundreds more were injured. Though the fire department arrived quickly and put out the blaze with appropriate speed, the stacks of dead and injured near the doors made it hard to get in to the wounded and to let air in for those still trapped inside. Interestingly, the survivors of this disaster were the first to receive penicillin as a non-test drug to help fight infections from the burns.^[6]

4 The 1989 Hillsborough Stadium Crush And The 1809 Ponte Das Barcas Disaster

When people say that they have a fear of crowds, they’re often told that their fears are unreasonable and the result of anxiety. A reader of history will note that there are many thousands of reasons why people should be wary of crowds—all of them dead.

On April 15, 1989, the FA Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest was sold out. Fans were separated due to fears of violence, and the club with the larger number of fans, Liverpool, was for some reason put in the smaller end of the stadium. Not a good idea.

The areas closest to the game were divided into “pens,” into which fans could go in and out through narrow entrances. However, the very narrow entrances and too many fans meant that there were people pressed up against the barriers and climbing fences to escape from the push of spectators trying to get in to see the start of the game. In all, 96 fans died, crushed to death under the weight of each other.

The 1809 Ponte das Barcas incident was a different type of calamity in that it wasn’t a peacetime disaster, but the magnitude of deaths by drowning was far greater and also included thousands of children. The tragedy was also brought on by the weight of a rush of people.

When Napoleon invaded Portugal with his huge army, the citizens of the peaceful Portuguese city of Porto fled onto the Ponte das Barcas Bridge over the river Douro and sank the pontoon structure under their combined weight. An estimated 6,000 people drowned. Whole generations of a city were left bereft.^[7]

3 The 2012 Sinking Of The Costa Concordia And The 1120 Sinking Of The White Ship

The Costa Concordia has become synonymous with terrible captaincy and the horrors of cruise ships in general.

On January 13, 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino began his dive down into the history books as the notorious perpetrator of an unnecessary maritime disaster that killed 32 people onboard. Going way off course, Captain Schettino had ordered the ship too close to Giglio Island, where she hit a rock.

What happened afterward was a completely shambolic misadventure, with the ship drifting around in the water for hours, the captain and crew leaving the vessel with passengers still on it, and said passengers being repeatedly told that things were fine when they absolutely were not fine.

While everyone knows about the Costa Concordia, the modern reader is probably not as familiar with the 1120 sinking of the White Ship in the English Channel.

While 300 people did tragically lose their lives, the reason that the wreck of the White Ship went down in history as such a momentous disaster is that the heir of King Henry I of England drowned on the fateful night of November 25, 1120. Prince William was set to not only inherit what is now modern England but also Normandy. He boarded what was very much a party boat with a half-brother and half-sister, Richard and Matilda. Everyone, crew included, was very possibly completely drunk, and the ship hit a rock and capsized.

Despite the calm sea, few could swim at that time, and the sole survivor was a butcher with the rather awesome name of Berald.

The king was overcome with grief at the loss of his legitimate heir, William, and two much-loved bastards. The sinking of the White Ship has now become somewhat of a medieval murder mystery to suspicious-minded historians.^[8]

2 The 1980 Eruption Of Mount St. Helens And The 1815 Eruption Of Mount Tambora

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens wasn’t long ago, and millions of people can remember the event clearly. You can even watch it on YouTube. On May 18, 1980, a geologist, David Johnston, was stationed to monitor the growing bulge on the north flank of the volcano, which had officials worried. An earthquake triggered an enormous landslide, which triggered the eruption, shooting ash, water, and rock debris 18,000 meters (60,000 ft) into the air.

Fifty-seven people died from the blast, and the shape and landscape of the region changed forever. David Johnston radioed in some data and was then obliterated, wiped out by the enormous blast of the volcano. Everything within 600 square kilometers (230 mi²) around the volcano was destroyed by the blast, and a larger area experienced damage and inconvenience from ash, smoke, and mudflows from the volcano.

However, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia was beyond devastating.

Gunung Tambora exploded on April 10 after several warning tremors on April 5. The blast, pyroclastic flow, and resulting tsunamis caused a mega-catastrophic event that killed 10,000 people and destroyed over 35,000 homes. The resulting starvation and disease killed a further 80,000 Indonesians. The ash cloud from the volcano blocked the Sun and caused global temperatures to drop an average of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 °F), and 1816 became known as the Year Without a Summer.^[9]

1 The 2013–2016 West African Ebola Epidemic And The 1330s–1350s Black Plague

There was a time not long ago in which the word “Ebola” was on everybody’s lips. Ebola seemed uncontainable and incurable. It reached the US, and anyone traveling from Africa was met with suspicion and fear. It was meant to be the end of the world. Clearly it wasn’t. You can tell because you’re reading this list.

In Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, however, more than 28,000 people caught Ebola, and 11,000 died from the disease, which left whole communities devastated and authorities afraid to bury the dead.

Considering the fear and horror that this outbreak caused among those in countries that were not affected, one can only imagine the level of devastation wrought by the European Black Plague, which affected more than just Europe. The scope of such a disaster was immense.

The Black Plague killed at least 75 million people, and it killed them horribly. The afflicted were covered with pustules, boils, black gunk, suffering from intense pain, chills, and vomiting, and suddenly, they were dead. People would wake up fine and then die in the course of a day.

The disease was spread by rodents and fleas and was airborne as well. The disease also killed poultry, cattle, goats, and sheep. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. You died or you didn’t.^[10]

Mostly, you did.

Christy Heather is an author and professional writer from Gippsland in Victoria, Australia. You can read her sentimental writing here and buy her first novel here. Christy is a practicing criminal lawyer and lifelong nerd.

Throughout history and into modern times humans have had to contend with and try to survive disasters both natural and man-made. And the aftermath of these disasters doesn’t always only include mop-up operations and memorial services. Often there are ongoing fights against misinformation and more notably, conspiracy theories that inevitably rear their heads.

Top 10 Best Films About Real Conspiracy Theories

10 Nuclear bombs were meant to start Cold War

On 6 August and 9 August 1945, the US dropped two nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. More than 220,000 people died in the bombings, the majority being civilians. On 15 August 1945, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced the country’s surrender in light of the new and ‘most cruel’ bombs’ extremely destructive power. His radio address also signaled the end of World War II.

The bombings rendered the two Japanese cities unrecognizable, and left bodies buried under heaps of rubble, and decaying corpses in rivers. Those who survived the initial bombings, soon began suffering radiation poisoning. They died in horrendous agony, as only 2 of Hiroshima’s 28 hospitals were still standing and many doctors and nurses were killed during the bombings.

In 2005, two nuclear historians decided to scratch at old, but for many still raw, wounds when they came up with a controversial theory that stated the devastating bombings were carried out to start the Cold War and not to end WWII. They went on to say that the US president at the time, Harry Truman, wanted to impress the Soviet Union and as such was guilty of a crime against humanity.^[1]

Peter Kuznick and Mark Selden also claimed that another of Truman’s motives was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia. Kuznic was also adamant that Japan surrendered because of a Soviet invasion after the bombing and not the bombs themselves.

9 Israel tried to start a nuclear war by bombing Fukushima

On 11 March 2011, a powerful earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, devastated Japan’s main island, Honshu, resulting in strong tsunami waves of up to 30 feet high. The tsunami led to major nuclear explosions at the Fukushima power plant along the coast.

Officials initially reported that backup generators at the plant had been damaged. All three reactors at the plant were successfully shut down, but the loss of power caused their cooling systems to fail in the days that followed. By 15 March three explosions had rocked the facility, releasing high levels of radiation.

Residents in the surrounding areas were evacuated and plant workers continued to try and cool the reactors. Radiation levels increased in food and water supplies and the nearby ocean became contaminated by iodine-131.

In 2012, self-proclaimed former National Security Agency analyst, Jim Stone, declared that he believed the entire Fukushima disaster was an act of nuclear war instigated by Israel’s government. His theory, 9000 words long, has it that the Japan earthquake was in fact a nuclear explosion detonated by Israel in an attempt to stop Japan from ‘enriching uranium for Iran.’ He also claimed that Israel was unhappy about rumors that Japan and Iran were working together on nuclear technology and retaliated by hiding a nuclear weapon of their own off the coast of Japan.

He went on to say that more nukes were hidden inside security cameras at Fukushima and when a ‘minor earthquake’ hit Japan on 11 March, Israel detonated the weapon they had hidden in the sea, thereby creating the tsunami waves which led to the Fukushima disaster. Naturally, the hidden nukes in the security cameras served to make the whole thing that much worse.^[2]

8 Lusitania sinking was engineered

On 7 May 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed British-owned steamship, Lusitania. The attack killed 1,195 people and events arising from this tragedy eventually led to the US entering WWI.

Lusitania was secretly remodeled for the war but remained a passenger ship. German naval commanders realized by early 2015 that merchant and passenger ships contained weapons that were being transported from America to Europe. Germany proceeded to declare the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone and eventually broke naval laws when the U-boat torpedoed Lusitania.

Over the years following Lusitania’s sinking, several conspiracy theories saw the light. These included Winston Churchill engineering the disaster to get the US to enter the war and a British cover-up of events.

Some have theorized that Lusitania had her name obscured and was sailed deliberately towards the U-boat. This theory has been used to tie into the Winston Churchill theory as well as the one that says the Cunard company cut ticket prices to ensure a high body count.^[3]

7 Ukraine is responsible for MH17 tragedy

Malaysia Airlines was still reeling from the loss of Flight MH370 when disaster struck again on 17 July 2014. Flight MH17, a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was flying over eastern Ukraine when it was shot down. All 283 passengers, including 80 children and 15 crew, were killed.

The ensuing investigation revealed that the plane was hit by a Russian Buk missile, causing it to crash. It was also found that evidence showed the missile had been fired from a field controlled by Russian-backed separatists. In June 2019, 4 men were charged with the murders of the passengers and crew.

Also in 2019, FvD leader Thierry Baudet stated that he believed Ukraine may have been behind the attack. He questioned the independence of the Joint Investigation Team and reasoned that it was up to the judge to decide who was responsible, instead of political leaders seeking to blame Russia.

Earlier conspiracy theories even claimed that Ukraine shot down the plane, thinking it was Vladimir Putin’s presidential jet, while yet another rumor said that, as is the case with many tragedies, that the Illuminati orchestrated the incident because of their love of the number 7. Therefore, they ensured a Boeing 777 with the number MH17 was shot down in the 7th month of 2014.^[4]

6 Boxing Day tsunami was an attempt at fixing the earth’s rotation

On 26 December 2004, the fault between the Burma Plate and the Indian Plate suffered a rupture, resulting in the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. This undersea earthquake measured a magnitude of 9.1—9.3. Tsunami waves of up to 30 meters resulted from this, leaving more than 227,000 people dead in fourteen countries. Aftershocks from the initial earthquake lasted almost 4 months. The furthest recorded fatality was in Rooi-Els, near Cape Town in South Africa.

A mere eleven days after the disaster, conspiracy theorists had already come up with their own suspicions. They asked questions such as why the
US would deploy a warship if there wasn’t a war to fight, and why the Boxing Day tsunami happened exactly one year after a massive earthquake in Iran in 2003, if there wasn’t any behind-the-scenes manipulation going on.

Other theories included an attempt to correct the rotation of the Earth (because it was apparently wobbly at the time), and the tsunami actually being triggered by a dormant WWII nuclear bomb.^[5]

Top 10 Most Shocking Conspiracies That Ended Up Being True

5 Halifax explosion was a declaration of war

On 6 December 1917, a munitions ship exploded in the Halifax harbor in Nova Scotia, killing almost 2,000 people and injuring around 9,000. The blast destroyed more than 1 square mile of the city of Halifax.

The explosion occurred after Norwegian steamship, Imo, headed out of the harbor and collided with French steamship, Mont-Blanc. The Mont-Blanc was loaded with 2925 metric tons of explosives and blew up after catching fire during the collision. Tsunami waves of 18 meters high followed the blast, destroying more than 1600 buildings and causing the Imo to become stranded on the shore.

News reports at the time predictably expressed doubt about it being an accident and inferred that something more sinister (such as sabotage) had taken place. Conspiracy theories grew as time passed, and rumors of German spies having been involved in the disaster soon reached the public. The explosion was suddenly seen as a declaration of war, leading to Germans being attacked in the streets of Halifax in retaliation.^[6]

4 US government engineered a massive tornado

The 2013 Moore tornado was an EF5 monster that released more energy than the Hiroshima Atomic bomb. Meteorologists used real time measurements during the almost 40 minutes the tornado wreaked havoc and estimated that the energy released was up to 600 times more than that of the bomb that wrecked the Japanese city.

The tornado was spawned form a weather system that had produced more tornadoes over the Great Plains over the previous two days. After the twister had touched down northwest of Newcastle and cut a path through Moore, Oklahoma, 24 people were left dead, 212 injured with damages equalling 2 billion.

Soon rumors began making the rounds, fueled by Alex Jones from InfoWars, saying that the American government was behind the ‘weather attacks.’ On his radio show, he claimed that while he wasn’t 100% sure whether a ‘weather weapon’ was to blame for the Moore disaster, he wanted to warn his audience that the government had the ability to ‘create and steer groups of tornadoes.’^[7]

3 The Obamas and the Boston Marathon bombings

On 15 April 2013, while the annual Boston Marathon was underway, two homemade bombs went off 14 seconds apart near the finish line of the race. Three people were killed, hundreds were injured, and 17 others lost limbs. It took the FBI only three days to release images of two suspects who they identified shortly afterwards. Brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev ended up in a shootout with police. Tamerlan was shot and died shortly after his brother ran over him with their stolen getaway car. A manhunt was launched for Dzhokhar and he was found hiding in a boat, shot, and wounded by police and then arrested.

Dzhokhar was sentenced to death, but this sentence was overturned in 2020 after a court concluded that he did not receive a fair trial.

Much the same as with other terrorist attacks and also school shootings, there were immediate conspiracy theories that claimed the bombings were nothing but a false flag operation. And that is the tamest of the many theories.

Other rumors have it that the bombings were part of a plan to implement martial law in Boston, that a naked Tamerlan was arrested after he had died and that Michelle Obama visited a mysterious Saudi national in hospital after an investigation against him was dropped. Allegedly the investigation was halted after the Saudi ambassador held a secret meeting with Barack Obama. This could only mean that Barack and Michelle visiting the injured victims in hospital was just a cover to carry out ‘secret sinister’ plans alongside the unnamed Saudi national.^[8]

2 Lasers used to start Australian bushfires

Australia’s devastating bushfire-season finally came to an end on 31 March 2020, but not before thousands of homes, around a billion animals and massive areas of wilderness were destroyed. 33 people also lost their lives during the fires that lasted from September 2019 to February 2020. 3000 homes were damaged or destroyed and thousands of people who were forced to evacuate had no choice but to seek shelter on beaches. Australia, during the blazes, recorded the worst air pollution in its capital with an air quality index 23 times higher than what is deemed ‘hazardous.’

This disaster didn’t escape the conspiracy theorists and a very strange theory came to light in January 2020. Many Australians are said to be convinced that lasers and ‘exploding smart meters’ are being used to intentionally start bushfires. The reason behind the arson is believed to be a way to usher in a new train network, the ‘brain-child’ of a global elite group. It is also believed that the ‘weapons’ harness the same power as that of microwaves.^[9]

1 Beirut explosion was caused by a nuclear bomb

When an explosion rocked central Beirut on 4 August 2020, its aftermath left 190 people dead, 6500 injured and around 15 billion in damage. It was soon established that the massive blast, which could be heard in Cyprus more than 160 miles away, was the result of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of Beirut.

Not long after, conspiracy theories started flooding the internet. Some are claiming that this was no ordinary explosion, but that an American drone had something to do with it. Others are convinced that the blast was caused by a missile strike, as part of a plot to plunge Lebanon into civil war. Yet another theory has it that Israeli fighter jets caused the disaster. Viral social media posts claimed that a firework factory had exploded instead, while others suggested that a nuclear bomb had been detonated because there was a mushroom-like cloud visible on some footage after the explosion.^[10]

10 Conspiracy Theories About MK-ULTRA You May Not Know

We all know Mother Nature likes to put us in our place. Earthquakes, tornadoes, and other assorted calamities all serve to keep us in check and knock our human ego down a notch. Sometimes, however, we don’t need the help.

Some of the worst disasters in our history can be chalked up to human error. We like to think things are under control, that the people in charge are careful and responsible, but as the following stories show, that’s not always the case.

10 Halifax Ship Explosion
December 6, 1917

A giant game of chicken caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. This big bang was the result of two ships, the Norwegian vessel SS Imo and the SS Mont Blanc, colliding in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia.^[1]

The Mont Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with explosives for use in World War I, was on its way to Bordeaux from New York with a stop in Halifax. As it entered the lane of the Halifax Channel, it met the Imo, which was on its way out. There was a protocol for this type of situation, with each ship assigned to opposite sides of the narrow waterway, but that day, the two captains refused to move out of each other’s way. At the last minute, the Mont Blanc turned but was hit broadside by the Imo.

The resulting explosion caused the harbor to momentarily empty of water, with waves washing tsunami-like onto the surrounding shore. This, in combination with the shock from the explosion, obliterated everything for a 0.8-kilometer (0.5 mi) radius. Structures were flattened, trees snapped, and piles of debris burst into flame. All in all, nearly 2,000 people were killed, and 9,000 were injured. Shock waves were felt 177 kilometers (110 mi) away, and to top it off, rescue and recovery efforts were hampered by a blizzard which blanketed Halifax in 41 centimeters (16 in) of snow. Do-over day, anyone?

9 Deadly Molasses Flood
January 15, 1919

Cause of death . . . molasses? That was what killed 21 inhabitants of Boston’s North End after a thunderous wave of brown goo smashed buildings and smothered terrified bystanders.^[2] It was Wednesday, Jan 15, 1919, when one of the weirdest man-made disasters of all time occurred.

It began when a giant holding tank full of molasses began to creak and groan. When citizens reported the problem, authorities seemed unconcerned. The metal tank had made such noises before, and everyone agreed it was just the molasses settling. Besides, how would anyone go about repairing such a thing? The tank was 15 meters (50 ft) tall and built to hold 8.7 million liters (2.3 million gal) of molasses. The decision to ignore the problem was a bad one.

The creaking sounds grew steadily worse until around 12:30 PM, when a deep rumble was followed by the shriek of rending metal. When the tank exploded, its contents flooded the area. In the aftermath, 150 people were injured, and 21 were killed. It was nearly impossible to identify victims under the dried brown glaze, much less remove them from the streets. Boston Harbor was brown for weeks as a result of the flood. This kind of molasses wasn’t so sweet.

8 Johnstown Dam Failure
May 31, 1889

In 1879, a group called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club built a luxurious lodge near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to be used by its wealthy members for vacations, hunting, and fishing trips. While the club members spent lavishly on the lodge, they neglected to update the earthen dam which held beautiful Lake Conemaugh in check. On May 31, 1889, everyone paid the price.

After two days of torrential rain, the lake rose to the top of the dam. Efforts were made to siphon off some of the water, but it was too late. At 3:10 PM, there was a great roar, and the dam burst. Millions of tons of water pounded down the valley at 64 kilometers per hour (40 mph).^[3]

By the time the water reached Johnstown, it was loaded with houses, wagons, animals, and trees. A 50-year-old survivor named Lisa Phipps said, “It resembled a rolling mountain, so filthy was its water.”

To add misery to an already epic misfortune, an enormous wall of debris which had stacked up against an old stone bridge caught fire, killing all who sheltered there. When the flood finally dissipated, over 2,200 people had died, and 10 square kilometers (4 mi²) of Johnstown were destroyed.

7 London’s Killer Smog
December 5, 1952

Killer smog sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but this was the real thing. For five days in December 1952, a smothering cloud descended on London, killing thousands.

December 5 was a cold day, and as Londoners woke, they stoked their fireplaces and lit their coal stoves, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. Smoky diesel-fueled buses carried people to work, and factories belched tons of pollution into the air.

Unfortunately, on this day, an inversion set in, trapping pollutants on top of the city. With no wind to clear the air, the smog had nowhere to go. By noon, it had turned a sickly yellowish brown and began to smell like rotten eggs. Parents were warned to keep their children home from school, for fear they might become lost in the vaporous haze. The air was so thick that people couldn’t see their feet, and river traffic was halted on the Thames. Birds died when they flew into buildings, and livestock suffocated. People suffered similar fates.

It is estimated that as many as 12,000 people died of respiratory ailments related directly to the sulfurous air.^[4] Finally, after five nightmarish days, a fresh breeze blew in and whisked the killer smog out to sea. It was not until 1956 that a clean air act was finally passed.

6 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
March 24, 1989

Prince William Sound and the lands around it are home to the grizzly bear, otter, and countless species of birds and aquatic life. This pristine and peaceful area also supported a large fishing community. Life here was forever changed on March 24, 1989, when an oil tanker named the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound.^[5]

On impact, the Valdez began spouting sticky crude oil. Roughly 41 million liters (11 million gal) gushed into the water, poisoning sea creatures and destroying the delicate ecosystem. It wasn’t long before black goo also began to wash up on the shore, covering seabirds and harbor seals.

Local fishermen who rushed to help were initially refused, but as the overwhelming effects of the spill became apparent, thousands of volunteers were recruited to help clean up beaches and animals. As the oil-soaked creatures were collected, they were carefully cleaned and rehabilitated, but tragically, thousands of seabirds and otters, hundreds of seals and bald eagles, and 22 orcas did not survive.

Despite being drunk and turning control of the ship over to an unqualified pilot, Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Valdez, got off relatively easy with community service and a $50,000 fine. Living with the aftermath of the spill wasn’t nearly so easy for those affected. Only time will tell the extent of the damage.

5 Bhopal Chemical Disaster
December 3, 1984

Used in the production of pesticide, methyl isocyanate, or MIC, is also deadly to humans. This became all too clear during the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, when the world’s worst industrial accident occurred at Union Carbide’s chemical plant in Bhopal, India.^[6]

Thanks to a leaky storage tank, malfunctioning warning systems, and multiple safety violations, a chemical reaction sent clouds of poisonous gas pouring into the surrounding neighborhoods. The victims, mostly poor and living in a densely populated area near the plant, were largely asleep at the time, but even those who tried to escape found it impossible. The suffocating cloud was heavier than air and hovered close to the ground. Carried by the wind, the gas spread faster than victims could run.

The final death toll was estimated to be between 3,800 and 16,000, with over half a million injured. Survivors suffered long-term consequences, such as lung damage, eye irritation, blindness, and other effects of exposure to the toxic gas. While some of the victims received compensation for their pain and suffering, the amounts were paltry and hardly sufficient to make up for a lifetime of disability.

4 London Beer Tsunami
October 17, 1814

Beer has always been a popular beverage, but most people prefer it in a glass, not flooding the streets of their town. In the early 1800s, many London breweries utilized giant wooden beer vats.^[7] They started as tourist attractions but soon turned into an unofficial competition to see who could build the largest cask.

The owners of the Horseshoe Brewery were proud of their vats, which held thousands of barrels of beer. On October 17, 1814, one of their vats burst, causing a domino effect with the surrounding vats. The result was a 4.6-meter-tall (15 ft) wave of beer which crashed through New Street into the St Giles Rookery, one of London’s poorest areas.

Two houses fell like matchsticks in the face of the solid wall of liquid, while shocked citizens were swept away in the torrent. After the wave of beer dispersed and rescuers arrived, they were instructed to be silent to better hear the cries of survivors who were buried in the rubble. In the end, eight people died. In a sad twist, five of the casualties were mourners at the funeral of a young boy who had died the day before.

The accident was determined to be an act of God, and the brewers got off scot-free. The victims were not compensated for their losses in any way.

3 Terrible Train Collision
July 9, 1918

The Dutchman’s Curve train wreck occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, over 100 years ago but is still considered the worst rail collision in US history. On July 9, 1918, two trains traveling at high speeds collided. The resulting impact was heard 3.2 kilometers (2 mi) away.

At around 7:00 AM, train engineer David Kennedy pulled his #4 train out of the station and onto the single track that headed for Memphis. After giving the okay, the tower operator noticed that another train coming from the opposite direction had not yet arrived in the station. Realizing his error, the tower man blew the emergency whistle to stop the #4. It was too late.

Each train was traveling around 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph) in opposite directions on the same track.^[8] The trains met in a furious crash. Cars piled on top of each other, littering the surrounding area with debris and bodies. “It was a mess,” said one rescue worker, “just a twisted jumble of steel and humanity.” When all was said and done, 101 people died, and 171 were injured.

In an ironic twist, Kennedy, the engineer of the #4 train, had been planning his retirement. Before departing that morning, he told a coworker that this would be his last run.

2 Arsenal Hill Explosion
April 5, 1876

It was a pleasant day in Salt Lake City, and crowds had gathered for the semiannual General Conference of the Mormon Church. People played baseball in the park, rowed in the lake, and picnicked in bright sunshine.

Two young men, Frank Hill and Charles Richardson, both 18, were tending cattle on Arsenal Hill near the powder magazine which held the city’s store of ammunition. In attempt to ward off boredom, Hill and Richardson began taking potshots at a flock of geese flying overhead.

Moments later, 40 tons of gunpowder, blasting powder, and various other types of explosives and ammunition detonated in three consecutive blasts.^[9] Both boys were killed instantly. Horses bolted, trees fell, and the baseball players were knocked to the ground. Shards of glass flew through the air, and boulders—some as heavy as 52 kilograms (115 lb)—fell from the sky. Every building within a 3.2-kilometer (2 mi) radius was damaged.

Remarkably, only four people were killed on this terrible day. In the end, it was estimated that 500 tons of rock fell on the city. The area where the powder magazine sat was reduced to a moonscape of craters. The local papers declared this was a day no one would forget, but today, the disaster is relatively obscure.

1 Chernobyl
April 26, 1986

One of the all-time worst man-made disasters was the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.^[10] Thanks to plant mismanagement and reactor design flaws, a massive explosion released enormous amounts of radioactivity into the air. Though the Soviet government tried to keep the disaster a secret, surrounding countries quickly noticed elevated levels of radioactive particles and tracked it back to the source.

Several people died immediately after the explosion, and 237 people suffered acute radiation poisoning. Due to lack of detailed information, it is not known how many people ultimately died from cancer and other side effects of this accident, but estimates are in the tens of thousands.

Though the area surrounding Chernobyl is still unsafe and will not be officially habitable for at least another 20,000 years, some people have returned to their homes. And in the ultimate act of defiance of danger, the Chernobyl catastrophe area has now become a tourist attraction.

While I’m a writer by trade and a wanderer by nature, and I like to combine the two activities whenever possible. I’m also lucky enough to be a book lover who works in a library, so I’m constantly inspired by the great writers I come in contact with each day.
For more of the Library Lady, see https://libraryladytravels.com.

According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.), natural disasters are now occurring three times more often than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, also increasing in scale and intensity. This means they are wreaking a disproportionately large amount of havoc and destruction in the least developed and low- to middle-income countries, where people are least able to cope.

What happens when we combine Mother Nature’s propensity for reminding us who’s really in charge every now and again with the massive increase in the use of security cameras, dash cams, and camera phones around the globe? We get to experience—now more than ever—what it is like to really confront one of these disasters for ourselves (from the safety of our own homes, of course!). So here is a list of 10 home videos that recorded deadly natural disasters.

Related: 10 Myths Humans Have Used To Explain Natural Disasters

10 Earthquake—Luzon, The Philippines

The Philippines is an archipelago in southeast Asia that regularly experiences volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, and all the terrible things that generally accompany them, such as tsunamis, flooding, and landslides. Given its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines is subjected to over 2,000 earthquakes every single year. Since 1951, they have claimed more than 4,800 lives without even counting the tsunamis that often follow them.

This video has no audio but shows a group of friends enjoying some free time in a local swimming pool when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake strikes their home of Luzon. The group struggles to evacuate the churning water as the tremors roll through, clearly shaking the trees and structures in the background before eventually subsiding after about a minute.

This was only a small rumble compared to some of the more destructive quakes the Filipino people have had to weather over the years, but the waves created in the pool really highlight how violently the ground moved. Unfortunately, eighteen people lost their lives in the quake, although everybody in this video escaped unharmed.^[1]

9 Volcano—Whakaari, New Zealand

Whakaari, also known as White Island, is a privately owned islet located off of the northeastern coast of New Zealand. It had been a popular tourist attraction for many years, despite being New Zealand’s most active volcano, before disaster struck in December 2019.

An increase in seismological activity had been recorded in the weeks leading up to the event. Still, no official warnings were issued, so two separate tour groups visited the island by boat that afternoon. Just after the first group completed their tour and their boat was leaving the island, Whakaari exploded, spewing a massive plume of rocks, steam, and burning gas across the island and 12,000 feet up into the air.

The video, recorded by Allessandro Kauffmann, shows the tour boat he is traveling on returning to the island immediately after the eruption to try to help any survivors. Official rescue efforts were delayed because of the risk of further eruptions, but three heroic helicopter pilots launched their own rescue efforts, only to later be charged by the New Zealand health and safety authority, WorkSafe.

Unfortunately, a total of 47 people were stuck on the island when the superheated gas enveloped them, 22 of whom lost their lives. Many survivors suffered life-changing injuries as a result of their burns.^[2]

8 Tsunami—Indonesia

Indonesia, like its neighbor, the Philippines, can be considered pretty unlucky geographically. It consists of over 17,500 islands—most uninhabited, though—which are home to 120 active volcanoes. Also located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is regularly subjected to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, and soil liquefaction. In late 2018, the Indonesian people would experience all of these cataclysmic possibilities within a two-month period.

At 6 pm on the 28th of September, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Palu on Sulawesi Island, causing a huge underwater landslide that, in turn, triggered a tsunami. As early warning systems malfunctioned, people were completely unprepared when a 23-foot high wave smashed into the city of Palu. At the same time the wave hit, soil liquefaction occurred over vast areas, swallowing entire buildings whole. In total, more than 2,000 people died in this disaster with more than 4,200 injured. Some news reports included home video footage.

Then, just two months later, on December 22, the Anak Krakatau volcano erupted, which caused another landslide as the southwest flank collapsed into the sea. This massive displacement of water created a tsunami in the Sundra Strait that was also not picked up by early warning systems. At 8:30 pm local time, the tsunami crashed into the shores of western Java and southern Sumatra.

This home video was shot at a seaside concert in western Java. Popular local group Seventeen were performing to over 200 people, mostly families, when the wave struck them from behind. While the singer survived the terrifying ordeal, in later interviews, he claimed he wished that he had died too. He lost all of his bandmates and his wife in this tragic event that took more than 400 lives.^[3]

7 Flood—Henan, China

The term “once in a lifetime weather event” is being thrown around a lot these days, especially when it comes to flooding in areas that may have seen little in the way of disasters in recent years, such as New York or Germany. In July 2021, the flooding in Henan Province, China, though, really can be considered once in a lifetime. The provincial capital of Zhengzhou received an entire year’s worth of rainfall in three days, and as you might expect, the entire city was submerged.

This was a terrifying event for everyone living in the province, but those who faced the most immediate danger were the people who found themselves trapped underground in the city’s metro system as water levels began to rise rapidly up to their necks. In total, 14 people lost their lives in the city’s subway, and many more are thought to have died throughout the province as videos emerged of people being washed away all over the city.

This video shows passengers stuck in a train carriage with the doors closed as brown water quickly rises all around them. Fortunately, they were eventually able to evacuate to safety, although many others were not so lucky that day.^[4]

6 Wildfire—Manavgat, Turkey

Today, Americans are so used to experiencing wildfires in the summer that news of them happening in other countries really doesn’t garner much attention. However, the huge increase in the number of wildfires across the planet over the last few years has meant that people have begun to recognize that this isn’t just an issue in California.

Australia, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Algeria, Italy, India, Russia, and Cyprus all had millions of acres of land reduced to smoldering ash due to huge forest fires over the last few years. This video comes from Turkey as some restaurant workers are trying to return home following a food delivery to firefighters tackling blazes in the Manavgat countryside. The hellish landscape of blazing forest seems to close in around them until they have nowhere to go and are forced to turn back. Fortunately, they were able to escape the flames unharmed, but many were not so lucky, with at least eight fatalities and hundreds injured across the country.^[5]

5 Hurricane—Florida, USA

Hurricane Michael struck Florida on October 10, 2018, and meteorologists soon realized that they were dealing with one of the biggest category 5 storms to ever make landfall in the eastern United States. Overall, it caused $25 billion in damages and was directly responsible for the deaths of 16 people. Still, despite all this mayhem and destruction, one plucky Callaway resident decided he would make a home movie documenting the damage caused to his community in this incredible video.

In just 15 minutes, you can watch his entire neighborhood get shredded by 150mph winds, and at the end, you get to see a walk-through of a residential street that has been reduced to nothing more than a pile of branches and shattered roof tiles.^[6]

4 Landslide—Kachin, Myanmar

This video was recorded at an illegal jade mine in the Kachin state of northern Myanmar. Kachin state has a long history of resistance against the oppressive Tatmadaw (Burmese Army). As such, the region is in many ways free from centralized Burmese control, meaning drug production, smuggling, and illegal mining are all common in the area.

One such illegal mine was experiencing unseasonably heavy rainfall when a miner decided to pull out his phone and begin recording. The landslide he captured on video sent a wave of mud and rock rolling down the valley like a tsunami and was responsible for the deaths of more than 162 people.^[7]

3 Sinkhole—Florida, USA

The idiom “I wish the ground would swallow me up” was obviously never meant to be taken literally. After all, the idea that you could just be minding your own business, carrying on with your life, and then, in a split second, the ground could open up and swallow you whole would be downright terrifying, no matter how embarrassed you are. Sinkholes happen more often than you might think, though, and every now and again, somebody ends up inside one.

One such unfortunate person was Jeffrey Bush, a 36-year-old Florida man who had just turned in for the night when the ground below him simply collapsed and swallowed him up. He screamed out for his brother, who rushed to his aid, only to find Jeffrey and all the contents of his bedroom had crashed through the floor into a sinkhole below.

This video was made as rescue workers tried to communicate with Jeffrey using a camera and microphone on a long pole to check on his whereabouts and condition. Unfortunately, he didn’t survive, and his body could not be recovered, so the sinkhole was filled in, the house and two neighboring properties were demolished, and the whole area was fenced off. That wasn’t quite the end of the story, however, as just two years later, the sinkhole opened up again, although this time nobody was hurt.^[8]

2 Avalanche—Mount Everest base camp, Nepal

Avalanches can have a variety of causes; sometimes, snow can just gradually pile up before collapsing down the side of the hill under its own weight. Often they are created deliberately with explosions, but sometimes they can be made by other natural disasters that occur many miles away. In the case of the Everest avalanche of 2015, it was the latter, as an enormous earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck Nepal on the afternoon of April 25, 2015, killing over 9,000 people. A video shows just how strong the tremors were, hurling people back and forth as the city of Kathmandu was violently shaken by the quake.

Way up at Mount Everest base camp, the shock waves were not strong enough to hurt anyone, nor were there any buildings to collapse on top of the 2,000 people gathered there. However, minutes after the deadly earthquake struck Kathmandu valley, a huge avalanche of ice and rock came crashing down Mount Pumori, completely burying the campsite at its base.

At least 20 people died, and hundreds were injured by the falling debris. This video shows the ferocity and intensity of the icy blast created by the avalanche and just how lucky the cameraman and his friend were to survive, ducking into their tent just in time.^[9]

1 Tornado—Illinois, USA

This final video shows probably the most terrifying video of a tornado that has ever been recorded. (Please add a link in the comments if you know of any contenders!) It was filmed by 84-year-old Clem Schultz from his bedroom window after he and his wife noticed the twister forming behind their home in Illinois.

Living in an area that sees numerous tornadoes every year, the couple considered their options but decided that they were confident that the tornado would pass by their home to the west, leaving them unscathed. Assuming the power could go out at any time, Clem headed upstairs to grab a lantern when he noticed from his bedroom window that the tornado was gathering pace and growing bigger by the second. He decided to begin filming, and even when he realized that the tornado would not just pass them by, he said nothing at all as it smashed into him with a deafening roar before everything turned black and the video ended.

Somehow, Clem actually survived this incredible encounter with one of the biggest tornadoes that Illinois has ever seen. His wife was not so lucky, though, as she was one of two people killed. Many more were injured, and 24 homes were completely destroyed.^[10]

Around a century ago, the world’s technology was far different from now. Even the most intelligent scientist would have thought the notion of the internet sounded like crazy witchcraft at the time. Automobiles for the ordinary citizen were just becoming widespread, the television had yet to be created, and the internet had yet to be invented. But, despite all the breakthroughs we’ve seen in technology and all the ways it’s improved our lives, it’s far from perfect. Every day, technology fails, and there have been some spectacular failures in recent memory.

Here are ten recent techs fails and disasters that I’m sure the creators should have rethought.

Related: Ordinary Items That Made People Rich

10 Juicero

What is it that fashionable, hip, aggressive go-getters like above all else? You would have your finger on the pulse if you guessed juice and/or useless devices. The worldwide juice business is approaching $200 billion annually. So, yeah, we like our juice. The annual revenue from kitchen gadgets is over $17.6 billion. Putting them together is a match made in heaven! Or, at the very least, it should have been.

Juicero seemed to be a fantastic idea in 2017. To prepare excellent juice, you need a sophisticated kitchen device, right? How it worked: Individual fruit packets were pressed in an internet-connected machine sponsored by some big-name investors’ $120 million investment.

The machine worked like a vise, squeezing pre-made vegetable and fruit packages with four tons of force to produce delicious and healthy fresh juice. Then someone discovered you could simply tweak the packets by hand, eliminating the need for the $699 juice press. When reporters put it to the test, they found that they could obtain just as much juice and do it quicker if they did it barehanded.

Even after lowering the price to $400, the Juicero had already had a disastrous debut. They went bankrupt after just a few months in business.^[1]

9 Zillow’s AI

Zillow is a real estate firm that has received much attention in recent years due to its market domination. Unfortunately, they spent so much of 2021 grabbing up homes that they had to put a stop to it for a few months. They’d experienced a major technical failure due to a combination of overconfidence and—probably—stupidity.

Most consumers had no idea Zillow really purchased and sold properties, mistaking it for a place where real estate brokers could simply display their listings. The fact was that the corporation was in the business of flipping houses and had built A.I. technologies to help them do so. They were so confident in the A.I. that they allowed it to make cash bids on homes. That proved to be a horrible decision.

By November, the firm—as Zillow Offers—had a backlog of 7,000 properties worth $2.8 billion that needed to be sold. As a consequence of its sloppy spending, they were forced to shut down its A.I. algorithm and cease property purchases, illustrating once and for all that you can’t let a website invest in real estate across a whole nation.^[2]

8 Tesla Bot

Tesla is one of the most well-known firms today. With Elon Musk’s shenanigans in the headlines all the time, the firm can’t help but be mentioned regularly as well, and not only about his antics. Don’t forget that Tesla is still the market leader in electric vehicles. They regularly release new and innovative products to keep their name on everyone’s lips.

In August 2021, Tesla held a press conference to announce that they were developing a humanoid robot. According to Musk, the objective was to construct a machine capable of doing people’s dull, risky, or repetitive activities. So far, everything has gone well. The rollout was the issue.

For whatever reason, Musk opted to show off the concept of the robot before anybody had built one. So instead, they sent out a guy dressed as a robot in a spandex jumpsuit. Then he danced, and it was a disaster.

It didn’t matter whether it was intended as a joke or not. The next day, the corporation was slammed in the press. Many observers chalked it up to a publicity gimmick to divert attention away from poor headlines, but whatever the underlying purpose, it made one of the world’s largest corporations and one of the world’s wealthiest individuals appear silly.^[3]

7 The Freedom Phone

A segment of the American population sees everything unpleasant or scary as a direct assault on their freedom. And their retaliation is to start labeling anything that supports their point of view “freedom” in a random and illogical manner. Remember when someone attempted to call French fries “freedom fries” because of France’s opposition to the Iraq War? Anyway…

In more recent history, the Freedom Phone was created for MAGA supporters who wanted to break free from “Big Tech’s” control by using a smartphone that didn’t censor them or promote a leftist ideology. It would feature an uncensored app store and an anti-surveillance operating system. And, sure, that’s fine if that’s your politics. It’s profitable to appeal to individuals depending on their political convictions. The issue was that the phone’s politics were not in line with its own.

To begin with, the Freedom Phone was nothing more than a rebranded, low-cost Chinese phone. The $499 Freedom Phone turned out to be a $119 Umidigi A9. Umidigi is a name you’ve probably never heard of. And neither had anybody else. So it wasn’t produced in America.

The concept that it was free of monitoring and restriction since it came from China, where neither of those qualities is highly prized, turned out to be a bit of a joke. There were no specifications on the website for purchasers. The OS was swapped with one produced by the Big Tech giants. Their unregulated app store poses serious privacy problems, and practically every tech website has recommended consumers avoid this item like the plague. Also, the phone would still use American cell networks for service.^[4]

6 Quibi

What do you have to say about Quibi? This is possibly the most powerful bomb of 2021, a reality only softened by the fact that everyone but those directly engaged appeared to see it coming from a mile away.

Quibi seemed to be a fusion of conventional TV and movies with something more fast-paced and consumable, such as YouTube and TikTok. The shows were all going to be brief, like five minutes or less, so you could watch them during your morning commute, and they were going to star Kevin Hart, Anna Kendrick, Sam Raimi, Idris Elba, and a slew of other famous names in Hollywood. How did so many well-known people show up? It’s possible that the approximately $2 billion in investment funds had something to do with it.

Quibi survived approximately seven months. There was no-one on board. Only a mobile phone could be used to view Quibi. It was impossible to screencap Quibi shows. It was way too pricey for what it was, and, more significantly, almost everything they produced was mediocre at best. Nearly every program on the platform was unanimously criticized by critics and spectators alike.^[5]

5 Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most anticipated games in recent years when it was launched at the end of 2020. For God’s sake, it even included Keanu Reeves. It was also one of the fastest-selling games of all time, with almost five million pre-orders and 13.7 million copies sold overall. Isn’t that a big victory? Well, not quite.

Because the game was so unstable that it was practically unplayable, it issued refunds to over 30,000 customers. The game was eventually deleted from the PlayStation Store.

On both the PS4 and Xbox One, the game was incredibly buggy. Lawsuits were brought when hackers acquired information from the developer for making the games run poorly on previous-generation platforms.

Even when folks were able to enjoy the game and have it operate flawlessly, the game ended up being barely acceptable in the end. It’s all right. It never lived up to the anticipation, and since its debut, many people have largely forgotten about it.^[6]

4 Coolest Cooler

It takes a lot of effort to turn a cooler into a tech flop. A cooler can’t be that hard to sell, even one as simple as a styrofoam box, so a corporation has to go above and beyond to make it a failure, let alone one that was teeming with technology. But that’s precisely what the Coolest Cooler accomplished when it first appeared a few years ago.

The Coolest Cooler was one of the most successful Kickstarter projects ever in 2014, raising a staggering $13 million, which no one could have predicted. Who’d have guessed that coolers were so popular?

The Coolest Cooler was designed to be able to charge electronics such as your phone and have its own blender and Bluetooth speaker, among other features. By 2019, the corporation had filed for bankruptcy, and the cooler had finally gone up in flames.

The CEO blamed Chinese tariffs for the device’s demise. However, product evaluations from 2016 had previously shown that the cooler was mainly useless. With a price tag of $399, you’d think a high-tech cooler would at least operate properly, but this one didn’t. The blender was subpar at best, with a battery life of just around four minutes of blending time.

The cooler was never issued because the firm ran out of money during the Kickstarter campaign. Therefore backers who still wanted one had to pay an extra $96. Additionally, folks who did not fund the Kickstarter and instead purchased one on Amazon received theirs sooner.^[7]

3 Galaxy Fold

The notion of folding technology has intrigued us for a few years in science fiction. Phones and tablets that can be rolled up and bent seem practical since many of us have dropped or crushed phones and shattered the displays, making this a desired feature. As a result, Samsung moved ahead and created a screen that could not be rolled but folded. Or at least that was the plan.

In 2019, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Fold, which resembled a wallet. You could fold it in half and unfold it, and your screen would be right there, giving you double the screen capacity of the size in your pocket. This fantastic technology costs just under $2,000 to purchase. Things did not go as planned.

When Samsung finally allowed reviewers to use the phones, they failed miserably. Most reviews merely needed a day or two to point out that their folding displays didn’t function. Some units produced bulges, while others only operated on one side of the Fold. Other reviews said they removed a protective layer since they didn’t know not to, thereby destroying the phone.

Samsung claimed to have sold one million copies in around four months after the phone’s debut but swiftly backtracked, claiming the one million was what they wanted to sell. Later, Samsung’s CEO humiliatingly recognized that the Fold was released too soon.^[8]

2 Breached Sex Toys

Everyone understands that hackers are lurking around every corner and must secure anything that connects to the internet. We all have a slew of passwords to safeguard everything we possess. For a good reason: hackers can get into almost everything. And sex toys are included in this category as well.

In a strong and expanding industry, some adult toys can be linked to the internet to enable remote control by other users for reasons you may imagine. The issue is that few of these gadgets have any security built-in.

Any personal data acquired by hackers from a linked device is the most obvious security danger. This may not seem to be much at first, and it might just be humiliating facts about your sex toy usage. That’s not all, however.

According to one Twitter user, someone acquired access to their Metamask. This browser plugin allows people to access Ethereum and other crypto businesses. After their machine was hacked, the user lost several NFTs and dollars, and the only unique item on their network that they could think of was a sex toy that they’d plugged in “to charge.”^[9]

1 WeWork

WeWork was a digital firm that helped new businesses and startups find shared office space. So it was really simply commercial real estate, albeit they experimented with virtual spaces alongside actual ones and worked very hard to deceive people into believing they were doing things when they weren’t. The firm would rent huge office buildings for a long time, then break them up into smaller rooms for more short-term tenants to utilize as their day-to-day office space. This concept managed to get a $47 billion value at the outset.

SoftBank invested $8 billion in the firm, and WeWork began purchasing office space in key cities throughout the nation. They estimated their company’s market to be worth more than $3 trillion, and no one thought they were crazy. They arrived at this figure by concluding that everybody who worked at a desk in a city with an office was eligible to join.

The CEO and his wife were well-known for their lack of business acumen, which was ludicrous. He used to work barefoot in the workplace and do tequila shots, while she once dismissed someone because their “energy” was wrong.

Its sole true strength seemed to be its ability to mismanage funds. It lost $1.9 billion in 2018 on $1.8 billion in sales, and its stock continued to plummet. The CEO had to leave just to restore trust in the company, but even that didn’t work. Their initial public offering (IPO) in 2019 was a flop and had to be canceled. They lost more than $2 billion in the first quarter of 2021 alone.^[10]