Natural disasters are naturally occurring events, or extreme forces of nature, that cause death or destruction of people and or their property. Here are a few common ones:
A collage image of typical natural disasters including fires, floods, volcanoes, storms, cyclones
The scale of natural disasters can vary from affecting only a few people to entire countries or regions and sometimes a global scale.
The word 'Disaster' contains '-aster' which means of the 'stars' and 'dis' meaning negative. So a disaster is a 'bad star' because great catastrophies in ancient times were often thought to be link with the position of the stars. image: wikipedia
Sometimes the topic of natural disasters is called 'Natural Hazards', to highlight that nature can be hazardous.
Some less common ones might include:
- Meteor impacts
- Avalanches
- Rock slides
- Snow or ice storms (Blizzards)
- Lightning strikes
Outbreaks of disease may also be considered natural sometimes. For example some wild animals may carry diseases that could infect a population.
Wild animal attacks could also be considered a type of natural disaster but on a more smaller personal scale. Examples might include a a stampede of animals or shark attacks on people. These usually are more oportunistic. Pirhana attacks for example.
Essentially any extreme form of nature could be considered a natural disaster. Comic events such as gamma ray bursts.
There are other kinds of social disasters, such as wars. Or Engineering disasters.