Number 11 Chelyabinsk Meteor In February of 2013, a massive meteor entered
Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in an airburst, about 18 miles above Russia’s Chelyabinsk
Oblast.
The celestial object was an estimated 66 feet in diameter and heavier than the Eiffel Tower.
It collided with the atmosphere at great speed and exploded into a fireball which, seen from
the ground, was brighter than the Sun.
The energy release was up to 33 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.
No deaths were recorded but the shockwave did damage thousands of buildings.
About 1,500 people were injured to the degree that they needed medical assistance, but those
were mainly indirect incidents resulting from the shattered glass.
Number 10 Great Flood of 1993 This is another natural incident influenced,
at least to some degree, by human activity.
The Great Flood of 1993 was the costliest flood in US history.
From April to October of that year, the Missouri, the Mississippi and their tributary rivers
overflowed, impacting about 320,000 square miles.
34 people were killed and about $15 billion in damages were reported which, when adjusted
for inflation, is nearly double today.
As the chaos died down, Missourian James Scott was accused of intentionally breaking a levee
on the Mississippi, thus resulting in the inundation of about 14,000 acres.
He was eventually found guilty of deliberately causing a catastrophe and sentenced to 10
years in a Missouri prison.
Added to a previous burglary sentence, he’d have to spend the next 2 decades behind bars.
No one was killed by Scott’s alleged actions, but all the bridges were washed out in the
area.
Additionally, a barge was sucked into the levee and slammed into a gas station, causing
a fire.
Scott maintained that he was innocent but one of his friends claimed he’d intentionally
sabotaged the levee to strand his wife, who worked at a truck stop, on the Missouri side
of the river.
He’d reportedly done it so that he’d be free to party, fish and have an affair.
Number 9 Carrington Event No lives were lost during the Carrington Event
but the incident reminded humanity that its greatest benefactor can also be its greatest
threat.
In 1859, the skies of the Northern Hemisphere, as far south as Hawaii, were covered in colorful
auroras.
In Colorado, it reportedly got so bright that people could easily read at night.
First observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington, the event was actually the largest
geomagnetic storm on record.
These events are caused by solar flares, powerful ejections of plasma and charged particles
which interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere.
They can disrupt communication on Earth as they tamper with electronic devices.
With our ever-increasing reliance on such technologies, an event correspondent in magnitude
to the one of 1859 would be catastrophic today.
Even in Carrington’s time, the geomagnetic storm took out parts of the recently-installed
US telegraph network.
Number 8 Great London Fog of 1952 In the early 1950s, London was starting to
regain momentum as an industrial powerhouse.
The manufacturing processes at the time, mainly powered by coal, were carried out with little
to no concern for pollution or air quality.
Then, for a few days in 1952, the forces of nature turned London’s industrial byproducts
against the city’s residents, basically forcing them to choke on that same pollution.
Starting in December of that year, unusually cold water and the absence of wind created
unusually stagnant conditions.
Pollutants were thus collected from the air and covered the city in a thick layer of smog.
Between December the 5th and the 9th, an estimated 4,000 people died directly as a result of
the smog, with their lungs ravaged by inflammation.
Children and the elderly accounted for most of the victims.
About 100,000 more suffered from illnesses of the respiratory tract in the aftermath.
The incident galvanized the city into action and spurred the introduction of the 1956 Clean
Air Act.
Number 7 Huascaran Avalanche At the end of May, 1970, the powerful Ancash
earthquake caused a massive portion of Peru’s Huascaran Mountain to collapse.
The resulting avalanche would go down in history as the deadliest disaster of its kind.
Close to 3 billion cubic feet of rock, ice and mud came hurtling down at up to 210 miles
per hour.
The towns of Ranrahirca and Yungay where completely buried under the inescapable wave of mountain
material and up to 20,000 people lost their lives.
Number 6 Locust Swarms on the Great Plains Locust swarms of biblical proportions ravaged
the US’ Great Plains starting in the summer of 1874.
The skies above the American prairies went dark as trillions of the insects descended
on land ranging from Montana, across to Minnesota and down to Texas.
They not only fed on crops but on basically any type of organic material.
This included leather, sawdust and even people’s clothes.
An account from the time mentioned that “they work as if sent to destroy” while others
compared the swarms to living snowstorms feeding on anything in their path.
One swarm, spotted in 1875, is suspected by Guinness World Records as being the largest
concentration of animals ever.
The swarm covered nearly 200,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of California,
and weighed a suspected 27.5 million tons.
This made the swarm 4 times heavier than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The swarms were described as the Rocky Mountain locust’s swan song of destruction, since
the insects went extinct by the end of the 19th century.
Number 5 Poison Gas Cloud at Lake Nyos In August of 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon experienced
a rare natural event known as a limnic eruption.
This occurs when dissolved carbon dioxide, in the lake’s deep water, suddenly erupts
in a gas cloud.
Commonly known as a lake overturn, the disaster can also be accompanied by a tsunami as the
rising gas displaces water.
On August 21st, Lake Nyos released hundreds of thousands of tons, possibly up to 1.6 million
according to some experts, of carbon dioxide and other noxious gases.
The cloud rose at a speed of over 60 miles per hour and then descended onto nearby villages.
The gas cloud displaced the air, as it was heavier, and fatally suffocated humans and
livestock.
The inescapable mass was about 160 feet thick and rapidly spread over a radius of several
miles.
Before they died, about 1,746 people experienced coughing, burning in the eyes and nose as
well as the inability to speak and cry out for help.
Many of those who had a chance to flee would suffer from lesions, breathing problems or
paralysis.
No one knows for sure what had caused the eruption but the main theories suggest a landslide
or volcanic activity.
Number 4 1931 China Floods This 1931 China floods is often described
as the deadliest natural disaster to have ever been recorded, with a death toll of up
to 4,000,000.
In 1931, the Yangtze and Huai rivers flooded tens of thousands of miles as a result of
heavy rain, unexpected snow and extreme cyclonic activity.
Other contributing factors included dams, which had been improperly built, as well as
the deforestation of lands which could’ve acted like a natural barrier to the rampant
waters.
Aside from drowning, people died from diseases or lack of food.
In the gruesome aftermath of the floods, people resorted to eating bark, weeds and earth.
Others sold their children or resorted to cannibalism.
Illnesses, like cholera, measles, malaria or dysentery swept through the refugee population,
adding to the growing list of casualties.
Number 3 Typhoon Tip While not the deadliest typhoon to have ever
occurred, the raw display of power that Tip unleashed in the 1979 season remains unmatched.
However, before going over its destructive force, it’s worth examining the difference
between typhoon, hurricane and cyclone.
These are all tropical storms named differently depending on where they occur.
For example, typhoons occur in the Northwest Pacific Ocean while the corresponding events
in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are called hurricanes.
Similar storms that form in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean are called cyclones.
Regardless of nomenclatures, at its peak, Tip was the largest tropical storm ever.
With a wind diameter of 1,380 miles, it was nearly half the size of the contiguous United
States.
It had sustained wind speeds of up to 190 miles per hour.
Close to 100 fatalities were recorded, mostly in Japan, due to widespread flooding and offshore
shipwrecks.
A Chinese freighter was actually broken in half by the storm, but all the people on board
were rescued.
Number 2 White Friday Avalanches are among nature’s most intimidating
displays of power, as moving walls of matter come crashing down, destroying everything
in their way.
While most natural disasters occur without human intervention, the 2nd deadliest avalanche
was actually a byproduct of war.
During World War I, Austro-Hungarian troops were fighting Italian forces for position
in the Alps.
Heavy snowfall and a sudden thaw in the mountains had already created the conditions ripe for
avalanches, by December the 13th.
Reports claim that both sides had fired shells at Mount Marmolada’s weakened snow packs,
hoping to trigger an avalanche on the other.
What followed proved to be more than any of them could handle.
On December 13th, approximately 200,000 tons of ice and snow plunged down the mountain.
The wooden barracks were no match for its destructive force.
They collapsed under the weight, crushing its occupants.
Other avalanches followed and roughly 10,000 soldiers, on all sides, died that December
in a disaster now remembered as White Friday.
Number 1 Year Without a Summer The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, on the
Indonesian island of Sumbawa, remains the most powerful event of its kind in recorded
human history.
Up to 36 cubic miles of dust, rocks and gases were spewed into the atmosphere, in an explosion
equivalent to 33 gigatons of TNT.
That’s roughly as much energy as the US consumes in an entire year.
Pyroclastic flows obliterated everything in their path and stretched to every part of
the volcano’s parent island, killing thousands of locals.
It’s believed that roughly 60 megatons of sulfur were released, causing a global climate
anomaly.
As it mixed with atmospheric gases, it prevented considerable amounts of sunlight from reaching
the Earth.
The eruption is the reason why 1816 would be remembered as the “year without summer”.
The Northern Hemisphere experienced extreme cold weather events, which lead to crop failures,
illnesses and mass starvation.
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Which would be a worse way to die: crushed by the depth of the Mariana Trench or thrown
inside an active volcano?
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