Citations:megadisaster

Noun: "an unexpected natural or man-made catastrophe of exceptional magnitude and/or causing unusually severe or unprecedented damage"

 * 1983 — Witold Rybczynski, Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology, Viking Press (1983), ISBN 9780670693597:
 * Another ecological megadisaster may occur in Brazil, where, some scientists believe, the large-scale lumber industry could denude the jungle to the point that the reduction in vegetation, and hence in oxygen production, will affect the biosphere on a global scale.
 * 1986 — Beverley Raphael, When Disaster Strikes: How Individuals and Communities Cope with Catastrophe, Basic Books (1986), ISBN 9780465091683, page 308:
 * The threat of nuclear war poses megadisaster to the city communities of the world directly and to all ecology.
 * 2007 — Bob Drury, "The Battle For Your Health", Men's Health, April 2007:
 * He describes how the next megadisaster — a Seattle earthquake, a tidal wave inundating New York City — will set the nation reeling.
 * 2009 — Richard Ben-Veniste, The Emperor's New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11, Thomas Dunne Books (2009), ISBN 9780312357962, page 309:
 * On the one hand, the families were out in force, demanding answers from the former city officials whom they felt had contributed to the loss of life on 9/11 by not preparing adequately for the megadisaster that claimed the lives of their loved ones.
 * 2010 — Jay M. Feinman, Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, Portfolio (2010), ISBN 9781591843153, unnumbered page:
 * James W. Greer, president of the Association of Property and Casualty Claims Professionals, lamented, "It was as if some small group of high-level financial magnates decided that the only way to save the industry's financial fate from this megadisaster [Hurricane Katrina] was to take a total hands-off approach and hide beneath the waves and the flood exclusion."
 * 2010 — Sisira Jayasuriya & Peter McCawley (with Bhanupong Nidhiprabha, Budy P. Resosudarmo, & Dushni Weerakoon), The Asian Tsunami: Aid and Reconstruction After a Disaster, Edgar Elgar Publishing Limited (2010), ISBN 9781848446922, page 12:
 * The response to a megadisaster such as the 2004 Asian tsunami raises many issues.
 * 2012 — Daniel P. Aldrich, Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery, University of Chicago Press (2012), ISBN 9780226012872, page 75:
 * This chapter uses case studies along with a new data set focused on Kobe's nine wards after the city's 1995 megadisaster, the earthquake known in Japanese as the Hanshin Awaji Daishinsai (the Great Hanshin—Awaji Earthquake),

Noun: "an unforeseen event of any kind with exceptionally unpleasant, distressing, or unfortunate results"

 * 1991 — Shana Alexander, When She Was Bad: The Story of Bess, Hortense, Sukhreet & Nancy, Dell Books (1991), ISBN 9780440208952, page 16:
 * Myerson's great happiness was followed by megadisaster. In 1987 her lover was convicted of tax fraud.
 * 1994 — Lael Littke, The Bridesmaids' Dress Disaster, Deseret Book Co. (1994), ISBN 9780875799407, page 90:
 * This was a total, out-and-out, megadisaster, and her numb brain couldn't think of a thing she could do about it. Except sew the dress.
 * 2009 — Andrew Attaway, Daily Guideposts 2009: A Spirit-Lifting Devotional, Guideposts (2008), ISBN 9780824947385, page 311:
 * After the initial shock of discovering my scheduling megadisaster, I forced myself to take a deep breath.