The 10 best natural disaster movies, ranked

This list is gonna be a disaster. A tragedy of world ending proportions. A real mess that threatens the human species as a whole. How will we ever survive the ten best natural disaster movies, ranked by how naturally disastrous they are?

10. Deep Impact

The most disastrous thing about Deep Impact is the title. Despite the impression it gives at first glance, Deep Impact is not a ’70s porno flick, as much as I’m sure we all wish it were. Mimi Leder’s disaster flick is about rogue comet that is hurtling towards Earth. This thing makes the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs look like something you’d skip across a pond. Luckily astronaut Robert Duvall and his team have a plan: blow the problem up with bombs. Because that’s the American way, isn’t it?

9. The Core

Jon Amiel’s The Core is one of the more creative (if completely implausible) entries on this list. No space rocks this time; the problem is not outside the Earth but inside. Scientists have discovered that Earth’s molten core has stopped rotating, meaning the planet’s magnetic field will slowly go by-by. What happens then? Earth and all life on it will be barbecued by solar radiation. How can it be stopped? By putting a crack team of scientists in a ship made out of Unobtanium (yes, really) and fixing the thing the only way this country knows how … with nukes!

8. The Day After Tomorrow

Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow is about the extreme effects of a natural disaster that is slowly but surely happening: climate change. Human emissions have caused the North Atlantic Ocean circulation to stop, causing all sorts of nasty weather to happen across the planet! Lady Liberty in New York City herself is buried under an Ice Age level of snow! Spoiler alert: They can’t solve this climate disaster with bombs; they’re just gonna have to … weather it.

7. 2012

Remember when people were convinced that the world would end in 2012 because someone misread a Mayan calendar? Good times. Roland Emmerich strikes again with this epic about the end of the world. The Sun, the thing that will eventually destroy the Earth in a few million years anyway, decides that Earth’s time is up early and shoots out some solar flares. These flares cause cataclysmic earthquakes and volcano eruptions, as if struggling sci-fi writer Jackson Curtis didn’t have enough to deal with! Now poor Jackson has to save his fam before it’s too late by getting them all onto … an ark. It’s a disaster film of biblical proportions.

6. Greenland

In Greenland, there’s a new addition to the solar system’s neighborhood: a comet named Clarke. Despite this comet’s unassuming moniker, it spells serious trouble for Earth. A fragment of Clarke has broken off and is now hurtling towards Earth. Structural engineer John Garrity learns that he and his fam have been selected by the government to shelter in a bunker in Greenland, the only place where humanity may be safe from the impact. All he has to do is get them there … easier said than done, considering everyone who wasn’t picked for salvation is currently freaking out.

5. Twister

Jan de Bont’s Twister is about what I believe to be the most terrifying type of natural disaster in the world: a torado. These dark and stormy fingers of God happen all the time, and the most powerful ones can peel the flesh from victims’ bones with their 300+ mph winds. In this film, stormchasers catch wind of a severe tornado outbreak in Oklahoma, which involves mile-wide F5 tornados forming at night. I literally cannot imagine anything scarier. Instead of running away, they decide to go into the storm in order to plant a tornado research device.

4. The Poseidon Adventure

Ronald Neame’s disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure isn’t really an adventure at all. Adventures are fun. What’s fun about being on a cruise ship as it capsizes? Nothing. It’s a straight up ordeal. The S.S. Poseidon has gone belly up in a tidal wave, and now a small group of survivors are fighting to survive in the overturned boat. They are led to salvation, ironically, by a priest that has decided to take charge of the situation. Not even he wants to meet his maker early.

3. Don’t Look Up

Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up is a black comedy about two scientists attempting to warn humanity of its impending extinction at the icy hands of a rogue comet. The problem? Humanity is too stupid to care. The government intends to blow the thing up with nukes (classic), but when a billionaire tech-bro informs them that the comet is full of rare and valuable metals, the powers that be decide to let the thing crash into Earth. It’ll be fine, they say. It most certainly won’t be.

2. Melancholia

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is one big metaphor for depression couched in an apocalypse movie. A newlywed bride named Justine sinks into a deep depression after agreeing to a marriage that she never really wanted. Meanwhile, her sister Claire attempts to hold the family together after the announcement that a rogue planet named Melancholia is on a collision course with the Earth. The two sisters’ responses to the tragedy are juxtaposed, with Claire attempting to control the outcome of the uncontrollable, while Justine makes peace with impending oblivion.

1. Contagion

Steven Andrew Soderberg’s Contagion is a 2011 medical disaster film that only gets better with age. Made 9 years before the events of the Covid-19 pandemic, the film is an eerily prophetic tale about a highly contagious and lethal virus that is spreading across the globe. After the sudden, horrifying death of a businesswoman after her trip to Hong Kong, scientists around the world scramble to understand the disease. The real villain of the film? The same as the theorized real-life Covid culprit: the adorable but disease ridden puppies of the sky, bats.