Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (''kata'') = down; στροφή (''strophē'') = turning ( el, καταστροφή). It may refer to:

A general or specific event

Disaster A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...

, a devastating event * The

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

Catastrophe, a Greek name for the 1923 Greek defeat at the

Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) The Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, ota, گرب جابهاسی, Garb Cebhesi) in Turkey, and the Asia Minor Campaign ( el, Μικρασιατική Εκστρατεία, Mikrasiatikí Ekstrateía) or the Asia Minor Catastrophe ( el, Μικ ...

and the

population exchange between Greece and Turkey The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ( el, Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, I Antallagí, ota, مبادله, Mübâdele, tr, Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at ...

after the defeat *

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

, also known by the Hebrew name ''HaShoah'' which translates to "The Catastrophe" * The Chernobyl Catastrophe, a name of the 1986

Chernobyl disaster The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two n ...

Blue sky catastrophe The blue sky catastrophe is a form of orbital indeterminacy, and an element of bifurcation theory. Orbital dynamics Blue sky catastrophe is a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit. In other words, it describes a sort of behaviour stable solutio ...

, a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit, where the orbit ''vanishes into the blue sky'' *

Catastrophic failure A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible. Catastrophic failures often lead to cascading systems failure. The term is most commonly used for structural failures, but has often been extended to many oth ...

, complete failure of a system from which recovery is impossible (e.g. a bridge collapses) * Climatic catastrophe, forced transition of climate system to a new climate state at a rate which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing * Cosmic catastrophe, thought experiment about what would happen if the sun were to suddenly disappear * Ecological catastrophe, a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity *

Error catastrophe Error catastrophe refers to the cumulative loss of genetic information in a lineage of organisms due to high mutation rates. The mutation rate above which error catastrophe occurs is called the error threshold. Both terms were coined by Manfred ...

, extinction of an organism as a result of excessive mutations * Impending climatic catastrophe, conjectured runaway climate change resulting from a rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system * Infrared catastrophe or infrared divergence is a situation in particle physics in which a particular integral diverges * Iron catastrophe, runaway melting of early earth's interior as a result of potential energy release from sinking iron and nickel melted by heat of radioactive decay *

Late Bronze Age collapse The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between c. 1200 and 1150. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near ...

Malthusian catastrophe Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, c ...

, prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production *

Mitotic catastrophe Mitotic Catastrophe has been defined as either a cellular mechanism to prevent potentially cancerous cells from proliferating or as a mode of cellular death that occurs following improper cell cycle progression or entrance. Mitotic catastrophe can ...

, an event in which a cell is destroyed during mitosis * The

1948 Palestinian exodus In 1948 more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine's Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession ...

in Arabic. *

Nedelin catastrophe The Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster was a launch pad accident that occurred on 24 October 1960 at Baikonur test range (of which Baikonur Cosmodrome is a part), during the development of the Soviet R-16 ICBM. As a prototype of the m ...

or Nedelin disaster, launch pad accident at Baikonur test range of Baikonur Cosmodrome *

Oxygen catastrophe The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), also called the Great Oxygenation Event, the Oxygen Catastrophe, the Oxygen Revolution, the Oxygen Crisis, or the Oxygen Holocaust, was a time interval during the Paleoproterozoic era when the Earth's atmosphere ...

, the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere * Runaway climate change or Climatic catastrophe, hypothesized runaway global warming when a tipping point is exceeded * Toba catastrophe hypothesis, hypothesis that the Toba supervolcanic eruption caused a global volcanic winter and 1,000-year-long cooling episode *

Ultraviolet catastrophe The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was the prediction of late 19th century/early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium would emit an unbounded quantity of energy ...

, the prediction by classical physics that a black body will emit radiation at infinite power * Vacuum catastrophe, the discrepancy between theoretical and measured vacuum energy density in cosmology

Art, entertainment, and media

Fictional entities

* Catastrophe, the main antagonist in '' The Secret Files of the Spy Dogs''

Film

* ''Catastrophe'' (film), a 1977 American documentary film * ''The Catastrophe'' (film), a 2011 American short film

Literature

* ''Catastrophe'' (book), a 2009 non-fiction book by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann *

Catastrophe (drama) In drama, particularly the tragedies of classical antiquity, the catastrophe is the final resolution in a poem or narrative plot, which unravels the intrigue and brings the piece to a close. In comedies, this may be a marriage between main charact ...

, the climax and resolution of a plot in ancient Greek drama and poetry * ''Catastrophe'' (play), a 1982 short play by Samuel Beckett * '' Catastrophe: Risk and Response'', a 2004 non-fiction book by Richard Posner

Music

* Catastrophic (band), a band featuring Trevor Peres

Television

* ''Catastrophe'' (2008 TV series), a five-part science series on Channel 4, presented by Tony Robinson * ''Catastrophe'' (2015 TV series), a 2015 sitcom starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney

Mathematics

Catastrophe theory In mathematics, catastrophe theory is a branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems; it is also a particular special case of more general singularity theory in geometry. Bifurcation theory studies and classifies phenomena c ...

, a theory by the French mathematician René Thom and the object of its study