Human-provoked disasters

Disasters having an element of human intent, negligence, error or involving a failure of a system are called man-made disasters. Man-made disasters like power or telecommunication outages may be caused by thunderstorms, tornados or earthquakes and though the root cause is a natural phenomenon, they are considered to be man-made disasters.

Aviation

An aviation incident is an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations, passengers or pilots. The category of the vehicle can range from a helicopter, an airliner, or a space shuttle. One of the more devastating events occurred in 1977 on the island of La Palma of the Canary Islands, when a miscommunication between air traffic control and pilot caused two filled jets to collide head-on, killing over 500 of the combined passengers.

Arson

Arson is the criminal intent of setting a fire with intent to cause damage. The definition of arson was originally limited to setting fire to buildings, but was later expanded to include other objects, such as bridges, vehicles, and private property. Arson is the greatest cause of fires in data repositories. Sometimes, human-induced fires can be accidental: failing machinery such as a kitchen stove is a major cause of accidental fires.

CBRNs

A catch-all initialism meaning Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear. The term is used to describe a non-conventional terror threat that, if used by a nation, would be considered use of a weapon of mass destruction. This term is used primarily in the United Kingdom. Planning for a CBRN event may be appropriate for certain high-risk or high-value facilities and governments. The usage of any of these weapons is astronomically disastrous: the only true example used on humans is not terrorist-involved, but in the end was catastrophic: in the 1940's, nearing the end of World War II American pilots dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing over half the cities' populations in plumes of fire and radiation.

Civil disorder

Civil disorder is a broad term that is typically used by law enforcement to describe one or more forms of disturbance. Examples of disastrous civil disorder include, but are not necessarily limited to: riots; sabotage; and other forms of crime. Although civil disorder does not necessarily escalate to a disaster in all cases the event may escalate into general chaos. Rioting has many causes, from low minimum wage to racial segregation. There were riot in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California in 1968 and 1992. The 1992 riots which started at the intersections of Florence and Normandee streets started immediately after the Rodney King verdict was announced on live TV. About 50 people died in the 1992 riots.

Power outage

A power outage is an interruption of normal sources of electrical power. Short-term power outages (up to a few hours) are common and have minor adverse effect, since most businesses and health facilities are prepared to deal with them. Extended power outages, however, can disrupt personal and business activities as well as medical and rescue services, leading to business losses and medical emergencies. Extended loss of power also interferes with law enforcement, creating opportunities for crime, including vandalism, looting, arson and violent crime, even leading to civil disorder, as in the New York City blackout of 1977. One other example happened in New York City and in the rest of the Northeast United States in 2003, and this time hampered millions of commuters' routes back and forth to work and home. Thousands were seen jumbled in the city's streets, confused and baffled. Only very rarely do power outages escalate to disaster proportions, however, they often accompany other types of disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, which hampers relief efforts.

Public relations crisis

A public relations crisis may threaten the long term survival of an organization. For this reason, many organization's business continuity planning include PR crisis responses to control the delivery of bad news, the initial statements made to media and thereby control first impressions. A successfully managed PR crisis may actually improve public opinion about an organization. A poorly managed PR crisis may eventually bankrupt an organization.

Radiation

When nuclear weapons are detonated or nuclear containment systems are otherwise compromised, airborne radioactive particles (fallout) can scatter and irradiate large areas. Not only is it deadly, but it is also a long-term affect on the next-generation for those who are contaminated. Ionizing radiation is hazardous to living things, and in such a case much of the affected area could be unsafe for human habitation. In the 1940's United States troops dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: as a result, the radiation fallout contaminated the cities' water supplies and food sources, and half of the populations of each city were stricken with disease. The Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus are part of a scenario like this after a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a meltdown in 1986. To this day, several small towns and the city of Chernobyl remain abandoned and uninhabitable due to fallout. in the 1970's a similar threat scared millions of Americans when a presumed failure occurred at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, which was fortunately resolved with little contamination resulting.

Space disasters

Space disasters, either during operations or training, have killed around 20 astronauts and cosmonauts, and a much larger number of ground crew. These disasters include either malfunctions on the ground or in orbit with technology, or of natural forces. Not all are space disasters result in human fatalities: unmanned orbiting satellites that drop to the Earth can incinerate and send debris spewing across the sky. One of the worst manned space disasters, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion of 1986, cost all of the lives on board. The shuttle exploded several seconds after taking off from the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Another example is the Space Shuttle Columbia which disintegrated during a landing attempt over Texas in 2003, with a loss of 7 astronauts on board. The debris field extended as far as from eastern New Mexico to Mississippi.

Telecommunication outage

A telecommunications outage is not immediately a disaster, however, an extended telecommunications outage can strain a company's ability to stay solvent by cutting them off from their clients, vendors and business partners. For this reason, business continuity planning normally addresses the possibility of an outage on the organization's core functions. A telecommunication outage at the same time as another disaster may exacerbate the serverity of the incident by hampering disaster response teams. One cause of a loss of telecommunications is by a solar storm, which can also wipe out all electronics in the region of the storm's path.

Terrorism

Terrorism is a controversial term with multiple definitions. One definition means a violent action targeting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. Under the second definition, the targets of terrorist acts can be anyone, including civilians, government officials, military personnel, or people serving the interests of governments. In the early 21st century, terrorism has been considered a constant threat to all people of the world, after the worst disaster of its kind struck in 2001 (predominantly known as September 11th, 2001, the date of the attack), in which four airliners were hijacked from American international airports: two were flown by the hijackers into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, causing both to collapse, another was flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a final was forced down by passengers' action into a small field outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A total of over 3,000 lives were lost that day. In 2004, a series of bombings struck several waiting passenger cars in a Madrid, Spain train station, and in 2005 the transportation systems of London, England were bombed in three synchronized locations.

War

War is conflict, between relatively large groups of people, which involves physical force inflicted by the use of weapons. Warfare has destroyed entire cultures, countries, economies and inflicted great suffering on humanity. Other terms for war can include armed conflict, hostilities, and police action. Acts of war are normally excluded from insurance contracts and disaster planning.

Taken from Wikipedia