Catastrophe

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

A general or specific event

 * Disaster, a devastating event
 * The Asia Minor Catastrophe, a Greek name for the 1923 Greek defeat at the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the defeat
 * The Holocaust, also known by the Hebrew name HaShoah which translates to "The Catastrophe"
 * The Chernobyl Catastrophe, a name of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster
 * Blue sky catastrophe, a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit, where the orbit vanishes into the blue sky
 * Catastrophic failure, 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
 * Ecological catastrophe, a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity
 * Error catastrophe, extinction of an organism as a result of excessive mutations
 * The Ikiza, which translates to the catastrophe from Kirundi
 * 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
 * Malthusian catastrophe, prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production
 * Mitotic catastrophe, an event in which a cell is destroyed during mitosis
 * The Nakba in Arabic.
 * Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster, launch pad accident at Baikonur test range of Baikonur Cosmodrome
 * Oxygen catastrophe, 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 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

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