Are disasters the events that occur within a community and that cause enormous damage or destruction, sufficient to alter the normal functioning of that place, leaving a large number of civilian victims, and at the same time serious economic and environmental consequences.
On many occasions, the concept of disaster is associated only with events produced by nature. However, the category of man-made disasters It is established to talk about the danger that the actions of man can reach the condition of disaster. For example: Second World War, smallpox epidemic, episodes of terrorism.
There are many issues that can make human activity become disaster situations.
Man transforms his geography by overpopulating space with mega cities, and establishing themselves by force in physical spaces previously reserved exclusively for nature. It is the species with the greatest predatory power, since its capacity for destruction has the same impetus and strength as its capacity for development.
social disasters
In addition to the events produced by the advance of man In nature, disasters can be caused by a purely cultural issue, that is, a disaster caused by the generalization of violence within a society.
Sometimes humans inflict suffering intentionally to others, which is motivated by cultural issues such as ideology or extreme nationalism.
Violence as a social process dates back to ancient times, and it is correct to say that it has also evolved, developing from the most precarious battle between men without weapons, to battles with knives and then with chemical weapons: Currently, violence can be perpetrated between people at very great distances through machines, thousands of kilometers from the event they are producing.
Examples of man-made disasters
| WWII | Chernobyl accident |
| smallpox epidemic | HIV-AIDS epidemic |
| Nuclear bombings on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Yellowstone forest fire, in 1988 |
| american civil war | Malpasset dam disaster |
| British Airways Flight 9 | Black Death |
| terrorism episodes | Persian Gulf War |
| Mexican Civil War | Sinking of the submarine K-219 |
| Castle Bravo | cholera epidemic |
| First World War | South African Apartheid |
| Southern Airways Flight 242 | Spanish Civil War |
danger and protection
Exposure to man-made disasters it is one of the reasons why a country falls behind in terms of human development, and the coverage of this kind of events, on the contrary, makes some countries become those with the best quality of life. However, violence can also be generated within countries that have better indicators in this regard.
One of the fundamental causes of man-made disasters is lack of preventionsince it is thought that with the levels of technological advance produced to date, many of the disasters can be easily avoided.
Consequences of man-made disasters
The damages of greater magnitude in anthropic disasters are the civilian losseseconomic and production losses, also in terms of institutional services and community organization.
However, when it comes to cultural processes, this type of disaster can have a deeper consequence in a society, which is the absolute separation of its members, motivated by the differences brought about by the process of violence: it is very difficult to overcome these differences. , even decades after the episode.
