10 of our favorite natural disaster movies ranked by destructiveness

In 1997, Dante’s Peak beat Volcano to theaters by just two months, a quirk of timing that would forever link the two films about deadly volcanic eruptions as cinematic rivals. That’s really the only thing they have in common, though. While Volcano takes place in Los Angeles, and has a grand time destroying its recognizable landmarks, Dante’s Peak is set in a small mountain town in the Pacific Northwest. Of the two films, it’s the one that has an actual mountain that spews fire, smoke, and ash—you know, that thing you picture when someone says “volcano.” Pierce Brosnan stars as a volcanologist who arrives in town with a research team when it seems like the local volcanic mountain might be getting ready to blow. Linda Hamilton plays the town’s mayor, who must weigh the risk of putting everyone on alert and causing unnecessary panic. The film’s laughably bad dialogue and uneven plot are somewhat offset by some spectacular effects.

Damage rating: 8

Damage assessment: The town of Dante’s Peak is devastated, along with a highway, several vehicles, a dam, and a bridge. There are about a dozen on-screen deaths, with many more implied.

The devastation in Volcano is greater than Dante’s Peak simply by virtue of Los Angeles being a major metropolitan city, with larger buildings to destroy and many more residents put in harm’s way. The scientifically questionable premise involves an earthquake that opens a fissure and creates an underground volcano beneath the city. Every disaster film needs an expert to issue warnings about the imminent danger (warnings which are inevitably ignored) and here that role is filled by Anne Heche as seismologist Dr. Amy Barnes. She shares her findings with the director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, played by Tommy Lee Jones, but he doesn’t take her seriously until a river of lava starts flowing down Wilshire Blvd. The rest of the film is a race to stop it before it reaches Cedars-Sinai hospital. The solution ultimately lies in the demolition of a condo complex to block its path. One honor Volcano can claim that Dante’s Peak can’t is a nomination for a Golden Raspberry Award for “Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property.”

Damage rating: 9

Damage assessment: Most of the buildings, structures, and vehicles in the path of the lava and the surrounding neighborhood, plus various subway tunnels, drains, and pipelines. An estimated death toll of at least 100 people.

Improvements in digital effects in the 1990s led to a second wave of disaster films, including the wildly successful precursor to Twisters. Although the Jan de Bont-directed film has a singular title, there are plenty of tornadoes wreaking havoc in Twister. We see about six of them, counting the F5 at the beginning that kills the father of Helen Hunt’s character Jo. The next one, a mere F1, starts developing just as the now-adult Jo is reunited with her estranged husband Bill (Bill Paxton), bringing divorce papers and his new fiancé (Jami Gertz) along for the ride. From there it’s a gradual progression of storms increasing in magnitude until we get work back up to another F5 in the film’s climax. As Twisters reminds us, the Fujita scale (the “F” in F5) doesn’t measure the strength of a storm but the damage it causes. That means the film features a range of destruction from the F1’s “light” to the F5’s “incredible” damage (times two). 

Damage rating: 20 (the sum of two F5s, plus one of each lower F level) 

Damage assessment: The small town of Wakita (population 585) is almost completely destroyed, including the house owned by Jo’s Aunt Meg (Lois Smith). Several vehicles, trees, scientific equipment, and other debris are sucked up by tornadoes and tossed away at high speed, causing road hazards and at least one tanker truck explosion. There are just three on-screen deaths, but many more are implied, both human and animal. Sorry, cows.

The Impossible is the most “elevated” of the disaster movies on this list, and the only one directly based on a true story. The Spanish co-production, directed by J. A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), hits many of the typical story beats associated with the genre—the characters are introduced, the catastrophe strikes, the storylines are split among the survivors, obstacles are overcome—only without any cheesiness or melodrama. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor play Maria and Henry Bennett, tourists visiting a resort in Thailand with their three boys (the eldest of which is played by a young Tom Holland) over the Christmas holidays in 2004 when a massive tsunami hits and floods the area. The family is separated and spends the rest of the film fighting their way back to each other. The recreation of the tsunami is stunning, but it’s the performances and the thoughtful direction that really stand out.

Damage rating: 50

Damage assessment: The real tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters in history and demolished entire communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, though the film only depicts the effect it had on the resort near Khao Lak and other villages in the vicinity. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 4,000 to 10,000 people. 

Yes, the Mario Puzo who is credited as the co-screenwriter for this film is the same guy who wrote The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. He handed in his first draft in 1972, between production on the two Godfather films, but would later be replaced by George Fox, who made significant changes to Puzo’s sweeping and reportedly unfilmable script. You can still see traces of his influence in the heightened personal drama that sets up the characters before the 9.9 magnitude earthquake hits Los Angeles. The cast hired to play those characters is also full of familiar names like Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Richard Roundtree, Victoria Principal, and Lorne Greene. When “The Big One” finally arrives, nearly an hour into the film, it rocks them and a handful of comically overdramatic extras for more than 10 minutes of screen time, setting off a series of other catastrophes, including fires, explosions, and floods. A strong aftershock comes along later, resulting in even more death and destruction. So it’s like getting several disaster movies rolled into one.

Damage rating: 100 (10 for each minute of earthquake screen time)

Damage assessment: Most of the city of Los Angeles is left in crumbling and flaming ruins, including landmarks like the Capitol Records building and the Mulholland Dam. Between the initial quake and the aftershock there are more than 100 on-screen deaths, and there are thousands more we don’t see.

If you told us this movie was generated by a genre-driven algorithm in 2023—rather than a director on his fourth feature (Brad Payton) and one of the showrunners of Lost (Carlton Cuse) in 2015—we’d have no trouble believing it. It takes every disaster movie cliché and smashes them together to create an over-the-top spectacle that audiences might someday look back on the same way we now view Earthquake, as an archetypal product of its time. Dwayne Johnson is the heroic first responder with a daughter in danger (Alexandra Daddario) and an ex-wife he’d like to get back together with (Carla Gugino). Paul Giamatti is the doomsayer scientist who realizes that the San Andreas fault is shifting and could soon cause a series of earthquakes powerful enough to destroy everything from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and even be felt on the east coast. It’s not long before that prediction comes true. As if the earthquakes weren’t bad enough, there’s also a tsunami heading right for San Francisco Bay. It’s not the smartest disaster movie you’ll ever see, but it’s got all the components that make them fun to watch.

Damage rating: 200 (double the cities destroyed, double the score)

Damage assessment: Two major cities are reduced to piles of rubble, as well as famous landmarks like the Hoover Dam, the Hollywood sign, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Millions dead, more seriously wounded.

We’ve got melon-sized hail in Tokyo, hurricanes in the Pacific, tornadoes in Los Angeles, cyclones over Scotland, a tsunami in New York, and possibly the beginning of a new ice age—it must be a Roland Emmerich film. Emmerich snatched the “master of disaster” title from Irwin Allen after the mass destruction he depicted in films like Independence Day, Godzilla, White House Down, and the granddaddy of all natural disaster films, The Day After Tomorrow. You could argue that it doesn’t really belong here because, as Dennis Quaid’s climate scientist warns everyone in the film, the crazy weather events in the film are technically the result of man-made climate change. But you wouldn’t win, because there’s no way we’re leaving it off a list that’s focused on destruction. If you want to see a tornado ripping apart the Capitol Records building (which has to be one of the most destroyed buildings in cinema history) or the Statue of Liberty frozen solid, you’ll get that here, and so much more. Let’s not pretend we watch movies like this for character development, a cohesive plot, or scientific accuracy. We want to see the world burn…or freeze.

Damage rating: 500

Damage assessment: Huge, worldwide, and impossible to calculate. The world is forever changed. Millions of people perish in New York City, plus thousands more in major cities across the globe.