From Aliens and Earthquakes to Fires and Floods, These Are the 35 Best Disaster Movies of All Time
After everything we’ve been through over the past year and change, you might be into the idea of sitting back and relaxing by cathartically watching other people deal with a major catastrophe. If that sounds tempting, there’s no better—or more harmless—way to do so than by loading up your favorite streamer to check out a good, old-fashioned disaster movie. You could go old-school by cueing up epics like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, combine romantic tragedy with spectacle in the form of Titanic, revisit pandemic territory via The Andromeda Strain or Contagion, or watch the near-end of the world again and again with The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon,Geostorm and many others. In between, you could also view movies about earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions (oh, my!) and much more—as revealed in this, our guide to the 35 best natural disaster movies.
Best Natural Disaster Movies
2012 (2009)
There are few filmmakers who enjoy destroying the world as much as producer/director Roland Emmerich does, as he’s proven with such movies as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. In the case of the latter, things start off with Earth’s core being heated by a massive solar flare. As a result, in the near future, the world will be rocked by cataclysmic events in the form of the biggest earthquakes and tsunamis ever experienced. John Cusack plays a struggling sci-fi writer who is determined to keep his kids alive while trying to reach a series of arks that have been designed for humanity’s survival. Will they make it? Of course, they will, but not before escaping one improbable scenario after another with the world literally collapsing around them. If you want spectacle, you’ll find it here!
2012 is available on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
Related: Best End of the World Movies
Airport (1970)
Released a little over half-a-century ago, Airport is credited with launching the disaster film genre. The formula is certainly there: gather a variety of characters from different walks of life (who are, of course, played by big-name celebrities like Dean Martin, Helen Hayes and Burt Lancaster), get to know them a bit and watch as they’re thrown into an insane situation they need to survive. In this case, it’s the mid-air detonation of a bomb that has weakened a plane’s structural integrity, resulting in the need to make an emergency landing — in the middle of a terrible winter storm. Airport was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and became Universal Pictures’ biggest hit at the time. It also spawned sequels that were decidedly not nominated for Oscars: Airport 1975 (a small plane crashes into the cockpit of an airborne Boeing 747), Airport ’77 (a hijacked Boeing 747 goes down within the Bermuda Triangle, which apparently works its magic as an air pocket keeps the passengers from drowning for a limited time) and The Concorde: Airport ’79 (the title plane desperately tries to survive missiles that have targeted it). Of course, nobody has more fun at this series’ expense than the parody Airplane, released in 1980.
Airport is available on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Microsoft.
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
From the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, ER), this is a chilling thriller about an extraterrestrial organism that penetrates the atmosphere and crashes into a small town in Arizona, wiping out its population. Scientists desperately do what they can to get this virus under control before it spreads. Given everything we’ve recently been through, the stakes in this one — despite being sci-fi based — feel uncomfortably real. In 2008, The Andromeda Strain was remade as a TV miniseries.
The Andromeda Strain is available on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video and Tubi.
A Night to Remember (1958)
We’re telling you upfront: Do not go into this film expecting an experience in any way similar to James Cameron’s Titanic (most notably, the fact that there is no Rose or Jack). That being said, this is nonetheless a powerful and dramatic look at the journey of the RMS Titanic from England’s Southampton to New York City, disrupted in the North Atlantic when the vessel hits an iceberg and quickly begins taking on water, sinking only a few hours later. Sadly, most of the passengers and crew would die due to a lack of lifeboats. Told in a docudrama format with a focus on the ship’s second officer, Charles Lightoller (Kenneth More), technical advisers included Titanic’s fourth officer, Joseph Boxhall, and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge. Adding poignancy to the film is the fact that it was produced only 46 years after the tragedy occurred.
A Night to Remember is available on Pluto TV and Apple TV.
Armageddon (1998)
There’s a huge asteroid on a direct course for Earth (don’t you hate when that happens?) which, if allowed to strike the surface, would create an extinction event in line with the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. The only solution, according to NASA’s Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), is to land a spacecraft on the asteroid, drill into it and set off a nuclear bomb to theoretically blow it to bits. Who can handle such a task? Only Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), the world’s foremost driller, who puts together a team to handle the situation. En route, he develops some respect for one of them, A.J. (Ben Affleck), who’s been dating Harry’s daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler). Directed by Michael Bay, so you know this is one disaster film that moves.
Armageddon is available on Hulu, fubo TV, YouTube, George Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video
Cold Zone (2017)
When scientist Roger Summers (Martin Cummins) discovers frozen animal corpses in Alaska, he finds an environmentalist who had warned the scientific community of a world-threatening global freezing, but was ignored. As usually happens when such things are dismissed as being the ravings of a madman, those things play out exactly how he predicted they would. Now Summers has to come up with a solution before we’re all turned into popsicles. Sounds serious to us.
Cold Zone is available on Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Paly Movies & TV, Apple TV and Tubi.
Related: Best Action Movies of All Time
Contagion (2011)
When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) mysteriously dies, her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), is told by doctors that they can’t figure out the cause. When others die in the same manner, it’s concluded that a virus has been unleashed and it’s a race to identify and contain it while developing a vaccine. In between, the film looks at the impact on society a pandemic has—which is all just a little too familiar at the moment.
Catch Contagion on Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.
The Core (2003)
In a way, this one sounds like old-school sci-fi in that Aaron Eckhart plays geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes, who is another in a long line of scientists discovering something that threatens all life on Earth. In this case, it’s the fact that for some reason the planet's inner core is no longer rotating, the result of which is our atmosphere is coming apart as Earth's magnetic field is dissipating. Our only hope is for Keyes and other scientists to drill to the planet’s center so that a nuclear device can be detonated, the belief being that it will be enough to reactivate the core. Also starring Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Alfre Woodard and Bruce Greenwood.
You can visit The Core on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, YouTube TV and Sling TV.
Dante’s Peak (1997)
Volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) and Dante Peak Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton) realize that the greatest volcanic eruption in history is about to happen, bringing with it destructive power equal to a multitude of atomic bombs. Besides trying to get the populace to evacuate, Wando’s kids are missing on a rescue mission to get their grandmother, so she and Dalton go in search of the duo while the world starts exploding all around them. For Brosnan, this was a film he shot in between James Bond adventures.
Dante’s Peak is available on HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, Vudu, YouTube TV and Hulu.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Before he destroyed much of the world in 2012, filmmaker Roland Emmerich gave it a practice shot in The Day After Tomorrow. A big hit at the box office, the plot (which shows that these disaster films definitely fall into a formula) has Dennis Quaid’s climatologist Jack Hall being ignored by officials when he shows them proof of potential danger on the horizon — until a superstorm triggers disasters across the globe. Unfortunately, Jack can’t just sit back and laugh, “I told you so,” because his son is trapped in New York City and he has to mount a rescue … yeah, you got it: before it’s too late.
The Day After Tomorrow can be watched today on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, Vudu and fubo TV.
Daylight (1996)
Have a group of armed robbers who are fleeing the police crash into trucks filled with toxic waste, which explode and seals off both ends of the New Jersey Tunnel, and you’ve got a situation where only one man can lead a rescue mission of those who have survived: Sylvester Stallone’s Kit Latura. The film also stars Stallone’s late son, Sage Stallone.
See Daylight on YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
This is an early one in the genre, and pretty ambitious for its time. Edward Judd and Leo McKern are reporters, who, along with Janet Munro’s weather forecaster Jeannie Craig, make the discovery that simultaneous nuclear bomb tests conducted by America and Russia has disrupted the Earth’s rotation. The results are fires and earthquakes, with the trio of heroes trying to figure out a way to return Earth to its natural axis. Don’t know about you, but none of our weather forecasters have been tasked with saving humanity. Impressive.