Why I Love Natural Disaster Movies
I am a devoted fan of natural catastrophe films. I have watched them all. Even live ones, like the Tsunami in Fukushima Japan.
From towering tsunamis and rampaging asteroids to supervolcanoes and planet-killing earthquakes.
Some readers will immediately label me a cynic. Fair enough. I might be one. But my love for these stories is not born of darkness; it is born of clarity.
I live in Europe, where I encounter racism on a regular basis. When I return to Nigeria, I face tribalism as an Igbo man. I have heard officials in the current government declare, in essence, that there is “nothing for the Igbos this time around.”
In both places, I am reminded daily of how much human beings care about divisions: skin color, tribe, status, faith, accent, and origin. Those divisions shape opportunities, safety, and dignity.
They feel enormous, until I watch a disaster movie.
Then the perspective shifts. On screen, a giant rock hurtling through space does not pause to check your passport, your bank account, or your last name.
It does not ask whether you are Black or White, Igbo or Yoruba, Christian or Muslim, able-bodied or disabled, rich or poor, pastor or parishioner.
The planet simply follows physics. If it wobbles, heats up, or shrugs off a civilization, it does so without malice and without mercy. No plea, no prayer, no protest influences its course.
That indifference is strangely liberating. Natural catastrophes remind us that we are temporary passengers on a modest boulder drifting through a vast, uncaring cosmos. In the grand scheme, our most cherished identities and grievances amount to less than a speck of dust.
The earthquake does not discriminate. The flood does not negotiate. The asteroid does not read manifestos.
This realization does not make me hopeless;
it makes me lighter. It encourages me to stop clutching every slight so tightly.
It invites me to enjoy the ride while it lasts, because the ride, for all its beauty and brutality, is astonishingly brief.
So yes, I will keep watching those disaster movies. Not because I want the world to end, but because they tell a truth that daily human drama tries to hide: in the end, we are all in this together, standing on the same indifferent rock.
Lighten up. The universe already has.
TSUNAMI quake massive 8.2 Earthquake
LANDSLIDES shot by screaming Pacific residents after massive 8.2 quake TSUNAMI