Great Disasters, hosted by Kari Fay, is a disaster podcast.
Great Disasters contains examples of the following tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: When Vesuvius erupted, Pliny the Elder attempted to organize a rescue and evacuation mission. Sadly, he failed and lost his own life in the process.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Kari Fay uses one of these while quoting a very racist article from the Tulsa Tribune in the wake of the Tulsa Race Riots.
- The Empire: The British took on this role during the Irish Potato Famine, seemingly (and possibly actually) doing everything in their power to make the famine as protracted and deadly as they possibly could just to avoid giving away abundant food to starving people.
- Face Death with Dignity: With the Titanic sinking, Benjamin Guggenheim retired with his valet to change into evening dress, to die dressed as a gentleman.
- Human Traffickers: The victims of both the Morecambe Bay Cocklepicking Disaster and the 2013 Lampedusa Migrant shipwreck were being trafficked into Europe, the former serving as slave labor and the latter likely to suffer the same fate.
- Madness Mantra: A mortician's assistant was found wandering the streets muttering "I can't identify that body, take it away," after working for three days straight in the wake of the General Slocum disaster.
- Mistaken for Apocalypse: In a rare tragic example, many of the Romans caught in the Vesuvius eruption believed the world was ending. Entirely justifiable, given the carnage.
- No OSHA Compliance: To be expected, given the subject matter. Special mentions go to the Station Nightclub Fire, Apollo 1, the Morecambe Bay Cocklepicking Disaster, and the Lampedusa Migrant shipwreck.
- The General Slocum had a firehose and life preservers that hadn't been maintained, and had completely dry-rotted to pieces. In addition, many of the ship's lifeboats were both painted and wired in place, making them unusable.
- Not Now, Kiddo: The child who tried to tell the captain of the General Slocum that the ship had caught fire was met with this response.
- Poor Communication Kills: Air New Zealand Flight 901 crashed into a mountain because the flight route in the computer was reprogrammed, but nobody ever told the pilots of this.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Cokeley, the first crew member of the General Slocum to hear of the fire, attempted to put it out and, failing in that, left for help, but left the door open, causing oxygen to reach the fire and turning a minor problem into a major one.
