Mother Nature's Heavy Hand Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vanuatu

An initiative of the UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), the World Risk Index measures the natural disaster risk of most of the world's countries. In the 2021 report, the small South Pacific Republic of Vanuatu ranked first, as it did for at least the previous ten years. Being of volcanic origin, the Vanuatu archipelago is prone to earthquakes, and active volcanoes (some of them underwater) are a constant threat. However, the greatest danger for these islands comes from tropical cyclones. In March 2015, Vanuatu was hit by Category 5 Cyclone Pam, which caused widespread damage, cutting off communication, crippling infrastructure, and affecting the water supply; further damage was inflicted in April 2020 by Cyclone Harold, another Category 5 event.

As can be expected, most of Oceania's island nations and territories are exposed to various kinds of natural disasters. In January 2022, Tonga, another high-risk country, was badly affected by the eruption of submarine volcano Hunga Tonga, while the Solomon Islands were hit by earthquakes in 2007 and 2013. In addition, most island countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are endangered by rising sea levels - Kiribati and the Maldives being two of the most vulnerable. New Caledonia, however, is not a sovereign nation, but an overseas territory of France.

Answer: volcano

Part of the notorious Pacific Ring of Fire, these three island countries - home to over 500 million people - have a large number of active volcanoes (11 in Japan, 150 in Indonesia, and 24 in the Philippines), and are often hit by earthquakes and tsunamis. Tambora (Indonesia), Pinatubo (Philippines), and Unzen (Japan) are three active volcanoes whose catastrophic eruptions have wreaked havoc on their respective countries and beyond. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora - the deadliest in recorded history so far - caused the death of over 70,000 people, and was the cause of the notorious "Year Without a Summer". Mount Unzen, one of the 16 Decade Volcanoes, has a history of violent eruptions, one of which - in 1792 - triggered a megatsunami that killed almost 15,000 people on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption, in addition to a death toll of almost 900 people, and considerable damage to urban areas and infrastructure, disrupted global weather patterns for several years.

Typhoon (originally from the Persian "tufan", meaning "storm", through the Chinese "tai fung") is the name given in the northwestern Pacific region to a mature tropical cyclone. The Philippines are often targeted by these violent storms, as are China and Japan; Indonesia, on the other hand, is not as badly affected by tropical cyclones as other parts of Southeast Asia.

Answer: Bay of Bengal

Most of South and Southeast Asia ranks quite high in terms of natural disaster risk. The large, densely populated area around the Bay of Bengal is particularly exposed to extreme weather events such as cyclones (formed over water) and tornadoes (formed over land), which in recent and less recent times have caused extensive flooding, and direct or indirect loss of life. The storm surges associated with these cyclones can be almost as high as tsunamis. The Bhola cyclone (at the time of writing classified as the worst cyclone in terms of death toll) that hit the east coast of present-day Bangladesh in November 1970 caused at least 500,000 deaths. In the 19th century, several particularly violent cyclones killed hundreds of thousands of people; the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), at the time the capital of British India, was ravaged by a cyclone in October 1864.

Bangladesh is particularly exposed to natural disasters because of its geographical location, on the floodplain formed by the massive delta of the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system. Climate change is making matters worse for this small, low-lying country that has been blessed with very fertile soil, but grapples with issues of overpopulation and lack of infrastructure. Myanmar, which borders Bangladesh to the south, is also prone to natural hazards that include cyclones, flooding, landslides, and earthquakes; in 2008, the deadly Cyclone Nargis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the densely populated Irrawaddy delta.

Answer: China

A sprawling country encompassing a multitude of different ecosystems, and teeming with hundreds of millions of people, China appears prominently in most lists of deadliest natural disasters (as well as in those that record disasters caused by human agency). The floods caused by the mighty Yangtze River in the summer of 1931 - which are believed to have led to the death of up to 4 million people, either by drowning, or starvation and disease - top the list of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history so far. In September 1887, the Yellow River flood caused the death of 900,000 to 2 million people in Northern China. Other deadly floods, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, took place during the 20th century. Though river management in China has improved in the 21st century, flood risk has increased especially in its enormous urban areas.

China has also been hit by some of the deadliest earthquakes in history, such as the one that occurred in Shaanxi in January 1556, killing almost 900,000 people, and the much more recent one that occurred in Tangshan in 1976, which also claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. China (especially its western part) is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes, due to the collision of India with the rest of Asia that has been going on for the past 40-50 million years (responsible also for the formation of the Himalayas). A recent, deadly earthquake occurred in 2008 in Sichuan, in southwestern China, killing almost 90,000 people.

China has also often suffered from devastating droughts followed by deadly famines. However, the Great Famine of 1958-62, the disaster that is believed to have claimed the most lives in Chinese (and possibly human) history, was sadly caused by human agency.

Answer: Tehran

The world's 17th-largest country, Iran is located in a seismically active area, and most of its territory is crossed by major fault lines - meaning that destructive earthquakes are anything but rare. In fact, one of the deadliest earthquakes of the past two decades happened in Bam, in the Kerman province of southeastern Iran, on 26 December 2003, exactly one year before the even deadlier tsunami in the Indian Ocean. With a magnitude of 6.6, the earthquake claimed the lives of at least 34,000 people, a death toll made worse by the poor building standards adopted in much of that area. Iran's capital, Tehran, a sprawling metropolis home to over 13 million people, is built near three major fault lines, and several smaller ones; in addition, it suffers from serious environmental issues due to human activity, such as severe air pollution.

With large parts of its territory occupied by deserts or semi-deserts, Iran is also prone to sandstorms, dust storms, and periodic droughts, though seismic activity remains the biggest concern. However, Iran has an extremely diverse climate, and severe winter weather is anything but rare in the country's mountain regions. The deadliest winter storm on record so far occurred in various rural areas of northwestern, central, and southern Iran, following four years of drought, and causing about 4,000 deaths over a period of six days (3-9 February 1972).

Answer: Albania

As a whole, Europe ranks quite low in terms of natural disaster risk. Some countries, however, are more exposed than others. While the Netherlands are particularly vulnerable to flooding, seismic activity is a cause for concern in Italy and in the Balkans, which have a history of destructive earthquakes. Besides suffering from a number of environmental issues, and being vulnerable to climate change, Albania - which is very geographically and biologically diverse in spite of its size - is prone to earthquakes, especially the central region, located on a fault line. In November 2019, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake, the deadliest of that year, caused the death of 51 people and substantial damage to buildings in the Durrës region, in northwestern Albania. Other hazards include flooding, landslides, fires, and coastal erosion. The danger of flooding has been particularly exacerbated by climate change, and occurrences have become more frequent in recent years.

Destructive earthquakes have occurred in other parts of the Balkan Peninsula, such as Bulgaria, Montenegro, and especially North Macedonia - whose capital, Skopje, was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in July 1963.

Answer: Sahel

Stretching for about 5,900 km (3,670 mi) across the width of the African continent, the Sahel (from its Arabic name, "al-sahil", meaning "the shore") marks the transition between the Sahara Desert to the north and the wooded tropical savanna (also known as Sudanian savanna) to the south. This vast, mostly flat ecoregion, covered in grassland, savanna and shrubland, receives low and irregular levels of precipitation, and is prone to long, dry spells in which no rain falls altogether. The Sahel, which includes portions of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea, is home to about 50 million people. The region has suffered from megadroughts (droughts lasting at least two decades) multiple times throughout history, decreasing the amount of land available for farming, and causing the semi-nomadic populations of the region to move south to the more humid parts of West Africa.

In recent years, the effects of these severe droughts have been exacerbated by global warming. Crop failures have resulted in widespread famines, with malnutrition affecting millions of people in this vast area, and contributing to large-scale emigration towards Europe and other developed regions of the world. Some of the worst droughts in the Sahel occurred in the 1910s, the 1960s, and the 1980s. Accompanied by extreme temperatures (abnormal even in a region known for almost constant sunshine and high heat), these droughts also cause spikes in diseases endemic to the region, such as malaria and meningitis. Indeed, most of the Sahel coincides with what is commonly known as the "African meningitis belt", where droughts and dust storms increase the incidence of the disease caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, known as meningococcal meningitis, which affects mainly children and young adults.

Maghreb corresponds to Northwestern Africa, Natal was a province of South Africa, and Darfur is a region of Sudan.

Answer: Guatemala

Political and social instability are not the only serious issues Guatemala has had to grapple with throughout its history. The small Central American nation - one of the world's top biodiversity hotspots - has coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which makes it a prime target for the hurricanes and tropical storms that form from the early summer to late autumn. While in 1998 Hurricane Mitch did not affect Guatemala as badly as it did Honduras and Nicaragua (where almost 12,000 people died), mudslides caused by the heavy rains inflicted extensive agricultural damage; in 2015, Hurricane Stan caused 1,500 confirmed deaths, though over twice that number of people were reported missing.

However, the threat of hurricanes in Guatemala almost pales if compared to the ever-present threat of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The country lies directly on the Motagua Fault, part of the tectonic boundary between the North American and the Caribbean Plates; a third, smaller plate, the Cocos Plate, lies off the Pacific coast of Central America, producing major volcanic activity through its subduction beneath the Caribbean Plate. Guatemala has 37 volcanoes, four of them active: one of them, bearing the rather self-explanatory name of Volcán de Fuego (Volcano of Fire), erupted violently on 3 June 2018, killing an unspecified number of people - officially about 200, but probably many more. The nation's capital, Guatemala City, was nearly destroyed by earthquakes in 1917-1918; a more recent earthquake, in 1976, claimed the lives of 23,000 people.

Answer: wildfires

As its name implies, a wildfire is an unplanned, uncontrolled fire that can start wherever combustible vegetation exists - whether in a rural area (such as a forest, grassland, or brush) or an urban one. Though human agency can contribute to the start and spread of wildfires, in many cases these destructive phenomena are triggered by weather, especially prolonged periods of heat and drought, as well as lightning. In recent years, extreme weather events brought about by climate change have intensified the frequency of wildfires in many regions of the world, including some - such as Southeast Asia and tropical West Africa - that have a mainly humid climate.

While regions with a Mediterranean climate, characterized by hot, dry summers and highly flammable vegetation, are particularly vulnerable to wildfires, the taiga biome that covers large parts of Siberia is equally susceptible to them, due to the presence of sap-rich conifers. In the summer of 2017, over 300 people died in Portugal because of wildfires, while over 100 people died in Greece, in the Athens region, in the summer of 2018. Australia has often been devastated by wildfires, which are an ever-present danger during the summer season: the Black Friday bushfires of 7 February 2009 claimed 173 lives in the state of Victoria. As to California, the frequency and intensity of wildfires have dramatically increased in the past few years, causing widespread property damage and loss of life.

Answer: Haiti

Occupying three-eights of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti is the third-largest country in the Caribbean after Cuba and the Dominican Republic (with which it shares a border). A mountainous tropical country of great natural beauty, Haiti is unfortunately located on the highly active Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system, whose movements have been responsible for a number of destructive earthquakes that have struck both Haiti and Jamaica (which lies directly to the west). Throughout its history, the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, has been repeatedly hit by earthquakes of substantial magnitude - like the one that, on 12 January 2010, devastated the city, causing the death of over 200,000 people (probably many more). On 14 August 2021, another 7.2 earthquake struck the Tiburón Peninsula, west of the capital, killing at least 2,200 people.

As if the constant earthquake danger was not enough, Haiti is also under constant threat of hurricanes: in 2008, it was hit by four major hurricanes that caused widespread destruction. In addition, this beleaguered island nation is prone to periodic droughts, floods, and outbreaks of diseases (such as cholera) due to contaminated water. The toll taken by all those natural disasters is compounded by the country's chronic political instability and high poverty levels.