Natural Disaster Trivia
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169 free Natural Disaster trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
46 free natural disaster trivia questions with answers. From Pompeii to Fukushima, natural disasters have redrawn maps, toppled governments and given us the vocabulary of catastrophe. This quiz covers the record-setters: the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, the loudest sound in history, the deadliest tornado, the deadliest tropical cyclone, the deadliest US natural disaster and the eruption that caused the Year Without a Summer. It also covers the science, from the Richter and moment magnitude scales to Saffir-Simpson and Enhanced Fujita. The easy questions ask which city Katrina flooded and which volcano buried Pompeii. The hard ones want the town wiped out by Mount Pelée with three survivors, the length of the Tri-State tornado's track, the private club whose dam caused the Johnstown Flood and how far away Krakatoa was heard. Written for science classes, pub quizzes and disaster-documentary addicts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the events and scales, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 169 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1755 Lisbon earthquake struck on the morning of which religious feast?
All Saints' Day
Churches were packed; the quake, fires and a tsunami killed 30,000 to 40,000 of the city's 200,000 people.
Q 02The Lisbon earthquake is credited with the birth of which science?
Seismology
It was the first earthquake studied scientifically for its effects over a wide area.
Q 03The 1906 San Francisco earthquake had roughly what magnitude?
7.9
The fires that followed burned for days and destroyed more than 80% of the city.
Q 04Roughly what proportion of San Francisco was destroyed in 1906?
Over 80%
More than 3,000 people died.
Q 05The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was triggered by an earthquake off which island?
Sumatra
Waves up to 30 metres high hit coasts around the ocean on Boxing Day.
Q 06The 2004 Boxing Day disaster holds which grim record?
Deadliest tsunami in history
It is also the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century.
Q 07The March 2011 Japanese earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded there, triggered which nuclear disaster?
Fukushima Daiichi
Three reactors melted down; official figures list 19,759 deaths from the quake and tsunami.
Q 08Which country suffered the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, in 1960?
Chile
The Valdivia quake measured 9.4 to 9.6 and sent tsunamis to Hawaii, Japan and New Zealand.
Q 09The 2010 Haiti earthquake struck near which town, west of Port-au-Prince?
Léogâne
Death-toll estimates run from 100,000 to over 300,000.
Q 10Which US city was 80% flooded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005?
New Orleans
Most deaths came from failures in the federally built levee system.
Q 11Katrina made its Louisiana landfall at what strength?
Category 3
It had peaked as a Category 5 in the Gulf and remains the costliest US hurricane.
Q 12The deadliest natural disaster in US history was a 1900 hurricane that struck which Texas city?
Galveston
The most-cited death toll is 8,000, and it left 10,000 of 38,000 residents homeless.
Q 13The deadliest tropical cyclone on record struck East Pakistan in which year?
1970
The Bhola cyclone's storm surge killed at least 300,000 people in the Ganges Delta.
Q 14Cyclone Nargis killed at least 138,000 people in 2008 in which country?
Q 21Which town did the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée destroy, leaving only three known survivors?
Saint-Pierre
Around 29,000 people died in minutes on Martinique, the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century.
Q 22The 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption began with what, the largest in recorded history?
A landslide
The whole north face slid away after a quake at 8:32am; 57 people died.
Q 23The deadliest lahar in history, in 1985, buried which Colombian town?
Armero
A small eruption of Nevado del Ruiz melted ice and sent mudflows that killed about 25,000.
Myanmar
Its surge travelled 40 km up the Irrawaddy delta.
Q 15Typhoon Haiyan devastated which country in November 2013?
The Philippines
Known locally as Yolanda, it killed at least 6,300 people in the Visayas alone.
Q 16The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa produced what record?
The loudest known sound in history
It was heard in Perth and on Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km away.
Q 17How far away was Krakatoa's explosion heard, on the island of Rodrigues?
4,800 km
At least 36,417 people died, mostly in the tsunamis.
Q 18Which 1815 eruption is considered the most powerful in recorded history?
Mount Tambora
It reached VEI 7 and led to the Year Without a Summer.
Q 19Which year is known as the Year Without a Summer?
1816
Crops failed in New England and there were food riots in Britain and France.
Q 20Whose two letters give the detailed eyewitness account of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius?
Pliny the Younger
He watched from Misenum; his uncle Pliny the Elder died leading a rescue fleet.
Q 24The 1931 floods often ranked the deadliest natural disaster ever struck which two Chinese rivers?
Yangtze and Huai
An official report counted 140,000 drowned and up to 2 million dead from flooding and famine.
Q 25The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was caused by the failure of a dam owned by what?
A private sporting club
Henry Clay Frick led the Pittsburgh money behind the South Fork club, which had no way to lower the lake.
Q 26The 1953 North Sea flood was the worst 20th-century natural disaster in which country?
The United Kingdom
It hit the Netherlands even harder and led to the Delta Works.
Q 27The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 killed how many people, the most of any US tornado?
695
Its 219-mile track through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana is also the longest ever recorded.
Q 28How long was the Tri-State Tornado's track?
219 miles
Scientists still debate whether it was one tornado or a family of them over 3.5 hours.
Q 29Who coined the term 'Dust Bowl' after the Black Sunday storms of April 1935?
An Associated Press editor
Edward Stanley rewrote a reporter's story from Boise City, Oklahoma.
Q 30Which nickname was given to Dust Bowl migrants heading to California?
Okies
Many came from Oklahoma; Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath followed one such family.