We think of natural disasters in terms of destruction, loss and extinction. Casualties and physical damages inflicted by an earthquake, a pandemic, a volcanic eruption or a flood, all point to the vulnerability of the built environment and the transience of our lives. It epitomises the power of nature against human frailty. However, by experiencing and surviving natural disasters, societies are forced to reimagine and rebuild the world in which they were living, and which no longer exists. As destructive as natural disasters are, they bring fundamental changes; they prompt new beginnings. Every time a natural disaster happens, it obliges humans to rethink their environment, their relation to nature, their ways of seeing and making the world around them. This module will look at how specific catastrophes (each used a case-study) in the history of the Western world brought about significant changes in the political, social, and cultural spheres.