Disaster Movies
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50 free Disaster Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Disaster movies promise one simple thing: something enormous is about to go wrong, and a handful of people will have to get through it. The formula took hold in the 1970s, when studios packed burning skyscrapers and capsized liners with as many stars as the poster could hold, and it has never really gone away. This quiz runs from those all-star epics to the effects blockbusters that followed: Twister and The Day After Tomorrow for weather fans, Armageddon and Deep Impact for anyone who remembers the summer of rival space rocks, plus Titanic, The Poseidon Adventure, Sharknado and the spoof Airplane!. Questions cover casts, plots, production stories and the real events that inspired some of the films. It suits a film-night quiz, a pub round or a quick test of how much you remember between the popcorn and the final rescue. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a miss leaves you with a story.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Twister, a tornado tears apart a drive-in cinema while which classic horror film is playing?
The Shining
The Shining was on screen, and life soon copied the scene: in May 1996 a real tornado wrecked a drive-in in Thorold, Ontario, hours before it was due to show Twister.
Q 02Titanic tied the record of 11 Oscar wins first set by which 1959 Charlton Heston epic?
Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur had held the record alone for 38 years. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King later made it a three-way tie by winning all 11 of its nominations.
Q 03In The Day After Tomorrow, students ride out the superstorm inside which Manhattan landmark?
New York Public Library
New York Public Library is only half a refuge: when the students go out for medicine, they have to dodge wolves that have escaped from the Central Park Zoo.
Q 04In The Poseidon Adventure, what strikes the luxury liner and leaves it floating upside down at sea?
A giant wave
A giant wave, raised by an undersea earthquake, rolls the ship over seconds after midnight, trapping the New Year's partygoers in an upside-down dining room.
Q 05Which rock band recorded the ballad for Armageddon, a 1998 film co-starring the frontman's daughter?
Aerosmith
Aerosmith got the job only after Liv Tyler, daughter of singer Steven Tyler, was cast; U2 had been asked first. The song became the band's only US number one.
Q 06Which 2011 Steven Soderbergh thriller about a deadly new virus found a huge second audience in 2020?
Contagion
Contagion drew on the SARS outbreak and the 2009 flu pandemic, and its writer consulted a doctor famed for helping to wipe out smallpox.
Q 07The Impossible follows a real family swept apart by the 2004 tsunami on holiday in which country?
Thailand
Thailand is where María Belón's family was staying, at the resort of Khao Lak. The film was shot partly on location there and partly in a studio in Alicante, Spain.
Q 08Which director wrecked the planet three times over, in The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and Moonfall?
Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich nearly made it four: he had planned a film about an asteroid strike in the 1990s, then shelved it when Armageddon got to the idea first.
Q 09Dwayne Johnson plays a rescue helicopter pilot searching for his daughter in which 2015 film?
San Andreas
San Andreas is named for the California fault that ruptures in the film. Seismologists pointed out that the real fault slips sideways, so it could never raise the giant tsunami that swamps San Francisco on screen.
Q 10Which Airplane! star had earlier played the doomed ship's captain in The Poseidon Adventure?
Leslie Nielsen
Leslie Nielsen was cast in the spoof because of straight-faced roles like that one, and it turned a veteran dramatic actor into a full-time comedy star.
Q 11The TV movie Sharknado, a 2013 social-media sensation, first aired on which American cable channel?
Syfy
Syfy drew only 1.37 million viewers on the first night, below its usual average. A storm of jokes on Twitter then made the repeat showings bigger than the premiere.
Q 12In Titanic, treasure hunters search the wreck for which blue diamond necklace that Rose once wore?
The Heart of the Ocean
The Heart of the Ocean was no gem on set: London jewellers built the prop from cubic zirconias set in white gold.
Q 13Which actor plays oil driller Harry Stamper, sent into space to blow up an asteroid, in Armageddon?
Bruce Willis
Q 21The spoof Airplane! borrows characters, storyline and some dialogue from which serious 1957 film?
Zero Hour!
Zero Hour! was taped by accident: the writers were recording late-night television to mine the adverts for jokes, and found a perfectly built thriller instead.
Q 22Which producer of The Poseidon Adventure became known in the 1970s as the Master of Disaster?
Irwin Allen
Irwin Allen came to catastrophe late: he had spent the 1960s creating science-fiction television such as Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel.
Q 23Which cinema sound system, built to shake audiences with deep bass, debuted with 1974's Earthquake?
Sensurround
Bruce Willis took the part to settle a debt: he owed the studio three films after his 1997 production Broadway Brawler fell apart.
Q 14Which actor plays the US President who breaks news of a world-ending collision in Deep Impact?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman's President Beck fronts the film that astronomers called the more accurate of 1998's two space-rock blockbusters, though Armageddon sold more tickets.
Q 15Pierce Brosnan plays a scientist warning a quiet Washington town of an eruption in which 1997 film?
Dante's Peak
Dante's Peak is a fictional town in Washington state; the real streets on screen belong to Wallace, Idaho, where the film was shot.
Q 16Which actor plays Tyler Owens, the YouTube storm chaser known as the Tornado Wrangler, in Twisters?
Glen Powell
Glen Powell was approached after the director saw him on a breakfast TV show, then read with co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones over Zoom from a film set in Australia.
Q 17Both Twister and its 2024 follow-up Twisters send storm chasers racing across which US state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma hosted both shoots as well. The 1996 crew modelled its storm chasers on a real team of University of Oklahoma graduate students the director had met.
Q 18The doomsday date in the film 2012 comes from a calendar kept by which ancient civilisation?
The Maya
The Maya never predicted an apocalypse; one cycle of their Long Count calendar simply ended in December 2012, and a modern doomsday theory grew up around the date.
Q 19In the thriller Crawl, a Florida hurricane traps a swimmer in a flooding house with which predators?
Alligators
Alligators hunt Haley through the flooding house. Director Alexandre Aja spent a year rewriting the script, and made her a competitive swimmer so that her escape would be believable.
Q 20Which actor plays Dr. Randall Mindy, the astronomy professor nobody listens to, in Don't Look Up?
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio signed on only after talks with director Adam McKay about changes to the script. McKay meant the film's doomsday threat as an allegory for climate change.
Sensurround pumped out bass as loud as a jet at takeoff, enough to crack the ceiling plaster at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Q 24Which 1974 film gave Paul Newman and Steve McQueen diagonal billing so that neither star came first?
The Towering Inferno
The Towering Inferno set McQueen's name lower left and Newman's upper right, so each led depending on how you read. The same fix had been floated for the pair on Butch Cassidy, before McQueen dropped out.
Q 25Which actor plays Helen Hunt's estranged husband, a storm chaser turned TV weatherman, in Twister?
Bill Paxton
Bill Paxton and Hunt were both temporarily blinded during the shoot by the bright lamps used to make the sky behind them look dark and stormy.
Q 26Which bestselling novelist co-wrote the screenplay for the tornado film Twister with his wife?
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin were paid $2.5 million for the script. He said its feuding exes on one last job came from the comedy His Girl Friday.
Q 27Which actor plays Sam Hall, the student stranded in a frozen Manhattan, in The Day After Tomorrow?
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal took the film's warning seriously: after shooting ended he flew to the Arctic to raise awareness of climate change.
Q 28Gerard Butler plays a satellite designer fighting weaponised weather in which 2017 film?
Geostorm
Geostorm imagines a ring of climate-controlling satellites called Dutch Boy. It was the directing debut of Dean Devlin, co-writer of Independence Day.
Q 29Mark Wahlberg plays real-life rig worker Mike Williams in which film about an offshore oil blowout?
Deepwater Horizon
Deepwater Horizon ends with footage of the real Mike Williams testifying about the 2010 explosion; he never went back to sea.
Q 30Apollo 13 filmed its weightless scenes aboard a NASA training aircraft known by which nickname?
Vomit Comet
Vomit Comet flights gave the cast under half a minute of weightlessness at a time, a filming trick suggested to director Ron Howard by Steven Spielberg.