Three years ago a joint parliamentary committee said a 'catastrophic event, such as a major fire' was waiting to happen.

Proponents of the practice of mindfulness suggest it can awaken us to our lives without the stimulus of a catastrophic event.

But mystery surrounded the cause of a 'sudden catastrophic event' to a plane rated as one of the safest since entering service in 1995.

He noted that most people who commited such crimes shared the presence of a single catastrophic event, or trigger.

It also diminishes genetic variability, which protects populations from being wiped out by one catastrophic event.