Relative Disasters is a disaster podcast hosted by sister-brother duo Ella and Greg.
Relative Disasters contains examples of the following tropes:
- A Million Is a Statistic: Discussed occasionally when a disaster has a particularly high body count.
- Both the K-Pg mass extinction and the earlier Permian mass extinction, the latter of which wiped out an estimated 90% of all life on Earth, fall into this category.
- The 1556 Jiajing Earthquake killed an estimated 830,000 people, more than the entire modern population of Bhutan, making it the deadliest earthquake on record. Greg in particular notes it's hard to imagine so many people being wiped out in an earthquake that lasted less than a minute.
- The Ace: Wiebbe Hayes, a soldier on board the ill-fated Batavia who ended up leading the resistance to Cornelisz's attempt to establish himself as a petty tyrant.
- Affably Evil: John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion, Illinois, was a faith healer and obvious con artist that could probably be compared to Jim Jones, but he was described as a genuinely warm, friendly, grandfatherly type of person.
- The Barnum:
- Gregor MacGregor fits this to a T, happily swindling thousands of people out of millions of pounds in a number of cons, the most notorious of which being the Poyais scam.
- The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. Philip Arnold and John Slack casually salt a mountainside with cast-off diamonds, use Obfuscating Stupidity to scam some of the wealthiest and most powerful men of Victorian America out of a small fortune, and retire to lives as legitimate businessmen. When Philip Arnold is sued for the con, he simply settles out of court.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: In the K-Pg mass extinction episode, Greg describes the insects of the late Cretaceous as "way too big."
- Big Damn Heroes: When Vesuvius erupted, Pliny the Elder attempted to organize a rescue and evacuation mission. Sadly, he failed and lost his own life in the process.
- The Caligula:
- The Jiajing Emperor. He punished harshly anyone who opposed his rise to power, lived as a near-recluse for 25 years, and was a notorious pedophile.
- Qin Er Shi was notorious for executing messengers who brought him bad news. He also was known for ridiculously high taxation rates and often baffling vanity projects, such as attempting to lacquer his capital city's walls.
- Captain Obvious:
- From the K-Pg Extinction episode:Ella: And no idea where [the asteroid] came from?
Greg: Well, it came from outer space.
- From the K-Pg Extinction episode:
- Catchphrase: "Colonization ruins everything."
- The Cavalry: Captain Pelsaert arriving just in time to save Hayes and his people from the last of the mutineers from the Batavia.
- Continuity Nod: In the Donner Party episode, the fraudulent guidebook causes the hosts to reference the fraudulent guidebook of the Poyais scam.
- Deus ex Machina: The Black Monday Hailstorm of 1360 is portrayed as a Real Life example of one of these within the context of the Hundred Years War, with both the English and French viewing it as a literal Act of God and the hosts referring to it as "a literal smiting."
- The Dung Ages: How Greg and Ella view medieval England in the 1091 London tornado episode.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- After the rescue of the survivors from the Batavia, Lucretia Jans was put on trial for being raped, something which genuinely pisses off Greg to the point where he practically shouts that part of the story.
- In Victorian England the misogynistic laws audibly disgusts both hosts.
- Eyepatch of Power: Amanirenas lost an eye in battle but was a powerful queen who led Kush to decisively defeat the Romans.
- Ghost Ship:
- Episode 43 details the Mary Celeste.
- Episode 58 is literally titled "Two Arctic Ghost Ships."
- Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: The K-Pg asteroid apparently impacted with the force of 4.5 billion Hiroshima bombs (100 teratons of TNT).
- It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context: The still-unexplained Dancing Plague of 1518.
- Karma Houdini: Gregor MacGregor repeatedly runs from battle, before launching the Poyais scheme that defraud thousands of people out of millions of pounds and gets around 200 people killed, but is acquitted of all charges and ends up living out his retirement as a respected member of Venezuelan society with a government pension.
- Life Will Kill You: One theory about the death of Pliny the Elder in the Vesuvius eruption is that he died of a heart attack.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Beast of Gévaudan has never been conclusively identified, and theories range from a hyena to a long-extinct prehistoric beast to a werewolf.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds:
- Mansa Musa's largesse on his pilgrimage to Mecca means he floods Egypt with so much gold he unintentionally crashes their economy with hyper-inflation.
- Miles Gloriosus: Gregor MacGregor runs away from any battle when the tide starts to turn and leaves his men to get slaughtered.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: The Trope Namer is covered in the 41st episode.
- Once per Episode: Greg and Ella introduce themselves with humorous fake credentials related to the episode's main theme.
- Outrun the Fireball: Ferdinand Clerk and his family do this with a volcano during Mount Pelee's 1902 eruption.
- Pointy-Haired Boss:
- Gaius Cornelius Galla, the prefect of Egypt who started the Roman war with Kush.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The CSS Hunley, after sinking twice, killing five members of the eight-man crew the first time and all eight the second time, finally manages to sink a Union vessel, making it the first ever submarine to sink a ship, but sinks for the third and final time, killing all eight men in this crew too.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: The pilot episode about the 1091 London tornado notes, to the surprise of both hosts, that England has more tornados per square mile than any other country in the world.
- Refuge in Audacity: Gregor MacGregor gets arrested for running a scheme centered around selling land grants in a country he'd invented himself. He then claims diplomatic immunity by claiming to be the king of this nonexistent country.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something:
- In the Roman-Kushite War, Queen Amanirenas and her son personally lead the Kushite forces in battle. A variation with the Roman emperor Augustus, as while he never takes direct part in this particular war, he's usually doing other work as the Hero of Another Story.
- Running Gag: Expect one of the hosts (usually Ella) to refer to a bad action or science fiction movie as a documentary.
- Serious Business: The Jones-Liddell feud, which would last for 23 years and claim a minimum of six lives, begins with one of Liddell's geese escaping to Jones's property and Jones eating the goose.
- Shady Real Estate Agent: Gregor MacGregor took this up to eleven by selling an entire non-existent country.
- Shoot the Messenger: Emperor Qin Er Shi had a habit of doing this.
- Shrine to Self: Galla from the Roman-Kushite War episode used illegal taxes to build statues of himself in Egypt. This was a colossal faux pas in antiquity, as he was just a provincial governor. This, combined with his badmouthing his boss, the Emperor Augustus, would ultimately result in him getting stripped of his titles, his wealth confiscated by the state, getting sent into exile, and eventually his suicide.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: During the Astor Place Riot, the military, controlled by the wealthy, used muskets and cannons against a mob of working-class rioters armed mostly with paving stones.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The 1931 Ottawa sewer explosion was set off when a plumber's assistant accidentally struck a spark with his trowel, igniting sewer gases in the air.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Beast of Gévaudan killed mostly children and women.
- Zerg Rush: The locusts in the 1874 plague numbered at least in the billions, and though farmers could kill hundreds at a time with farm tools, running them over with plows, or shooting them, they just kept coming. In one notable instance a farmer set a ring of fire around his property and the locusts simply smothered the fire with their bodies.
