#7. North Korea Floods
Life in North Korea is one long, man-made disaster, and the full magnitude of human suffering that goes on north of the DMZ may never be known. But the world received a glimpse of the precarious state of the hermit kingdom in August, when wide-scale flooding afflicted the southern part of the country. Details are patchwork, but more than 400 people were believed killed, and the damage was extensive enough that the Mass Games, Pyongyang's yearly and freaky athletic showcase, were postponed. Even worse than the immediate damage was the destruction wrought on the starving country's farmland — the World Food Programme estimated that 450,000 tons of grain production was lost.