He flirted with, but never succumbed to, professional disaster, producing his pages through many a hangover, and giving up alcohol at the point where it might have killed him.
Misconduct in food distribution and unbalanced industrial production, fused with natural disaster, produced a staggering death toll – officially 15 million, but independent historians surmise it was closer to 36 million.
For the first time, all of the major domestic TV news networks have deployed doctor-reporters to the scene of a natural disaster, producing a dramatic kind of participatory journalism.
And crowds similar to the Love Parade disaster produced dangerous waves of energy.
Second, by 2015 there will be an environmental disaster producing 2 million refugees.
In New Orleans the disaster produced infrastructure loss.
Floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and hurricanes have the potential to devastate our way of life, and the cumulative effect of these disasters produces a significant personal, material and economic strain on individuals, communities, and the fiscal capacity of all levels of governments.
Many so-called successes have shut citizens out of decision-making processes, been rife with insider dealings, undermined worker job security, displaced large numbers of people without adequate compensation, been economic disasters, produced projects that privatize benefits while under-producing public goods.
"I show the disasters produced by the liberalization of values," he has said.
National disasters produce lasting images which can often change the course of a leader's time in office.
