What if Another Crisis Strikes During This Pandemic?

Parts of the world might have shut down, but nature never does. Even while people stay at home and learn about physical distancing, weather, tectonic shifts, meteorites, and solar storms do not pause. With many international borders closed and an increasing percentage of the population sick or rendered potential carriers of this latest coronavirus, what happens if some city or country needs an international operation for disaster aid?

Simultaneous environmental hazards are far from rare. The 1923 earthquake that hit Tokyo and Yokohama led to an inferno fanned (rather than extinguished) by a typhoon, with over 100,000 dead. One of the largest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, coincided with the landfall of a major typhoon. In Afghanistan in both May 1998 and March 2002, earthquakes killing