Why We Return to Disaster Stories

Clara Wren

Alright, let’s get into it. Three engines—basically, the three main reasons we keep coming back to disaster stories, even when we know how it ends. First up: rehearsal. We sort of read these tales not just for curiosity, but as a kind of—oh, call it a mental fire drill? We’re—yeah—running the worst case, but in safety. Do you do that too, Vincent?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah, absolutely, rehearsal’s one of the biggest. Good disaster novels don’t fixate on the spectacle, but on all those tight, pressure-cooker decisions. It’s about the quiet moments where someone shifts from not knowing anything to choosing—sometimes badly, sometimes not. That’s what sticks with me as both a writer and a reader.

Clara Wren

Engine number two is witness. We read to say, you know, “I saw this. I saw what happened to you.” Especially when the people involved have been left out of history—or even erased altogether. I keep thinking about the Wilhelm Gustloff sinking; most people, even big readers, haven’t heard of it. But once you dig into it, you realise how many stories get buried if we don’t read to witness them. Does that land for you?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah, and that’s...honestly, that’s where *Unyielding* really lives. For me, writing it wasn’t about the ship itself, it was about respecting the people who had to pay for those lessons—sailors, cooks, medics. Like, if we don’t honour the ordinary labor in survival, what’s the point?

Clara Wren

And third—systems thinking. We read to see how big things fail, right? The checklist that nobody double-checked, that one valve that never got serviced. It’s like, if you want to see how a catastrophe blooms, you look at the paper trail, not just the storm.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Readers, I’ve found, love tracing those hidden lines—the subtle stuff. The objects left behind, a lifeboat manifest, a broken radio. These things carry their own stories, and they show us how chaos and order kind of run side by side. It’s much less about blaming one villain, and much more about understanding how the whole system unraveled.

Clara Wren

Yeah, so if a book is just giving us screams, splinters, non-stop panic—that's spectacle, isn’t it? But if it’s naming people, giving us the logbooks and the chains of command, that's when we're witnessing, when we're actually learning something deeper. It feels—well—safer, somehow, even in all that uncertainty.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Exactly. Witness for me always comes back to respecting the people who learned the lesson the hard way. That’s the goal.

Clara Wren

So let's talk about how we know if a disaster story’s crossing that line—from respect to just...exploitation. There’s, what, four? Four checks for readers, right?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah, I break it down like this. First, does the story name the workers? If it’s all about the wealthy or the big VIPs and the crew are invisible, it’s probably tending toward spectacle instead of substance.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Second, does the book show the labor of rescue? Real disasters are muddy and technical and sometimes...tedious. If all the gritty effort is skipped, you’re not reading a witness story—you’re in the realm of emotional display, where it’s more about gasps than truth.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Third, does the story disclose uncertainty? If every moment reads like a movie, but there’s no mention of missing records or blindspots—watch out. Real disaster includes fog-of-war. Sometimes, nobody knows what was happening except in hindsight, if ever.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

And fourth—maybe most important—does it pin the whole collapse on one villain? I mean, yeah, people make mistakes. But most disasters are systemic; blaming one scapegoat just lets everyone else off the hook. That’s not honest storytelling, not to me.

Clara Wren

So, if you’re reading a big disaster book and you notice all the credit and all the blame flows to just a handful of characters—well—it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it, but it’s worth asking: did the author do their homework on the full cast?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah. It gets me thinking back to my Army days—there’s this thing that sticks. After any brush with disaster, the best leaders I knew would name every name, from the cook who prepped the night rations to the last person off the truck. The debrief wasn’t about pinning medals on the biggest pair of boots in the room, you know? It was naming who actually got people home. That’s what real witness writing ought to do, too.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Alright, I want to share a little from the draft of *Unyielding*—it’s rough, but I think it shows what we’ve just been talking about. Here we go: Steel remembers. Hours after the first shudder, the hull still spoke in a language of small griefs, rivets ticking, bulkheads breathing, the slow ache of a body holding. On deck, salt clung to the lamps like frost. No speeches. No hero music. Only hands, callused and sure, testing lines, counting heads, naming the distance in the dark. A flare lifted, red as a wound, and for a moment the sea admitted how wide it was. Someone whispered the word home and no one answered, because home was a moving thing now, a point that kept sliding across the black. The oars bit once, then again. Water took the shape of their will. And the ship behind them, stubborn as a promise, learned a harder word, let go.

Clara Wren

My favourite part’s that the hero isn’t a single bloke—or even a pair of them. It’s the group, the hands, the oars. The choices are spread out. It’s collective survival, you know? That sits right—it feels like respect, not spectacle. And that’s, well, that’s the sign of a story that’s looking at community, not just one person striding off into the sunrise.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

That’s the big test for me—when you finish reading, ask: who’s the hero here? If the book’s honest, it’ll be the crew, the cooks, the radio operator whispering into static. Disaster always asks for community, not just one hero with a big spotlight.

Clara Wren

So, if you’re reading on your own, or in a book club, we’ve got some prompts to dig deeper: Whose labor actually saved the most lives in this chapter? What information were the main characters missing when they made that crucial decision? What was the saddest object—like, was it the lifeboat manifest, a ruined logbook, or some unclaimed coat? And then, what silences did the author highlight, and did they treat that silence with any care at all?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Exactly—those are the kinds of questions that push us past the initial spectacle and into what actually matters. They’re simple, but you might be surprised what those little details reveal about the heart of a story. And, y’know, if you tackle these prompts, tag us or reach out. I always love hearing how people read those moments. If nothing else, it keeps the lantern burning, right?

Clara Wren

Couldn’t have said it better. Alright, let’s call it there for this episode. If this sparked something for you, subscribe and maybe leave a review—that’s how other thoughtful readers find us. Next week, we’re back behind the book, or...maybe drifting into Don't Ride Alone—You’ll see it in your feed. Vincent, thanks as always.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Thank you, Clara—and for everyone listening, keep the lantern lit. See you next time.