This is another list so be warned.
You've got a nice, normal Modern 21st century world with some interesting variations due to consulting Tadeusz's lists, and because you made up a few yourself. However, your player has been rude enough to go and solve the major problem in that world. Or there are still major problems, but you'd like some background static to make it feel real.
What we need is a collection of minor, and not so minor banes and benefits, and just plain weirdness because Reality is just such a kick in the head at times.
1. Power plant disaster. This can run the scale from Three Mile Island to an Eleven State Blackout (Curse you, Canada even if it wasn't your fault! :) ) to Chernobyl which irradiated a couple thousand square miles.
2. Hurricanes, Monsoons, Gales, and strings of Tornadoes have been making the news lately. This can run the range from a minor tornado (and even a minor one is quite interesting...when the sky turns green thats a bad thing) to a several state line of disaster from a half-dozen tornadoes to a city destroyed to a nation buried under water.
3. Factory Disaster: This can run from a friend being hurt in machinery to a factory on fire to a refinery on fire to a chemical plant releasing toxins in the air as it burns and the downwind being a major population center. Think of Bhopal, India.
You are going to catch the verser's attention if you tell him he's leaving the diner, and to the north is a rapidly moving cloud that is yellow, and coming his way.
4. Earthquakes: This can run from interesting if scary as the crockery trembles on the table to eighty thousand dead as a city collapses.
One key factor is how strong the buildings are. In China, a school building collapsed while nearby a ten story hotel stood, and the party leader's children's school is just fine. Substandard construction is very bad in an earthquake.
Earthquakes are enormously energetic, and they can be felt from a very long way away. And they can be heard from even further. So you could have your verser and his friend be separated. Spring an earthquake two hundred miles away where the friend is staying. Tell the verse he hears a loud bang. Watch the verser move heaven and earth to get to the town, and hope to find his friend safe.
The San Andreas Fault may be the most famous earthquake fault in the world, but the San Madrid Fault is stronger. It hasn't 'quaked' in a long time, but the last time it did, the Missisippi flowed north for three days or so. This is my area of the country, and a San Madrid Fault Quake could be very bad indeed.
Of course, there is also for maximum damage....The Big One (although Madrid is probably bigger to be realistic). This is the one where California drops into the Pacific.
5. Tsunami. If California does drop into the Pacific, it will create a monster tidal wave. I would not be at all surprised if Hawaii got completely overrun by a wave, and after that a number of Pacific Rim cities would be destroyed.
The Chinese might prefer we nuked them as it would be less damaging than the California Tsunami.
One way tsunami can develop is underwater earthquakes or volcanoes. Another way is if a huge underwater mudslide moves down an underwater mountain, and shoves water out of the way.
A side note: If the water suddenly goes out, its time to run inland for high ground. The mass of the wave has to come from some place, and it sweeps up the shallow water into itself, and then rapidly sends it back on to the land.
6. Volcano: If you're close to a volcano when it erupts, well, you're versed out, m'kay? Volcanoes may give warning (which may be ignored), and then devastate huge acreage surrounding them very, very quickly.
You might be fifty miles away and have only a few minutes to save yourself.
Volcanoes can run from sending up slow amounts of lava to causing ground tremors and worry to Mount St. Helens which trashed over ten thousand acres if I remember right to Vesuvius which paved over Pompeii to Krakatoa and to Thera. Krakatoa caused the Year Without A Summer. It was heard over five hundred miles away. It caused enough global cooling that there was frost in June.
Thera was worse. Some people think Thera's eruption put paid to a civilization, and caused the myth of Atlantis to be born.
If you have a low-tech civilization (say pre-steam engine) you could pretty much shatter it with a large enough volcano, if you wanted to do so. Or you could substantially weaken it, and cause famine as crops failed if you decided to go the Krakatoa route.
7. Plague. One half of Europe fell to yrsinnia pestis. The Spanish Flu killed twenty million in 1918.
I've written a cheery little world which shows how a small collection of maniacs could destroy the world with variola major. Its called 'In the Valley of the Shadow', and I reccomend it for running a "How to Deal with a Plague Outbreak" gameworld.
A lot of people think that some sort of serious plague outbreak is inevitable. More and more people are developing easier and easier techniques for genetic alteration of viruses. Some day, some maniac is going to open up the genie's bottle.
Actually, its already happened. Only its been small time cases so far. One cult tried to rig elections in its small town by making the other residents sick by spraying something on the salad bar.
So this can run from mild and localized to an outbreak to a pandemic to a civilization destroying incident to a human extinction level event.
There are a lot of good fiction and some non-fiction on this topic. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis deals with time travel and the black plague. Infectress by Commander Tom Cool deals with genetically engineering a virus to wipe out the not so intelligent 98% of the species. The White Plague by Frank Herbert of Dune fame is one of the earliest, and it offers a man crazed by vengeance who decides to get back at the Irish because the IRA killed his family.
8. Local Serial Killer. This is a partially media created event. In the local area, a madman with a knife is making his rounds. He's been successful in the past, but stopped. For some reason, he's started again.
He may have stopped because he was in jail for a lesser crime.
If you want to, you can have the victims be of the same general type as the character.
9. Transportation disaster. A ten-car pile-up on the interstate, a train derailing, a plane (either a military test flight) or a commercial flight (large passenger jet, or a team or band of some kind.)
10. Assasination of major political leader. This can be an attempt that fails, or it can be 'successful'. A manhunt might be formed, or not.
The leader's policies are generally strengthened.
11. Recession can run from fairly mild where unless you're wired in, its hard to tell its happening to pretty sharp and painful. A Depression like the Great Depression left 25% of the populace out of work.
Depressions often spawn changes of government, wars, and social repression.
12. Riots. Riots are not done by poor people. Riots are done by those who are better off, but not as good as they think they deserve. Its the 'revolution of rising expectations'. You've got your nose to the grindstone, just trying to stay alive, and you have no energy or will for rioting. However, once things start getting better, but not as good as you'd like then riots become more likely.
Riots will frequently target minorities like Korean convenience store owners in predominantly black neighbourhoods. The targetted ones are thought to be rich, exploitive, and snobbish.
A firm hand is the best treatment for a riot, but if a city riots its usually a sign that a lot of things are wrong with the city, and firm, decisive leadership is usually lacking.
13. Terrorism. One man's freedom fighter is NOT another man's terrorist. A terrorist strives to hit civilian targets whereas for a military man (either professional or guerilla) such is 'collateral damage'.
Car bombs, suicide bombers, retarded people with bombs strapped to their waists, mortars fired from the back of vans which quickly move on, unguided rockets aimed at marketplaces....
One moment, the verser is eating a pleasant meal, and the next moment he's picking glass shards out of his chest as the car bomb parked outside the restauraunt goes off.
14. Guerilla Combat: By the Rules of Land Warfare (which may not apply in your universe) they are eligible to be shot. But they are honorable combatants. A guerilla seeks out military and governmental targets and attacks them.
On 9/11 there were terror attacks on the Towers, and a guerilla attack on the Pentagon.
Regardless, both types provoke a lethal response from the central government. However, guerillas tend to be more skilled, and more popular than terrorists. Having good, small unit tactics for light infantry is essential for most guerillas.
The response of the local government naturally varies. The Syrian dictatorship dealt with an uprising by dropping poison gas shells on a town, and killing 30,000 people. If you, for example, live in a Psi Dictatorship, the likely response to a guerilla strike is not going to be 'why do they hate us?'. Something vastly more lethal is likely.
15. Drought. A lack of rain, or dams got damaged by perhaps a flood. Prices go up, and if the local tech base is sufficient, the people are okay. If not, you might move on to famine.
16. Famine. In the modern world, famine is a result of government. Either basic incompetence and corruption strangles affairs, or the government tries to use food aide as a weapon against recalcitrant tribes.
The verser could be in a near the frontier city which is mainly run by the locals, and the leader of the country wants more of his people in charge. So, he withholds food aide until the locals agree to submit totally.
Bridge collapse...blizzard...crime wave...
Enough for now.
Tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes. And, we pesky little insignificant humans have the audacity to think that we can harm this planet? This planet has weapons that make an A-bomb look like a pack of M80s.
Eric, I know you're probably more into action, but myself, as a player, I want some downtime here and there. In the world I'm currently in, my plan is once I take out the bad guys, learn everything I can. I'm hoping for some downtime, a few years (hopefully) where I can just acquire skills and knowledge. I don't mind skipping months at a time. Then, after I become a more formidable verser, if MJ decides to drop something else in my lap, I'll be looking forward to it. But, I would want some time to just build skills here and there. Action does not always make a good story. What I would do is if the player took out the problem, I'd give them some time to rest, relax, and learn new skills. THEN drop an earthquake on them and see what they do.
It is true that I am the Action Guy/GM. This flows through the whole of my life, and not just my gamemastering.
Two howevers....
1. Not all of these need to be the verser directly involved. You could hear about a tornado on the south side of town, and then hear about the aftermath. It doesn't directly involve you unless you deliberately seek it out (more on that later), or go to help the recovery efforts (involving yourself.). So some of this is just background static if you want it to be.
"In the last month, you learned how to fire the Maxim Machine Gun, went to two raves, and heard that the neighbouring town of Smallton suffered a flood."
It makes it more real.
2. Second However. I personally have 1)Seen the sky turn green. 2)Seen a funnel cloud in a truck, and the driver wanted to chase the tornado--(see previous statement about deliberate involvement.) Been out a couple times in high wind conditions. Been in the back of a store when a tornado struck nearby--if I remember right.
My brother has had the pleasure of evacuating from a country the day before things got a little tetchy. My father was in LA for a computer conference during the LA riots.
I don't think I'm Mr. Adventure Guy.
And as a general rule Homo Fictis leads a far more exciting life than Home Sapiens. I'm Homo Sapiens, my character is Homo Fictis.
17. Fire. This can be arson or accident or an arc of lightning. We had a former mayor in this area lose his barn. It looked suspicious to our eyes as to whether he had annoyed someone in office, or he had annoyed someone with his plan to sell off the historic barn. About two weeks ago, I saw a small two yard wide grass fire on the side of the road. I kicked it out. My best guess is someone threw a cigarette out of their car. Sorry, I don't have any recent local examples of lightning fires.
The neighbour's house, or yours is on fire is one situation (and woodburning stoves need their chimneys cleared out as I know from personal experience.).
The other case is the wildfire. This can be something fairly compact which is dealt with by a small crew, or given the wrong conditions (lengthy term of dry weather, and high winds) you can see an arc of fire that takes weeks, and hundreds of firefighters to deal with.
Fire can leap firebreaks by twigs being born by the wind. Another problem is 'topping' where fire runs along the tops of trees, and can move faster than humans on the ground can run away. Fires on the grasslands justify the wild-eyed panic of animal stampedes with their enormous speed and width.
A house related problem is 'backdraft' for which I recommend the movie by the same name. Another concept is 'flashover' which is what happens when the whole room becomes hot enough to ignite at the same time. Both these situations can be excessively interesting.
18. Climate Change: Anthropogenic Global Warming seems to be extremely problematic as a theory unless the use of SUV's on Earth causes global warming on Mars. The dominant effects on global climate change seem to be the Solar Heating Cycle and volcanoes. The Little Ice Age of the 15-1700's seems to have been caused by the Sun producing less heat. The Year Without A Summer was, of course, caused by Krakatoa. Since the end of the LIA, we've been in a warming period, which in general is good for humanity. There is evidence that we may be about to enter a cooling period which will be bad for humanity.
There are methods to alter the climate, but such things are 1)mega-engineering (painting several states white, for example or spreading dust motes in the atmosphere.)
My previous list of eighteen should be twenty, and it was supposed to be a wide variety of good and bad things. Instead, it mostly focused on natural disasters. Let's see if I can make a list of ten reasonably possible engineering or technology changes.
Things change in the modern world, and often quite quickly.
1. Peak Oil: This is the theory that we've discovered most of the available oil, and the peak amount of oil known to be available has been passed. Now we are on the downward slope to less and less oil.
Naturally, oil will never totally fail, but its price will rise and rise to the point where no one is using it for cars anymore.
2. Abiotic Oil: This is the theory that oil is mostly created by pressure, and it is being continually created, and we will never run out of oil.
As you can see, #1 and #2 are mutually exclusive. However this is the Multiverse, and so one is true somewhere and two is true elsewhen. Both have significant impacts on the life and future of the dimensions where they prevail. In one, its get an electric car or get a horse, and face significant economic problems either way. In the other, the biggest problem is stiff-arming ecos.
3. Fish farms go active: The only major source of hunter-gatherer lifestyle left on this planet is commercial fishing. A realistic comparison of efficiency between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists is the farmers can produce 100 times as much.
Imagine fishing boats going out of business. Imagine fish farms booming with Fortune and Entrepreneur magazines having fish farmer franchise creators as their cover stories instead of computer geeks as their cover stories.
Imagine Salmon and Lobster as cheap as chicken, or cheaper. Imagine coastal communities receiving massive economic booms.
Imagine being stranded on a mile wide 'island' of fish cages that rest six inches above the waves as a hurricane bears down directly on top of you.
Brave new world.
4. Practical Robot Valet. No more of woman carrying purses weighing twenty pounds because the botstand rolls along behind you a fixed two feet back of your heels. It can carry your groceries, your gas mask, your purse, your assortment of electric gear, a spare set of clothes in case you spill honey mustard dressing on your blouse, and in an emergency, you can climb on, and it will drive you to the hospital at a stately three miles per hour.
This will remove the mass limits on what people can carry with them to a great degree.
5. Creationism finally carries the day; Evolution joins Phrenology and Freudianism in the trash heap. The superior philosophy and scientific theory wins out.
Already most people believe in some form of Creationism, and when informed with more data, the advantage to Creationism grows. The 'preference cascade' where people are afraid of losing their jobs, or looking unenlightened cracks, and in the course of a few years something remarkably similar to the Fall of the Berlin Wall occurs.
Freedom and logic are restored.
And most of those who had supported the Darwinians end up claiming to their grandchildren that they never supported it.
This event is likely to happen in our lifetimes.
6. Private Rocket Industry becomes a serious business. What with X prizes and publicity stunts, the rocket business is still fledgling. But if things keep snowballing, the private rocket researchers may end up surpassing the governments when it comes to rocket flights and tonnage put into space.
A new generation of heros and pioneers will come on the scene, and there will be not just pilots and engineers, but also the visionary leaders of the parties.
7. Self-Reliance Survival really takes off. In some places, laws aid the progress, and in other places social norms develop. People take a page from the Mormons, and plan on having no food and no water for close to a year. Also, like the Swiss, owning and training with an automatic weapon becomes mandatory.
The dominant effect is to make the country more resilient. Small disasters do not snowball into bigger ones, and the disasters that do occur get handled very quickly.
MORE LATER