In any situation where a party has to pass through some obstacle one at time (a narrow shaky bridge, a rope, a submerged tunnel, etc.) one of the party will always freeze in a panic and have to be talked through their fear of heights/ narrow spaces/ water/ dark/ ankle deep bugs/ etc.
At least one person in your party will die, no matter what. This makes it real.
No matter how bad things are (or often, because of that), one of the party might go nuts and try to rape and/or murder one of the others.
When the survivors are down to one man and two women, one of the women will die. I suppose this is because only true love as opposed to a skeevy ménage à trois can triumph.
Disaster situations reverse the social order. (see The Admirable Crichton) Your best friend in a disaster (movie) is a hardened con with the ruthless will to survive. The social superior will turn out to be useless or worse, while the wallflower or geek will show hitherto untapped reserves of intelligence, character and competency.
You can also outrun the terminator (line between night and day), which is portrayed as the boundary between pitch-black and high noon. Also, if you’re on foot and being chased by a car into a tunnel, you will always make it into the tunnel before the car catches up, no matter how fast the car is or how far you have to go to get to the tunnel.
All disasters, whether natural or manmade, when approaching in the form of a fireball or some such, can easily be avoided by ducking into a nearby alcove. You will take no damage, even if the statue you shoved into the open is partially or completely melted and you had no actual barrier between you and the fireball (or whatever).
The guy who clearly died in the explosion/fireball/evil animal attack but whose body you never saw is still alive and will save everyone. (But then end up dead anyway.)
If you are a good-looking woman, you can rest assured that even if you suffer a life-threatening injury, your makeup will always stay in perfect condition. You will even get *more *beautiful as you approach death.
Don’t be anywhere near the Capitol Records building. It is always the first target on the west-coast for any sort of cataclysm, from martians, to earthquakes, to lava.
And fergodsakes, just don’t live in or around Manhattan. For some reason it’s a Tsunami / Meteorite / 30-Story Monster / Ice-Age magnet.
If you are a high ranking official who pooh-poohed the warnings of the lower level employee, you will be given a chance to save someone’s life. If you take that chance, you will be successful, but die in the effort.
All meteors and asteroids that enter the Earth’s atmosphere will appear as slow moving fireballs visible to pretty much everyone on Earth. Meanwhile, any comets that pass through the solar system (signal the arrival of some sort of phenomenon) will pass by so quickly that if you blink, you miss it.
If the nuns are wearing their habits, do not get on the airplane (or boat) with them. You may survive, but your survival will be harrowing and cliche ridden.
Bombs/doomsday machines/booby traps always have a visible count-down light display that shows the seconds remaining until they explode. They can always be disarmed/disconnected/defused, but never until there are five seconds or fewer remaining on the timer (preferably one).
And if there are both nuns and a little girl who needs a transplant of some sort and is travelling for the purpose of receiving it on your aircraft (or boat), take the next flight (or sailing). Nothing good will happen to a vessel carrying both nuns and transplant-needing little girls.