Catastrophism

Catastrophism, at the barest level, is a hypothesis that holds catastrophic events, such as impacts between asteroidal, cometary, or planetary bodies and the Earth, are responsible for the geologic and biologic formation of the planet as it is today, as well as the re-shaping of human culture and history, and, in some forms, asserts that accounts of these events may be found in ancient religious texts, as per the example of the Great Flood described in various world traditions (or the sinking of supposed lost continents, such as Atlantis, Kumari Kandam, Lemuria, or Mu). The term "catastrophism" should not be taken to refer to a particular theory or understanding, so much as it encompasses many disparate hypotheses that principally argue catastrophic events are the principal cause and originating point for further global (and local) developments.

Catastrophists

Author	Hypothesis (in Summary)	Primary Text
William Whiston	Cometary impacts	A New Theory of the Earth, 1696, http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/earththeory/id/1468
Ignatius Donnelly	Cometary impact, c. 10000 BC	Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, 1883, https://archive.org/details/ragnarokagefire00donngoog
William Comyns Beaumont	The movement of Saturn caused the Noachian Deluge, etc.	The Mysterious Comet: Or the Origin, Building up, and Destruction of Worlds, By Means of Cometary Contacts, 1932
Hugh Auchincloss Brown	Regular planetary axial shift caused by the accumulation of polar ice	Popular Awakening Concerning the Impending Flood, 1948
Immanuel Velikovsky	Changes to the orbit and axis of Earth caused by a near collision with the planet Venus after it's ejection from Jupiter	Worlds in Collision, 1950, https://amzn.to/VIll25
Adam D. Barber	Axial shift causing a global flood and other disasters	The Coming Disaster Worse than the H-Bomb, 1954, https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=apopheniacs-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=e3d1548af2888187b886b13b00d6e157&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=The%20Coming%20Disaster%20Worse%20than%20the%20H-Bomb
Charles H. Hapgood	Earth Crust Displacement	Earth's Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science, 1958, https://www.amazon.com/Earths-Shifting-Crust-Scientific-Mysteries/dp/B000KDLPLA/?tag=apopheniacs-20
Dolph Earl Hooker	Ice rings in Earth's orbit hailed down onto the planetary surface	Those Astounding Ice Ages, 1958
Emil Sepic	Axial shift	The Imminent Shift of the Earth's Axis, 1960, rev. ed. through 1995
Chan Thomas	Periodic crossing of galactic "null zones" provokes shifts in Earth's electromagnetic fields, increasing the viscosity of the crust, causing rapid drift	The Adam and Eve Story: The History of Cataclysms, 1965, 1993, https://www.amazon.com/Adam-Eve-Story-History-Cataclysms/dp/1884600026/?tag=apopheniacs-20
Stanislav Szukalski	A global deluge posited in his grander theory of Zermatism	"I CLAIM THE WORLD!" (unpub.)