From the vault · ← A companion to Disasters by the Decade
The oldest films on the list are old enough to belong to everyone. Of the 18 released before 1931, 9 could be found and cleared — they run here, 1900 to 1930, with one reel of raw archive footage, every frame in the US public domain and streamed straight from the Internet Archive with its paperwork attached. The earliest are not fiction at all: a tripod set down in the wreckage, eight days after the storm. Then the studios noticed what a crowd will pay to watch.
· House lights down · every clip is muted until you ask ·
Walter R. Booth wrecks two model trains on a mountain ledge — the oldest staged catastrophe in the dataset, forty-eight seconds of engineered calamity.
On screen — Model trains meet head-on beside a tunnel mouth; carriages tumble down the slope. Silent picture — no soundtrack exists.
Internet Archive · a-railway-collision-1900-directed-by-walter-r.-booth · tagged Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Released 1900; US public domain — published before 1931.
Eight days after the deadliest hurricane in American history, an Edison crew set a tripod among the debris of Broadway. Disaster cinema before anyone thought to invent it: the camera simply arrived.
On screen — Work crews pick through the wreckage of the Galveston hurricane, September 1900. Silent actuality — no soundtrack exists.
Internet Archive · silent-searching-ruins-on-broadway-galveston-for-dead-bodies · tagged no license tag · Released 1900; US public domain — published before 1931.
Not on the film list — raw reels from the Prelinger Archives. Refugees, tent kitchens and freestanding chimneys: the same catastrophe at street level, unedited.
On screen — Displaced residents and ruined buildings; the original print jumps and rolls. Silent actuality — no soundtrack exists.
Internet Archive · SanFranc1906 · tagged CC Public Domain · Released 1906; US public domain — published before 1931.
The dataset’s first earthquake: actuality reels shot in the smouldering weeks after 18 April 1906, cut together from the footage that survived.
On screen — Pans across ruined San Francisco streets, toppled facades and burned-out blocks. Silent footage — the score on this transfer was added by the compiler.
Internet Archive · AfterThetheSanFranciscoEarthquake1906 · tagged CC BY 3.0 · Released 1906; US public domain — published before 1931.
Winsor McCay spent nearly two years drawing the torpedoing of the Lusitania — some 25,000 drawings. The first animated documentary, and still furious.
On screen — Animated re-enactment: the liner steams into frame, the torpedo strikes, the ship goes down by the bow. Silent picture — any sound on this transfer is an added score.
Internet Archive · the-sinking-of-the-lusitania-1918 · tagged Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Released 1918; US public domain — published before 1931.
Michael Curtiz, two decades before Casablanca, burns a biblical city with thousands of Viennese extras. The oldest divine judgment on the books.
On screen — Fire rains on the city; crowds flee through collapsing colonnades; the ruins smoke. Silent picture — any sound on this transfer is an added score.
Internet Archive · silent-sodom-und-gomorrha · tagged no license tag · Released 1922; US public domain — published before 1931.
Lillian Gish takes the veil; Vesuvius objects. A romantic melodrama that settles its third act with an eruption and a burst dam.
On screen — The climax: the volcano erupts, the dam gives way, and tinted crowds evacuate into the smoke. Silent picture — any sound on this transfer is an added score.
Internet Archive · ptp_the-white-sister_henry-king_dvd_x264_mkv_716x480_252423 · tagged no license tag · Released 1923; US public domain — published before 1931.
Fox’s dramatisation of the 1889 dam failure that killed 2,209 people. The dataset files it under Floods; Pennsylvania filed it under memory.
On screen — The South Fork dam gives way and the flood takes the valley below. Silent picture — any sound on this transfer is an added score.
Internet Archive · the-johnstown-flood-1926-by-irving-cummings · tagged Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Released 1926; US public domain — published before 1931.
Warner Bros. answers the Great War with the Great Flood. The deluge was real enough to injure stuntmen; sound was arriving, and so was the water.
On screen — Lightning splits the rock; the storm builds toward the breaking of the flood. Part-talkie — synchronised score with talking sequences.
Internet Archive · noahs-ark-1928_202401 · tagged Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Released 1928; US public domain — published before 1931.
Cecil B. DeMille throws a masquerade aboard a zeppelin, then hits it with a storm. The last film here to enter the public domain — 1 January 2026.
On screen — The costume ball in the dirigible; the storm; the guests take to parachutes. Sound film — original recorded dialogue and score.
Internet Archive · madam-satan_1930 · tagged no license tag · Released 1930; US public domain — published before 1931.
· End of programme · 1900 – 1930 ·
The paperwork ↓House lights up
An Internet Archive license tag is a claim, not a clearance — the same search that found these reels also returned a 1989 documentary tagged as public domain. So nothing here shipped on a tag. Every clip had to pass all four tests: released before 1931, which makes it US public domain by age in 2026; an item date that corroborates the release year; no YouTube rips or trailer-dump collections; and a playable file. License tags were recorded as supporting evidence only.
The dataset holds 18 films released before 1931. Nine cleared. Nine did not — they are listed below, because what was left out is as much a part of the method as what got in. Famous “public domain” disaster titles from later decades (Night of the Living Dead, The Last Man on Earth…) are lapsed-renewal cases that need title-by-title verification, so none of them appear here.
| Reel | Film | Year | Source item | Tag on item | Basis for clearance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | A Railway Collision | 1900 | a-railway-collision-1900-directed-by-walter-r.-booth | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | Published 1900 — PD by age |
| 02 | Searching Ruins on Broadway, Galveston, for Dead Bodies | 1900 | silent-searching-ruins-on-broadway-galveston-for-dead-bodies | no license tag | Published 1900 — PD by age |
| 03 | San Francisco Earthquake Aftermath, Part 1 · archive footage | 1906 | SanFranc1906 | CC Public Domain | Published 1906 — PD by age |
| 04 | San Francisco: Aftermath of Earthquake | 1906 | AfterThetheSanFranciscoEarthquake1906 | CC BY 3.0 | Published 1906 — PD by age |
| 05 | The Sinking of the Lusitania | 1918 | the-sinking-of-the-lusitania-1918 | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | Published 1918 — PD by age |
| 06 | Sodom and Gomorrah | 1922 | silent-sodom-und-gomorrha | no license tag | Published 1922 — PD by age |
| 07 | The White Sister | 1923 | ptp_the-white-sister_henry-king_dvd_x264_mkv_716x480_252423 | no license tag | Published 1923 — PD by age |
| 08 | The Johnstown Flood | 1926 | the-johnstown-flood-1926-by-irving-cummings | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | Published 1926 — PD by age |
| 09 | Noah's Ark | 1928 | noahs-ark-1928_202401 | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | Published 1928 — PD by age |
| 10 | Madam Satan | 1930 | madam-satan_1930 | no license tag | Published 1930 — PD by age |
The other nine pre-1931 films in the dataset, and why they are not on this page.