Tactics Harpo contrived with dire outcome

Usage examples of catastrophic.

In a bull Regnans in Excelsis, which was to have a catastrophic effect on the fortunes of English Catholics, he formally excommunicated the English Queen and released her subjects from their allegiance to her.

Depending on how you looked at it, life there was either a catastrophic deracination or a useful dress rehearsal for life in the American inner cities to which many of its inhabitants would ultimately relocate.

By the Treaty of London he surrendered virtually all of western France from Calais to the Pyrenees, and agreed to an augmented and catastrophic ransom of 4 million gold ecus, payable at fixed installments, to be guaranteed by the delivery of forty royal and noble hostages, of whom Enguerrand de Coucy was designated as one.

Otherwise time ergs in vast amounts would collect at one particular continuum and the result would be catastrophic.

But the since there were maybe ten thousand fans in the whole country, if each and every one of them bought a copy of your paperback and no one else did, the sales figure would still be catastrophic.

Nevertheless, the simple facts about Antarctica are really strange and difficult to explain without invoking some notion of sudden, catastrophic and geologically recent change.

Critical mass was a shiny, polished concept from the gray halls of the universities and space agencies on Earth, but it had its dark side-a side discussed only in hushed conversations among the planners who hung out during late hours in what passed for dim bars in Mars City: they would have to reach critical mass before they could survive a catastrophic shutdown of the supply lines from Earth-a shutdown that could happen any day because of an economic collapse Earthside, a spacecraft disaster at Crystal City or Phobos, or worse.

I had become the spokesman for HealthExtras, a company based in Maryland that offers low-cost supplemental insurance to cover nonmedical expenses in the event of a catastrophic illness or disability.

He was such a successful swindler because he himself could not, even after two convictions, understand what was inevitably catastrophic about a Ponzi scheme.

Hu Jintao came third, counted as worse than the leaders of the catastrophic regimes in Zimbabwe and Guinea and the Wahabi Islamist totalitarianism of Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, the Egyptians know that Saddam believes a new Arab-Israeli war would be to his benefit and is trying to stir one up--something that would be catastrophic for their own interests.

TV images of diebacks -- the sudden, catastrophic collapse of whole life support structures on a regional level, the Four Horsemen writ large.

Mira Corp office was a small room set aside for backup documentation on nonelectronic media in case of catastrophic computer failure on Greentrees.

His acquisition of nuclear weapons could result in a new Great Depression and the death of millions of people, and the risks of such catastrophic outcomes demand action.

A world had been born and sent upon its way, but its unmooring was somewhat catastrophic, though it might not have seemed so on the outside.