There's a difference between taking advantage of a catastrophe and deliberately manufacturing one.
In The Miracle Metal: Rise of the Calypso, Ocean Morales uncovers a document outlining a plan to unleash plagues upon the world. The objective is population reduction, widespread panic, and ultimately, a society vulnerable enough to be manipulated by one man.
What interests me about this particular kind of evil isn't simply the willingness to cause suffering.
It's the calculation behind it.
When human lives become variables in an equation, suffering can be rationalized as a necessary expense. A population reduced to desperation becomes easier to manipulate, and the people orchestrating that desperation can present themselves as the solution.
The catastrophe is no longer the problem to be solved.
It's the mechanism.
I've always found villains who genuinely rationalize their atrocities more disturbing than those who simply enjoy destruction.
I'm curious how others see this in dystopian fiction. Is the greater horror the destruction itself, or the ideology that allows someone to justify deliberately causing it?