In Superman (1978), Lex Luthor planned to trigger a catastrophic earthquake with a nuclear warhead, causing much of the west coast to plunge into the sea and creating a brand-new coastline out of previously worthless desert land— desert land owned, of course, by Lex Luthor. The Gene Hackman character would corner the market on new oceanfront property and become a billionaire, all at the minimal cost of millions of lives.

In Naomi Klein's landmark book, Shock Doctrine, she details a new theory of economic opportunism dubbed "disaster capitalism," that seems to describe Lex's plans to a T. Klein defines her theory as the means by which corporations and governments use the cover of great disasters and upheavals to enact their own social or financial schemes and by them, profit.

Here are 12 instances of disaster capitalism at work in the modern world, where it seems there's nothing but Lex Luthors all around and not a single Superman to be seen.