Hollywood uses real life tragedies in two ways – gutwrenching drama, often aimed at award season, or as pure popcorn fodder. It saves on character and world building if you plunk your lovers (or your action heroes) in the midst of some preset horror.

Your mileage may vary on how comfortable you are with such stories. It's a difficult line to maneuver. Why is "Pearl Harbor" wrong, but so many other World War II swashbucklers are all right? What events are untouchable for sillier fictions?

One of them might have been Chernobyl. Yet here we are, with "Chernobyl Diaries," a "found footage" horror film picking the bones of a catastrophic man-made disaster. But can you blame them? It's just sitting there, a gruesome ghost town, ripe for any intrepid reporter, reality television show or photographer to explore and feed our curiosity.  And there is (as evidenced by the trailer's marketing) an entire generation (or two?) that has no idea Chernobyl ever happened. Why not make a horror film about it? There's plenty of reasons not to ... and plenty of cool, rational reasons to do so.

So, in the spirit of "no sacred cows" and "everything, ever, is up for grabs," here are some other man-made disasters that could make for some intriguing horror films ... or award bait movies. Your call on that moral conundrum, screenwriters!

1. The Bhopal disaster

Chernobyl wasn't the only industrial nightmare of the 1980s. The Bhopal disaster occurred December 2-3, 1984, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries. (The death toll also included 2,000 animals.) What could have caused such a horrific toll? A major gas and chemical leak at a pesticide plant that dumped poisonous gas into the poorest neighborhoods of Bhopal, India. Thousands of people died within hours. Others were trampled trying to escape. Medical staff were unprepared.  Food was poisoned, and thus ran short. Even the trees died. To this day, people are still suffering health problems as a result of the disaster. Like Chernobyl, it's sort of an ongoing, endlessly renewing horror film subject ... but if some intrepid director were to tackle it, at least people might remember, and spur on additional relief efforts.

2. The BP Oil Spill

Two years later, and we have mutant fish, crabs and shrimp, as well as record deaths of baby dolphins. Now, think about what else lives in the Gulf – dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, coral – and mutate it. Imagine a person falling in or eating a mutant shrimp. Perhaps species could combine into things we couldn't even predict. It pains us to say it, but the Gulf has become a bubbling pot of salty horror just waiting for someone to script up.

3. The Boston Molasses Disaster

Explosions and tidal waves are scary enough. But what if the wave rushing towards you wasn't water, but hot, sticky, impenetrable molasses? That's what happened in Boston in 1919. A molasses tank containing more than 2 million gallons of the stuff collapsed, dumping a wave of it over the North End of Boston. Buildings were crushed, a railway car was knocked over and people, horses and dogs were caught up, stuck and drowned/choked to death. Rescue workers had difficulty aiding the wounded because of the clogged streets and the dead were impossible to identify. It's like the universe wanted to prove there was a worse way to drown than in water. Let's see a filmmaker prove they could make an even more gasp-inducing experience than "Buried" by giving you a first person recreation of it.

4. The Great Train Wreck of 1856

This disaster initially reads like a math problem: What happens when two trains, traveling on the same track in opposite directions, hit a blind corner? And what happens if the boilers make direct contact with one another? An explosion. But just in case that's not actually horrific enough, it's said that the screams of the victims was as loud as the blast itself. Neighboring towns could see the blaze, and when they went to help, the heat was so intense that they couldn't get close enough to do anything but observe the "protruding limbs" of people in the rail cars. The "Final Destination" franchise has nothing on that image.

5. Lake Peigneur

Let's step away from the casualty list and just tackle one that's bizarre. On November 20, 1980, the Diamond Salt Mine and a Texaco oil rig were both happily drilling away at Lake Peigneur – the latter underneath, the former up top.  No one quite knows what happened since "all evidence was destroyed or washed in the ensuing maelstrom," but basically the two made a hole in the lake, creating a whirlpool that sucked in the oil rig, eleven barges, trees and 65 acres of landscape. The flow of the Delcambre Canal was reversed, and created a record-holding (albeit temporary) waterfall for Louisiana. Water flowing into the salt mines created geysers. Amazingly, the only loss of life was that of three dogs. But come on ... who knows what was awakened or what door was opened when you put a massive hole in a lake? "The Mist" only hinted at the gruesome delights that can come from such a rift.

6. Sverdlovsk anthrax leak

Did you know there was a "biological Chernobyl" in the former Soviet Union? Probably not, because they denied it for years. But on April 2, 1979, a military facility in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinberg) accidentally released a bunch of anthrax. And it wasn't just any old anthrax, but the most powerful strain in the Soviet arsenal. Due to the massive cover-up, no one knows exactly how many victims there were, but there were at least 105. Just in case an anthrax leak wasn't toxic enough, it's worth noting that there was (though information appears to be scarce) some kind of nuclear accident there in 1958. We're not sure what the combination of anthrax and radiation might produce, but we're willing to bet it wouldn't be friendly, beautiful or good for anyone who met it.