10 Dumbest Characters In Disaster Movies

Current events have certainly prompted film fans to dive back into the cinematic back catalogue of disaster movies for some perverse "comfort," and as both reality and cinema have proven to us over the decades, nothing brings out human stupidity quite like a world-threatening cataclysm.

Though disaster movies are typically fronted by smart, resourceful heroes who guide their fellow survivors to safety, it's practically expected that there will be at least a couple of certifiable idiots in the bunch, leading others astray and, more often than not, paying the ultimate mortal price for it.

These are the 10 disaster movie characters who, above all others, led themselves and those around them to their sure doom, and even in the unlikely event they actually survived, they sure as hell didn't deserve to.

These are the characters who left viewers screaming at the screen in disbelief, begging them to have even the faintest shred of self-preservation instinct. Instead, they willingly waltzed to their brutal, often prolonged demise...

Legendarily trashy pandemic thriller Outbreak features a number of pathologically stupid characters, but none more so than the man responsible for the whole mess, James "Jimbo" Scott (Patrick Dempsey).

Jimbo works at an animal testing lab and ends up infected with the Motaba virus while attempting to sell an infected monkey on the black market.

For starters, the monkey spits in Jimbo's face, fatally infecting him, after which he tries to sell the monkey to a pet store owner who get scratched on the arm and also infected. The pet store owner's blood then accidentally splashes over a technician's face in a lab, infecting him and allowing it to spread.

Jimbo eventually sets the monkey free in a Californian forest where it's free to further spread its disease, oh, and despite clearly being deathly ill on his flight home, Jimbo nevertheless kisses his girlfriend passionately upon arriving, infecting her too.

Basically, it's all Jimbo's fault: he's the vector which allows the virus to spread and kill a lot of people.

While he obviously didn't know what the monkey was carrying, it's safe to say that illegally selling exotic animals is a risky business at the best of times, and he took no precautions whatsoever to protect himself or others.