For the denizens of Lisbon the 1st of November 1755 was to be spent paying respects to their dead by participating in one of the most important Catholic Church celebrations. At 9:40 as everyone was already participating in the mass, an earthquake began. The imposing church towers caved in at the foundations and were the first to fall, burying thousands of people underneath. Mere moments later a colossal tsunami emerged from the ocean, devouring hordes of terrified believers. Finally there came the fires which consumed the ruins of the city. On that day an inconceivable apocalypse leveled the city, killing tens of thousands of its inhabitants in the process. People would ponder the matter of why would God in his wisdom punish the city. After all, the Lisbon of the time was renowned for its piety and having resisted the reformation and religious wars it stood as the bastion of Catholicism. This tragedy echoed throughout 18th century Europe. Voltaire wrote about it in his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster in which he dared to ask that question that was on everyone’s mind: “Why Lisbon?”. The answer was not the divine, punishing will, but a natural disaster. Its reasons were not to be found in sin but in the falsity of the world order of that time, built on the shaky foundations of imaginings and magical thinking. Both the text and the earthquake itself made significant contributions to the establishment of enlightenment thought and laid the groundwork for human and citizen rights, emancipation, the development of scientific reasoning or the questioning of the feudal system. Lisbon was built anew, in accordance with new ways of thinking, by marquis de Bombal, one of the greatest heroes of Portugal known today as the creator of the first methods of crisis management.