The game features a variety of manmade disasters, that can be avoided with diligent care and player choices. However, player choices is also what creates manmade disasters.

There are three types of manmade disasters:

1) Rioting:
Whenever there isn't sufficient consumer goods to meet the demands of all colonists at a consumption cycle, there is a chance a riot occurs. The chance is based on the porportion of people who got the good to those who didn't. (total pop - got = didn't; didn't / total pop as %, is the chance). If you have a riot, all structures take about 10-20% of maximum HPs as damage over time and is considered a negative random event, and thus suffer a morale drop. 

Can be avoided by ensuring sufficient goods are available to meet the entire population and ensuring that you don't just produce a small quantity of goods; in many ways it is better to have no goods, than just a few goods. So there is a risk-reward system in place for making goods to service some of the population for the morale benefits (as discussed in Morale.txt) but there runs a risk of a potential riot if the RNG doesn't favor you. 

2) Containment Breach
Whenever a lab, that is currently researching a project, takes damage, there is a risk of containment breach. The risk is based on current damage and current health of the lab at the time of the damage (curr dam + (total hp - current hp) / total hp as a percentage). Thus as the lab takes more damage, the chance of containment breach increases as well. If there is a containment breach, the type of breach is determined by the research topic. If you were researching weapons, it will be an explosion. If you were researching biological improvements, it will be a plague. If you were researching energy or power production, it will be an EMP. This breach affects all structures near the lab. 

An explosion deals about 30-50% of the Lab's Maximum HP to all structures near it, including the lab. The EMP has a range equal to the structure's maximum HP / 100, also EMPing the lab. The plague will make people extremely sick and death rates will increase dramatically for a number of ticks equal to maximum lab hp / 250. Thus, if an Advanced Lab suffers a containment breach, it will provide a much nastier effect than a standard lab, as it has far more HP.

To avoid this, you should shut off your labs the moment they start taking damage, or proactively disable them if you know a disaster is going to occur on it or near it. It may be tempting to keep researching to avoid losing the data, but if the structure has a containment breach, you will regret your decision in not disabling it. Researching requires a safe and calm environment, and upsetting that can have serious consequences.

3) Rain of Fire
The Survivalists can construct a special rocket payload called a Hunter Killer. It can seek out starship components or satellites of the other faction and destroy them. Similarly, the Terraformer's Mass Driver can be used to destroy enemy missiles or their starship components or satellites. This however has an unintended consequence of a Rain of Fire.

All those materials from the downed space-stuff has to go somewhere. Typically it causes a rain of fire over an area, that takes the equivalent of many small meteorite impacts, except that Meteor Defenses cannot shoot them down, and they don't cause holes on impact. But, they do deal damage on impact, hurting any vehicles or structures caught in this man-made meteor shower.

The obvious way to avoid it is to not blow up missiles or space-stuff, but that isn't always avoidable. The rain of fire appears randomly on the map, so you might not get it by hit, but then again you might.