The chapter provides an extensive literature review on contemporary extreme events and emergencies with territorial relevance. The chapter explores how traditional disaster studies approaches have been challenged by emerging paradigms to understand extreme events. It identifies mainstream approaches in response to disasters and highlights their shortcomings. During the mid-twentieth century, the hazard paradigm dominated disaster research by treating disasters as events originating from natural forces outside human control, and proposing scientific technological advancements, zoning management, and forecasting as solutions. Based on critical social sciences trajectories—critical disaster studies, environmental justice, political ecology, urban political ecology and decolonial approaches—and delving deep into several contexts, the chapter frames disasters as socio-spatial products that cannot be understood if separated from existing inequalities and power unbalances. The case of Terra dei Fuochi in Southern Italy is instrumental in illuminating the nexus between extreme events and pollution. This chapter aims at bridging the gap between extreme events and critical social sciences scholarship that engages with social and spatial inequality, not limited to assessing impacts or offering recommendations.