catastrophic failure

基本解释

The cache must be nonvolatile to ensure that log data is protected in the event of a catastrophic failure, such as loss of power.
高速緩存必須是非易失的以確保在發生災難性故障（例如停電）時保護日志數據。
Problems such as corrupt data on the disk, power failures, and system crashes can all cause catastrophic failure of the resizing process.
磁磐上的不可靠數據、電源故障、以及系統崩潰的等問題可能會導致調整過程發生災難性故障。
By adding extra layers of redundancy, the probability of such a catastrophic failure can -- in theory at least -- be made too small to worry about.
在增加額外的冗餘層後，理論上，這種災難性的系統失傚的事故發生的可能性就非常非常小了。

"Its failure could have resulted in a 1930s-style global financial and economic meltdown, with catastrophic implications for production, income and jobs,".
Because it says, your program will still give you a value, but it may not be what you intended, and you can't always tell, and that may propagate it's way down through a whole bunch of other computations before it causes some catastrophic failure.
因爲這意味著，你的程序依然會返廻一個值，但是這個值可能不是你想要的，你可能還分辨不出來，而且這種情況會傳播,結果會沿著正果計算過程傳播下去,直到産生一個災難性的錯誤。
麻省理工公開課 - 計算機科學及編程導論課程節選
That is what makes metal so fascinating, because metallic bonding allows the atoms to glide over one another without resulting in catastrophic failure.
所以這就使得金屬具有了特別的性質，因爲金屬鍵使得原子可以,在彼此之間流動,而不會千萬災難性的後果。
麻省理工公開課 - 固態化學導論課程節選

Yet the record will prove that active management is a catastrophic failure to achieve that goal.
FORBES: Playing With Active Money Managment Is A Losing Game