Disaster Area

"Many worlds have now banned their act altogether"

- The impact of Disaster Area

Disaster Area are antagonists in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They are the "biggest, loudest, richest rock band in the history of... History itself." The band consists of many members, Hotblack Desiato is the most famous. Ford Prefect was also implied to have started the band, but it went from simple rebellion, to mindless violence in his absence, meaning he didn't start the current band.

Their songs often follow love stories, in a budding relationship, but then the moon the couple meet under explodes, presumably dooming that world.

Disaster Area are famous for their sundives, they practice violent and unethical dives round the suns of the planets they orbit. They have outer space jet skis which they dive right over that sun, and narrowly impact, and those riders who survive die, not of the sun, but of sexual exhaustion on the parties after.

The band have performed several unethical acts, they play their songs in orbit, often around a totally different planet than the one they are on, and they are never on the planet - because one wouldn't survive the tuning up, because in size and shape the drumkits and guitars resemble Manhattan city. The current members of the band are either insane, outcasts or criminals - and this doesn't matter because the band is often played by a team of robots, which means that the procession will be better.

The band members are also very prideful, aggressive and violent - when they play, they often cause shockwaves of sound, which causes earthquakes around those planets they orbit, followed by tsunami, solar flares and other such disasters.

When approached by environmentalists who are concerned about the planets' environments, the members of Disaster Area pay hitmen to shoot the environmentalists, and they care little about the expensive ships they use for the sundive, regardless of any living beings that may be in them.

This is evidenced, when Zaphod calls Disaster Area to say to not do the sundive because Zaphod is on board, the band just say hello, and say good to meet him, and throw the ship into the sun anyway. However, Arthur finds a teleportation device, and ejects all of them.

Very few of the planets' inhabitants survive a Disaster Area performance, but some survivors of planet Kakrafoon claim that a thousand-mile desert jumped up in the air, flipped over and fell down again. Also, one reporter said this, regardless of all the deaths and chaos caused, was "a good gig."