How do natural and man-made disasters faced by central bankers in their impressionable years influence their decision-making? Using data on a large panel of central bankers from developing and developed countries, we find that central bankers who have experienced a larger number of natural as well as man-made disasters tend to act in a more conservative way. In particular, the experience of famines is the most traumatizing and influential. The results are robust to the inclusion of control variables and alternative measures of disasters, and reveal strong behavioural differences when comparing before and after the 2008 financial crisis.