A small but growing body of literature is concerned about the mental exhaustion and anxiety experienced by scientists working in the field of climate and the environment. Their foreknowledge of coming disasters and lack of means to prevent them appears central to their malaise. Having said that, the mechanisms at work in the interweaving of psychological life and social practices that transform researchers who enjoy their work into anxious experts is not well understood. This article takes a closer look at the issue, drawing on the experience of scientists who specialise in observing dangerous natural phenomena and have long been confronted with the prospect of disaster. Using the methods of sociological enquiry and discourse analysis, it reveals how different logics, discourses, and injunctions intertwine to render untenable the subjective position of the researcher placed in a situation of expertise. Disasters, hybrid and complex by nature, confront the researcher with the limits of his or her own knowledge and, more generally, with those of the modern scientific project.