catastrophe vs hardship

catastrophe and hardship both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
catastrophe	Yes	No	No	No
hardship	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, hardship is a hypernym of catastrophe; that is, hardship is a word with a broader meaning than catastrophe:

Other hypernyms of catastrophe include adversity, hard knocks.

catastrophe (noun)	hardship (noun)
an event resulting in great loss and misfortune	something hard to endure
a sudden violent change in the earth's surface	something that causes or entails suffering
a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune	a state of misfortune or affliction