famine vs disaster

famine and disaster both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
famine	Yes	No	No	No
disaster	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, disaster is a hypernym of famine; that is, disaster is a word with a broader meaning than famine:

famine: a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
disaster: an event resulting in great loss and misfortune

Other hypernyms of famine include calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, tragedy.

famine (noun)	disaster (noun)
a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death	an act that has disastrous consequences
an acute insufficiency	an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
	a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune