1. A computer program product comprising: a computer readable storage medium having computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code comprising a computer usable program code configured to: determine that a population of candidate solutions for an optimization problem has prematurely converged during a metaheuristic optimization run; determine a cause for premature convergence of the population based, at least in part, on an analysis of the metaheuristic optimization run, wherein the analysis of the metaheuristic optimization run comprises at least one of: a determination that one or more candidate solutions in the population of candidate solutions is associated with one or more tokens; an analysis of the history of the metaheuristic optimization run; and an analysis of a set of genes associated with each of the one or more candidate solutions in the population of candidate solutions; select a first cataclysm strategy of a plurality of cataclysm strategies based, at least in part, on one of the cause of the premature convergence and a history of the metaheuristic optimization run; and simulate a cataclysm based, at least in part, on the first cataclysm strategy.