Mechanism for high geographical change but not killing everything
Premise: Earth has a magical cataclysm that pulls up new mountains, pushes down parts of landmasses, and generally reshapes Europe enough to make it unrecognizable (to the average person looking at a world map) in a period of weeks.
Problem: I'm trying to stick to more 'rational' magic that obeys most laws of physics (and with zero unexplained handwavium), and all the ways I can think of to do that much geographical change would probably end up kicking up so much dust and debris that it'd choke out the sun, killing plant life, and then everything that depends on plants.
Limitations: I want as few laws of physics broken as possible in the causal action, but for the result to be able to be explained entirely by physics. This means something like a magical push on tectonic plate ignoring strength/inertia/mass issues but with a result of making plates crash together and pucker into mountains like they would naturally do in response to that stimulus.
Goal: Make the geography/shape of Europe unrecognizable on a world map in a matter of 30 days, and have at least some of European humanity survive (while still living in Europe).
Can you think of any plausible, semi-rational ways to achieve this end?
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If the cataclysm focuses on the center of Europe, and the landmasses surrounding it pull in to fill the gap of what was destroyed, then you should have surviving people, animals, plants, etc in those outer sections. I'm imagining something like the center being sucked down into oblivion and the rest being drawn to close the hole.
If you need it, perhaps the extra mass from the lost center can go down and around the surviving parts then rise up to be landfill (it will surround what is left of Europe). That land will be dead but will fill in with life within a few decades (perhaps not all microbes die, so at least plant life and insects can come back faster, which means humans and livestock can deliberately move there).
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