Principal features of the behavior of materials subjected to short pulsed loads are common for a number of seemingly different physical processes including such as dynamic fracture, yielding, cavitation, etc. In this paper examples illustrating typical dynamic effects inherent in these processes are analyzed. A unified approach to fracture and yielding in solids is proposed. Examples of different physical processes considered in the presentation show the fundamental importance of investigating the incubation processes preparing abrupt structural changes in continua under intense pulsed impacts. As an application of this approach some of the effects of anomalous behavior of yielding in materials subjected to intense short pulsed impacts (collisions with elementary particles) under elevated temperatures will be discussed. It will be shown that for high rate loaded material, increase of a sample temperature results in increase of critical yielding stress. This can result in brittle micro-cracking and damage of heated material irradiated by high energy particles.