10.5

May 3, 2004 8:51 PM

10.5If you're like me, you probably just finished watching 10.5, and are still giggling at the "disastrous" screenplay and campy drama. Well, the science is in: Magnitude 10.5 is impossible, brick buildings would collapse long before the Space Needle, fault lines don't follow train tracks, California will not slide into the sea, bottomless pits do not swallow up unfortunate red-shirted extras, and for crying out loud, Lex, don't use nuclear warheads either to blow the tectonic plates apart or weld them shut.
posted by brownpau (28 comments total)

I liked how the chasm stopped just short of swallowing up the characters. I figure that's where they ran out of CGI money.
posted by trondant at 9:07 PM on May 3, 2004

I just hope the EMP comes crashing down.
posted by xmutex at 9:15 PM on May 3, 2004

I could have told you that brick buildings would collapse
first. But, California will so slide into the sea. The nuclear bomb that Al-Qaeda has sunk in Yellowstone Lake will blow the whole friggin' caldera, and CA will be done for.

I'm tellin' ya.
posted by troutfishing at 9:22 PM on May 3, 2004

Hmm. I was too busy working in my yard on one of my many projects to watch this disaster porn. I like disaster porn too. So it was really bad disaster porn? That makes me feel better.
posted by bargle at 9:24 PM on May 3, 2004

Wait, so a movie actually cares more about plot and special effects than scientific accuracy??
posted by Spacelegoman at 9:29 PM on May 3, 2004

brownpau> don't use nuclear warheads either to blow the tectonic plates apart or weld them shut.

I wouldn't codify that in to law. It might be worth a shot. In the US. While I'm in Australia. Away from the coast.
posted by snarfodox at 9:31 PM on May 3, 2004

Heh. The only reason I've heard about 10.5 at all is that I've encountered several newspaper and radio stories lately about how inaccurate the science is.
posted by hattifattener at 9:42 PM on May 3, 2004

Trout knows about YellowStone----BRAVO!
But Al Qaeda bomb involved?
Not likely.
I heard it is a natural occurance inciting earth changes.
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:48 PM on May 3, 2004

ilsa and I have been heckling and enjoying the process, but how, even as bad as this thing is, did the editors not notice the news channel with the crawler announcing "Marshal Law"?
posted by shagoth at 9:51 PM on May 3, 2004

As for movies with science accuracy.............
The Day After Tomorrow.
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:52 PM on May 3, 2004

Good lord that was so *bad* it was *good*!! This has got to be intentional, it can't possibly be so campy on it's own.
posted by riffola at 9:56 PM on May 3, 2004

10.5? Feh. Let me know when it goes up to 11.
posted by SPrintF at 9:59 PM on May 3, 2004

As an East coaster, I really enjoyed the movie, except I could have used some Dramamine for that awful, shaky camerawork and 24-style splitscreens. If this ever comes out on DVD, it will occupy a proud place on my shelf beside Showgirls.
posted by MegoSteve at 10:18 PM on May 3, 2004

dammit, as a structural engineer and a berkeley resident i cannot believe i managed to miss the golden gate falling down! oh well, i'll just have to go back to sitting, twiddling my thumbs, and waiting for the hayward fault to move me further north.
posted by NGnerd at 11:01 PM on May 3, 2004

I...

I love you, SPrintF.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:52 PM on May 3, 2004

The movie and acting was so awful it was astonishing... what saved me was my wife walked downstairs and I immediately felt embarrassment at watching the thing so I turned it off right after the fem geologist has a hissy fit in LA so I didn't get to see the end of this ... thing. Did everyone die?
posted by edgeways at 12:30 AM on May 4, 2004

Bad bad tv movie.. was riveted until the end though haha. Being an ex-Californian myself and terrified of Earthquakes it was like a train wreck... just couldn't take my eyes off it :D
posted by dawna at 12:38 AM on May 4, 2004

I thought this movie was trying to trump Arthur C Clarke's book.
posted by phyrewerx at 1:10 AM on May 4, 2004

What a perfectly good waste of Fred Ward that was. It walked that fine line between sucktastic and craptacular.

I give it two chasms open... wide open!
posted by chicobangs at 7:51 AM on May 4, 2004

The only reason I've heard about 10.5 at all is that I've encountered several newspaper and radio stories lately about how inaccurate the science is.

See? This is not something you'd need a television to know about.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:06 AM on May 4, 2004

"Trout knows about YellowStone----BRAVO!
But Al Qaeda bomb involved?" (TangerineGurl) - Yeah, I did a post about the Yellowstone caldera a month or two ago. but I guess I should have included, in that last comment above, a *rolls eyes* or something.

Still, if Yellowstone did blow, that would sure incite some earth changes - in a hurry.

Somehow, the thought of Al Qaeda terrorists paddling out art night, in a canoe or something, with a nuclear bomb seems almost comical. But I do wonder if it actually would be possible for a small nuclear bomb sunk in Yellowstone lake to pop that big pimple?

Any experts or pseudo-experts on this. Hey?......Ask Metafilter!

The idea seemed vastly more fiendish to me then blowing up a mere city. And - yes - there are indeed people who believe this doomsday scenario. I'm not one of them.

But, who knows. It's just weird enough.
posted by troutfishing at 9:22 AM on May 4, 2004

Here's a good example of how review quotes can get misused...

What the article says:
"On a scale of 1 to 100, I'd have to give this movie a rating of only 10.5 on the reality scale."

The carefully edited "review" quote:
Rick Wilson of the California Geological Survey gave it a "10.5 on the reality scale"
posted by joquarky at 9:36 AM on May 4, 2004

You can find a hilarious summary at the TV Barn discussion group (Part 1 and Part 2, "the spellbinding conclusion").
posted by pmurray63 at 10:10 AM on May 4, 2004

If it weren't for Tivo and the liberal application of "fast-forward", I wouldn't have sat through this whole thing. (and yet I did, in a sad sort of way). Summary - hundreds of extras just sort of flail madly (as the cameramen jiggle their rigs furiously) Handful of faces talk about things a lot, decide to use Bombs to fix the planet, LA gets more waterfront. I'm pretty sure the bike guy got smashed by the Space Needle, but every other fatality was either implied or distant (reported by a news anchor). Also, the effects (which were of course the parts I was intersted in) were painfully bad. I actually thought the train model was supposed to be a model train. When I realized, a few seconds later that it was supposed to be real, I couldn't believe how bad it looked.
posted by kokogiak at 10:44 AM on May 4, 2004

What I Learned from "10.5": The only thing seismologists do is stare at computer screens and yell out numbers. "6.0, 6.6, 7.8...!"
posted by owillis at 1:34 PM on May 4, 2004

I think that some histories of the nuclear arms development have photos of underground test results. The result is a nice sized cavern but not really that impressive on the scale of volcanic explosions.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:29 PM on May 4, 2004

I didn't watch this but I've certainly heard about it. I think that a lot of the problem is that people really just don't understand how much kenetic energy is produced by plate tectonics. By all means, a single slip might only be a few centemeters (or even milimeters) but a few fractional metres per second multiplied by billions of kilograms of rock easily dwarfs anything that humans can produce.

The orders of magnitude involved are inconcievable. Although we like to think of nuclear weapons as "planet killers", the truth is much more modest. Sagan's "Nuclear Winter" scenario over-inflated one possible outcome based on a dozen hypotheticals involving orders of magnitude. (Every scientist diserves at least one free pass letting ideology get in the way of sanity.) Nuclear weapons are closer to car crashes on the scale of enegies involved than plate tectonics. Yeah, a nuclear weapon is huge compared to conventional explosives, but still no more than superficial mild shocks. The ability to detect above-ground and under-ground nuclear tests says more about the sensitivity of seismic equipment and the uniqueness of nuclear test signals than the energy involved.

And what is more amazing is that we know more about the nuclear fusion furnace that is the sun, than we know about the nuclear decay furnace that is the Earth's mantle and core. Although the leading theory proposes that plate tectonics is driven by good-old alpha decay. An alternative theory proposes that the core may involve enough concentrated uranium for fission to be a major player. The truth is stranger than fiction, but probably makes for a worse movie.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:03 PM on May 4, 2004

What I Learned from "10.5": The only thing seismologists do is stare at computer screens and yell out numbers. "6.0, 6.6, 7.8...!"
posted by owillis at 3:34 PM CST on May 4

What else CAN they do? They're just people owillis!!!
posted by Ynoxas at 8:52 PM on May 4, 2004