Hollywood Disasters Project

Jasmine O. Rodriguez

Camila Filippi

Megan Quinn

Zach Hoggeogge

Mikayla Christensen

Alondra Solares

Geography 1700-401

Salt Lake Community College

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Abstract:

Hollywood has made movies depicting what they believe would happen during an end of

the world’s natural disasters, such as “The Day After Tomorrow”. Often times, however,

Hollywood tends to exaggerate what would happen during a real natural disaster. The differences

between what Hollywood says will happen and what geologists will say will happen will be

discussed throughout this paper. Dennis Quaid plays the role of Jack Hall. Jack Hall is a

climatologist that has major concerns for the environment. The U.N. Officials ignores his

concerns, but later on, Hall proves his point when there is a second world ice age.

Throughout the movie, Hall is a brave character that treks his way from Washington D.C.

to New York City to reach his son, Sam Hall who is played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The second ice

age is the final disaster after a chain of severe natural disasters. There are massive tsunamis,

earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. The plot of the movie mostly revolves around the survival of people,

and the steps that take to survive.. During a very intense time in the movie it is mentioned that

the whole northern part of America would not survive. One thing that is realistic and the movie

does well, is the representation of how the world would actually react to these disasters. Most

people aren’t educated or prepared to deal with natural disasters, so it would result in chaos and

panic.

The movie shows how people choose to survive in these observed situations and the

movie really emphasizes choices that were right, as well as the choices that were wrong. Some

people reacted out of panic and ended up getting themselves killed while others chose to stay

collected, call loved ones, made sure they had a spot to meet, and camped out in warmer
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conditions. The movie depicts many ways natural disasters affect the planet and its human

population.

As mentioned earlier, Hollywood movie producers have their own idea of what could

happen during a natural disaster. In the movie “Day after Tomorrow” the very first disaster

depicted the ground shaking and then the icy ground created a very long single split down the

middle. When the ground opened it appears to be very steep.

The next natural disaster showed more than four tornadoes formed in the same general

area. Then two tornadoes combined to form one large tornado. According to Ward (1972)

tornados can sometimes have multiple funnels that make it appear as if there was more than one

tornado formed in one single area. However, unlike in the movie, these tornadoes only appear to

be two or more separate tornados when looked at from ground level. If they are observed from

from above, one can see that the tornadoes are indeed connected to one another.So, although it is

possible for the “appearance” of more than one tornado, it unlikely that there would be four

separate tornadoes forming miles away from each other without being connected at some core

vertex.

After the tornadoes came the tsunamis. In the movie, there was a large tsunami that had

reached the city in a matter of seconds. Although Hollywood can exaggerate things in movies, it

is very much possible for a tsunami to reach great heights and reach cities fairly quickly. In fact,

according to Mori et al. (2011), a magnitude 9 earthquake created a tsunami that had a 2000 km

stretch and a height of 19.5 m. However, considering in this movie everything was frozen solid,

the ocean should have also been frozen which would prevent a tsunami from occuring in the first

place.
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While there were things that were done right, there are a lot of flaws included. It seems

like the weather hazards that are depicted in “The Day After Tomorrow,” happen too rapidly,

which is one of its flaws. One example is would be when the sea level was rising rapidly, which

resulted in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. This would not happen as quickly as

Hollywood depicted it.

The next example was how fast the cooling of the Earth happened in the film. That

wouldn’t happen in real life because that also is an event that would take time to happen. Some

of these events may take years to fully occur, and Hollywood makes it seem like it will only take

a few hours. Hollywood tends to do this in films, they want to create a “wow” factor even if that

“wow” factor is necessarily correct. It’s all about what makes money, being accurate and correct

is not the priority in Hollywood. This can be harmful because someone who doesn’t have enough

information on natural disasters will be misinformed and believe that it is correct. This could

cause fear, I know that back when I was younger and watched this film, I was terrified of

something like that happening. I wasn’t well educated enough to know that this movie wasn’t

realistic.

When watching Hollywood movies about this topic, I wouldn’t take it too seriously until

I did more research and what was happening in the movie. As was mentioned earlier, Hollywood

tends to make movies about natural disasters ten times worse that they actually would be.

Another movie that is an example of this is the movie “2012,” many scientists believe that the

movie had a lot of flaws. “The Day After Tomorrow” isn’t safe from scientific criticism either,

many also said the movie had a lot of flaws and it should be taken with a grain of salt. Something

that is important to take away from this project is to be more careful when watching these
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movies that depict natural disasters, instead it might be a better choice to watch a documentary

on a similar topic so it would be more realistic.

Something that Hollywood can do to make these movies better, is hiring someone that

has knowledge on the subject. The movies may become boring, since things don’t usually

happen that quickly, but it could still be informative and can educate the public about these

events. It can educate others on how to be prepared, not only normal civilians but businesses as

well so they can prepare their buildings for these events. Also, once others are more educated

they could have a solid plan to be prepared in case something like this were to happen during

their lifetime. Education is powerful and important, especially when it can be as useful and could

save lives.
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References

Mori, Nobuhito; Takahashi, Tomoyuki; Yasuda, Tomohiro; Yanagisawa, Hideaki. Survey of

2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami Inundation and Run-up. “Geophysical Research Letters”.

August 2011. Volume 38.

Ward, Neil B. The Exploration of Certain Features of Tornado Dynamics Using a Laboratory

Model. “Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences” January 1972. Volume 29.