Another Crappy Disaster Movie: "San Andreas"

Here, watch the trailer and see the best parts of the film:

There's been a lot of movies about earthquakes. Most of them are terrible. The Earthquake 1974 movie pretty well covered the subject. And it was mostly drama about the disaster rescue efforts. Oh, and they shot looters rather than gave them water bottles and blankets. Sigh. I miss the good old days.

But thanks to digital special effects, essentially computer generated cartoons, you can get the cinematic feel in a few moments, then revert to the typical soap opera crap which bores audiences to tears. 'A troubled family, struggling to pull together through a journey across a desperate city destroyed in a fit of mother nature..." They're like slasher films and just as dumb.

 

I have NEVER seen one that talks about the cost of repairs, about the tax rates to rebuild all the public utilities, which is where things get expensive. Not the high rise buildings, which nobody actually needs. Its about the water and sewer pipes destroyed by the quake, and the power outages, and trying to replace all those transformers when only the Chinese make them anymore. New Jersey is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy after many of their transformers melted from the flooding. Salt water conducts, ya know? They were buying them surplus from Detroit, who was salvaging them from neighborhoods shut down and returning to nature by that city's full collapse.

 

Telling the story of no power, no water, no flush toilets, and useless fedgov getting in the way to kill more people and prevent rescue? That's drama enough. Oh, and overpasses and bridges ALSO get wrecked in quakes. They don't necessarily fall all at once, thanks to wrapping the columns of concrete in plate steel welded around them, but they still crack, and they still have to be torn down and rebuilt, so those huge interstate interchanges? Destroyed in many cases. Easterners won't understand this until New Madrid destroys them and sets back everything for about 450 miles from Memphis to 1900's living. The well drilling companies will be busy, and trenching companies installing septic systems too. Why rebuild big sewer systems when last time New Madrid Quakes hit, there were 7.5 aftershocks for 80 years? They'll just get wrecked again.

San Andreas wasn't made for Californians. It was made for Easterners who enjoy hating California weather and are jealous to see Californians die on screen. Its a certain type of blood lust. Another bit of human darkness exploited. Slasher films are snuff films, after all. Same kind of thing. They are for people who enjoy seeing nubile teen girls murdered. Think about the morality of that. That's an awful lot of darkness. People who like them are murderers, or Democrats which is sort of the same thing.

 

I have seen a bunch of these natural disaster movies, mostly to count all the things the directors get wrong. Its not like there aren't a bunch of geologists who can correct the scripts so they don't suck. I just think that Producers find educated experts inconvenient to their release schedule. Not that geologists can't do it quick and still be largely factual, its just that Producers want to crank these out without engaging an audience's higher brain functions. Or ANY brain functions. Who cares if the suicidal girl in "Volcano" gets rescued or finally dies? I mean, you can see she is doomed. All that screaming and she doesn't just stand up and walk away? Its not like the lava is FAST after all.

Remo Williams: not good at disaster management.

 

So bad. So very bad. The continuity errors. The idea that the ocean would flood the Mojave Desert, which is 2000 feet up, rather than stop after filling the Salton Sea, which is below sea level. Sigh. So much dumb. Its stuff like this which has turned teens away from the Movie industry, and so they keep remaking movies, using old scripts rewritten to be edgier and include more black characters out of racial exploitation. It stops being art and is just business. Earthquake movies COULD be good, if they were about earthquakes and all the rippling invisible damage, and how people have to live afterwards, and all the people who will abandon California after The Big One because the taxes to rebuild really are the last straw, and how those bankrupt people will Reverse Okie back to the Midwest and try and restart their lives with tornados and the eventual New Madrid Quake. It isn't NICE, but it is better drama than a "journey from LA to SF to save their daughter". Sheesh. Who cares!

 

Show us more CGI movies of damage, and add CGI to the scenery to subtly emphasize all the broken stuff. I don't care about ex-wives. That isn't drama. That's America today. Its not edgy. Its boring. Show railroad lines twisted and trains waiting at the damage, having prevented being derailed by modern brakes. Show the dust and smoke and the little landslides. I'm pretty sure the Hollywood sign WON'T dramatically fall down in a quake. Its pretty well anchored and not very massive. In a really big quake it will flex a lot and remain standing. I can't say the same with the LA freeways. Show the cracked overpasses cars are driving around all the way up I-5. Show the frustration with every single water spigot being off, and the flooding into the streets with broken sewage pipes. Offer some heroic bulldozer operators pushing the rocks off the highways so cars can escape the damage North and East. Show the lines of cars leaving LA for Arizona, heading off to Midwestern relatives rather than wait for the Fedgov to declare "best response to disaster ever!" while people die of dehydration. The Whitehouse is so lost to reality. They really would say that while people are dying. Declare victory when everybody can see defeat on live TV and a few million videos on YouTube. Show the packs of wild dogs hungry and insane. Show rescue ships trying to bring in supplies after aftershocks wreck the port facilities so they can't unload. That's some irony drama. And the aftershocks of a big quake really do go on for ages. Survivors get used to them pretty fast.

 

The other thing about big quakes is they can provide just enough stress to set off quakes far away. The planet rang like a bell for both the xmas quake in Thailand and the Japanese quake a few years ago. Japan has rebuilt most of its damage, btw. It cost them a fortune and caused more recession. So people fleeing from LA might get to drive into New Madrid breaking not long after. It IS due, after all. My friends in the Midwest will get their rude awakening someday, probably in their lifetimes.

I avoid predictions of quakes other than very general because you just can't predict specific dates with them. Trying is an act of self deception and humiliation, and people who post them as video blogs are a step away from tinfoil hats and needing anti-psychotic medications. I only post general warnings because they're agreed upon by seismologists, who are a type of geological scientist, rather than fundraising scammers like say "climatologists". Seismology is lots and lots of math. Its very boring, not sexy, and they don't get invited to the good cocktail parties or have sexy interns or good scotch. All that money went to Cultists. This also means that most seismology data is fact based and the general predictions are based on prior quake cycles, which are generally true, with certain exceptions. New Madrid quakes happen every few hundred years. We are due. San Andreas quakes happen every century. We are due. Oregon quakes happen every few centuries. We might be due. Convergent plate boundaries are weird. Deformation is one of those things which prevents quakes, by twisting the rocks. The Poleta Folds, east of Big Pine, California in Deep Springs Valley, CA, has rock deformation along a faultline which is visible from space. This sorts of things do happen, and over a longer timescale than people normally think, the earth moves a lot, and has quakes often. I have never seen a disaster movie that begins with someone staring up the hill from Bodega Harbor and counting the mega-quakes visible on that hillside. It would be a clever way to begin such a story. Hollywood has no idea what Clever is. They still think Cocaine makes them Better than everyone else. Cocaine is the driving force of Hollywood and it explains so very much.

 

Oh, and in case you wondered how to prep for a quake:

1. Enough stabilized gasoline in cans to get your car out of state.
2. Enough drinking water for a week, around 21 gallons. You'll spend days in denial before deciding to leave town.
3. Camp Stove, freeze dried or dried foods, cast iron pot to cook in with lid. Kettle, cutting board, spare cooking knife, plastic plates and cups, detergent, paper towels, sponge, box of tea, iodine tablets, water filter. Fuel for stove.
4. Soap, towel, bandages, ace bandage.
5. Various clothes and blanket. Socks and underwear. Laundry detergent.
6. Maps on paper, waterproofed, grease pencil to mark map.
7. Cell phone charger for car. Backup battery.
8. Handheld emergency radio.
9. Tire puncture kit, bicycle pump. Air pressure gauge.

 

You don't have to carry them in your car every day, but having them packed up in a couple boxes for the trunk makes leaving a lot easier once you need to go. Some disasters are so big you can't get away from them, but most disasters are regional and many cars will work fine on gravel roads provided you drive slowly and sanely. You can go around collapsed bridges in many cases. The motorcyclists will have it the easiest. Well, not Harley Riders with their 3 inches of ground clearance and dragging pegs. Cruisers are NOT good on gravel. But Enduro bikes are made for this. They don't weigh much, they are tall with long suspensions. They can cover a lot of ground. They just don't carry very much. Still, getting yourself out of California is the important thing after a really big quake. Not a teaser like Napa, but something nasty like Loma Prieta, only worse.

 

If you have the money, of course, securing your home to its foundation (anchor bolts are standard in all California homes built since 1970), drilling a well, and digging a septic system for backup is even better, assuming you aren't living somewhere stupid and pointless, like behind a levee or downstream from an earthen dam. Leaving may be your best option in those cases. If you get the chance. Few people died in the 1906 quake and fire. Few will die in the Big One. Its mostly the damage to infrastructure and public panic that are the problem. And that's the reason to leave.