In December 2015, my final project for physical science was critiquing the movie San Andreas. I disliked it, and did not try to disguise that fact. My professor gave it, I think, a 95, but expressed disappointment over my unappreciation of her favorite movie.
I am not science-minded in the slightest but that being said, even I noticed things significantly wrong with the science of this movie. It all started at the beginning with the young, distracted driver suddenly falling through the fault line as it cracked open. A fault line would never spontaneously open up and create something like a miniature Grand Canyon. Next we have the aftershocks, a part of the movie that is more or less realistic. In the film, the earthquakes get increasingly bigger and bigger. It starts with, say, a 2.3. I don't remember the specific measurement but that is close enough. Then, there is the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that destroys the Hoover Dam. After that, the aftershocks are something like 9.1 and 9.6 in magnitude. Earth tremors often occur before an earthquake (or a volcano), so the 2.3 tremor resulting in the Hoover Dam earthquake was accurate. Even the much-larger aftershocks are accurate. An earthquake of such a magnitude could not actually occur underneath San Francisco or Los Angeles, but overlooking that, it is technically accurate.
But the realism ends there. The damage was unrealistic. Buildings do not topple over all in one piece and create a domino effect. Skyscrapers will sway back and forth, but not at the intense, violent speed shown in the movie. I also noted that Cal Tech conveniently stayed perfectly intact while the rest of the area looked like it had met the Apocalypse. And why did the cell phone towers and phone lines still work? At the end, San Francisco looked like post-atomic bomb Japan, not any earthquake aftermath I have ever seen in textbooks or on TV. Also, I had issues with half the city going up in flames. I know fires are a big part of natural disasters. In 2011, I was living just outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, when the deadly tornado demolished the town. I saw the damage right after it happened on TV. Here and there, fires began to burn in the destroyed structures. But there was not some giant fireball engulfing everything like what was shown in the film.
Overall—and the Internet is in agreement with this—the most ridiculous element of San Andreas was its tsunami scene. Obviously I have never experienced a tsunami first-hand but I remember seeing TV coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and I have seen the very realistic, affecting film, The Impossible, based on it. The San Andreas tsunami was anything but realistic. It started with the water drawing back, which was accurate, but after that it turned ridiculous. You cannot surf a tsunami because it is not a cresting wave. It is a giant wall of water that obliterates everything as it moves. The water likely would not have reached Blake, Ben, and Ollie on the 10th floor. Tsunamis have been known to crest 100 feet, but it is still highly unlikely. The water also could not have toppled skyscrapers and buildings. It would blast into the buildings and gut them, but the structures themselves, particularly the large and sturdy ones, would still stand. People on high-level floors should have been safe. I also had a major issue with the fact that Blake "drowned" but was revived several minutes later and was completely fine. Entirely too much time had passed for this to be accurate. After 3-5 minutes without oxygen, irreversible brain damage begins to occur and by this point in the movie, that much time or even more had already passed. So the bottom line is that San Andreas more or less got the concepts right, like aftershocks and tsunamis, but completely disregarded how these things actually happen in real life.
