10.5

Just saw this last night - a bad movie lovers paradise. We've got an earthquake that opens up a chasm that literally chases a train around. It's very accurate too, it doesn't even stray off course the least little bit. Once the entire train falls into the chasm, the earthquake stops immediately.

**SPOILERS**

Then there's the marvelous part at the end where the earthquake keeps getting bigger and bigger. They read off the Richter scale measurements: 9.7, 9.8, 9.9...goodness. The name of the movie is 10.5, I wonder how high it will go?

They evacuate the entire population of Southern California to Barstow, and then a doctor goes looking for his family there. Finds them in about 10 minutes. Did I mention the entire population of Southern California is in Barstow? Then at the end, after a gigantic chunk of California has fallen away and the ocean comes in and fills the gap, it comes right up to Barstow, only stopping when it comes to within about 5 feet of a main character. Kind of odd, isn't Barstow about 2,100 feet above sea level?

My favorite is the guy that has a big nuclear bomb fall on his chest from a hight of at least 15 - 20 feet. It's probably 5 feet around by 5 feet high, made of steel. What's that, about half a ton? Anyhow, it comes to rest right there on top of him. It hurts at first, but then he's able to recover enough to have a heart-to-heart chat with his son over the cell phone, and then he reaches around to the other side of the bomb (which he can't see), and luckily hits the correct button on the keyboard to complete the combination and set the bomb off at precisely the right time. I also enjoyed the fact that the display on the bomb reads out gibberish. One would think that wouldn't be all too useful, but I'm no nuclear physicist.

They actually had a computer animation at one point that showed all of the western half of California breaking off from the continent and sinking. Apparently continents just float on top of the ocean, and if a piece breaks off it tips over and sinks, like a boat dock or something.

Their understanding of fault lines seemed a bit odd to me as well. Those things go all over the globe, it's the boundary between one tectonic plate and another. The plates move very slowly over millions of years, that's how continents drift and stuff. But you can put an end to this with 4 or 5 nukes. They sort of weld the plates together. Personally, I think they would have had just as good a luck putting a whole pile of oxygen and acetelyne tanks down there and setting them off, or maybe having a bunch of tug boats push against the shore of Southern California in the opposite direction that the plates are trying to move.

Oh well. A must see. And I missed the beginning where I hear a guy on a BMX bike managed to outrun the falling Seattle Space Needle, while doing X-treme stunts the whole time, in the middle of a 7.0 quake.