San Andres Movie Analysis
The movie, San Andres, is an exciting movie about major earthquakes devastating California. While there are some scientific truths in the film, there are many more scientific fallacies. All of the fallacies in the film are done out of ignorance, as a plot device. In this paper, both the truths and fallacies will be addressed.
To give the film some credit, we will first address what was portrayed accurately. In the opening scene a young woman is driving on a winding hillside road, when she gets taken out by a rockslide. This is portrayed accurately, yet the size and force would have done much more damage to the vehicle. As the film progresses, the geologist states that the earthquakes were triggered by other earthquakes in Nevada, this is accurate …show more content…
As a son of an ironworker, one who worked on almost every high-rise in the Los Angeles area that went up between the early 1980’s to 2005, I can attest that the destruction depicted is very aggravating to them. The aggravation is not due to the destruction of the structures, my father and all his buddies were ecstatic when Independence Day came out because it depicted the aliens destroying the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles that they had built 7 years prior, but because most buildings that San Andres depicts failing could and would withstand the destructive forces of any earthquake that hit California. While there would be significant damage to masonry structures and low soft built homes, many multistory steel structures in the area are built to withstand the violence of an earthquake. (Housner) The buildings would not shake violently as the film depicts, but are engineered and built to sway slowly with the quakes. Outside of California, the Hoover dam would also fare much better than the film depicts. The film gives us an unknown fault line destroying the dam in a spectacular explosion like collapse. First of all, structurally the dam can and does hold up to earthquakes. (Sasaki, Uesaka and Nagayama) Even if there were a direct significant earthquake that hit the dam, it would crack and release water slowly, the dam failure would be gradually, not anywhere close to as dramatic as depicted in the
To give the film some credit, we will first address what was portrayed accurately. In the opening scene a young woman is driving on a winding hillside road, when she gets taken out by a rockslide. This is portrayed accurately, yet the size and force would have done much more damage to the vehicle. As the film progresses, the geologist states that the earthquakes were triggered by other earthquakes in Nevada, this is accurate …show more content…
As a son of an ironworker, one who worked on almost every high-rise in the Los Angeles area that went up between the early 1980’s to 2005, I can attest that the destruction depicted is very aggravating to them. The aggravation is not due to the destruction of the structures, my father and all his buddies were ecstatic when Independence Day came out because it depicted the aliens destroying the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles that they had built 7 years prior, but because most buildings that San Andres depicts failing could and would withstand the destructive forces of any earthquake that hit California. While there would be significant damage to masonry structures and low soft built homes, many multistory steel structures in the area are built to withstand the violence of an earthquake. (Housner) The buildings would not shake violently as the film depicts, but are engineered and built to sway slowly with the quakes. Outside of California, the Hoover dam would also fare much better than the film depicts. The film gives us an unknown fault line destroying the dam in a spectacular explosion like collapse. First of all, structurally the dam can and does hold up to earthquakes. (Sasaki, Uesaka and Nagayama) Even if there were a direct significant earthquake that hit the dam, it would crack and release water slowly, the dam failure would be gradually, not anywhere close to as dramatic as depicted in the