| abstract
| - You've Seen It a Million Times. A Disaster Movie features an earthquake, volcano or some other ground-based phenomena and does it in a relatively entertaining way. Then the Fridge Logic hits that Geology Does Not Work That Way! Artistic License-Geology is the catch-all term for where a work shows an often well-studied disaster but gets it wrong. Either they Did Not Do the Research, They Just Didn't Care, or they simply got it wrong during production and it creates such a blow to the Suspension of Disbelief of anyone who might even have a passing knowledge of the subject matter. For example, earthquakes rarely last more than 30 seconds and are usually produced along tectonic boundaries. Sometimes this is different and large quakes can happen in places where you normally don't expect them, such as in Earthquake In New York. Problem is, such quakes are RARE. As in once in many lifetimes rare. The massive New Madrid earthquakes in 1812 are unlikely to repeat themselves any time for the next 200 years. But this is not the point. The point in such movies is that while the premise of an earthquake somewhere you don't expect is plausible, the actual depiction of the event is usually not. This can get incredibly Egregious at times. Cracks do not chase B actors or swallow entire cities whole without a trace. Ground shaking does not just move from left to right or just up and down. Likewise, lasting a very long time for dramatic purposes kills the science. Extremely long duration quakes are rare and when they do happen they tend to occur only on the largest ones. The Sumatra quake in 2004, which is the 3rd largest earthquake ever recorded, lasted 8-10 minutes. In contrast, the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles lasted 20 seconds, and even the "Big One" cannot be expected to last much more than 40 seconds in a nightmarish worst case scenario. But this is not the only time geology gets failing grades. Volcanoes are another example. Outrunning the Lava Flow in Real Life is as easy as picking up to a brisk walk. Rarely does it move any faster, but it frequently outruns sprinters in TV land. Inversely, you cannot Outrun the Pyroclastic Flow. Those travel near the speed of sound and will destroy anything in its path not strong enough to withstand a 1 megaton nuclear weapon. Related to this are writers' tendencies to ignore the well-established conventions for volcanic activity such as the fact that precursory activity is known and alerted for sometimes a month or more in advance of an actual eruption-even the famous "Cornfield Volcano", ParicutÃn, which sprouted from its namesake cornfield in 1943 and grew 1,000 feet in under a year, occurred in a region where there are hundreds more cinder cones-so while the unlucky farmer was surprised, scientists were not. But in TV Land, volcanoes can pop out of the ground wherever they damn well please and surprise big budget actors playing scientists with the Idiot Ball. And we haven't even mentioned the heat given off by lava flows yet... As a note, this trope also covers other abuses of the field of geology including getting rocks, minerals even whole processes down wrong. Of course, some may not notice this and the MST3K Mantra provides an easy escape for having to think about it. This is the supertrope of California Collapse. Compare Artistic License Biology, Artistic License Physics. Contrast Shown Their Work. See also All-Natural Gem Polish. Examples of Artistic License Geology include:
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