Mitchell Berryhill

Mr. Schmitt
Natural Disasters
April 20, 2016

San Andreas

This movie is about the biggest earthquake to ever be recorded, and how technology can be very
helpful in future happenings. This story lines involves some scientists, a search and rescue person, his
wife, daughter and a douche bag. The movie starts out with a small earthquake happening near a
mountain and a girl was driving and didnt notice a big rock and got knocked off a cliff and was wedged
inbetween a cliff. As she was sitting there scared the search and rescue guy (the rock) came to her aid
and saved her and then began the research of the earthquakes.
The definition of an earthquake is when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. The
surface of where they slip is called the fault or fault plane. The location below the earths surface where
the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the
earth is called the epicenter. Sometimes an earthquake has foreshocks. These are smaller earthquakes
that happen in the same place as the larger earthquake that follows. This is a simalarity to the movie, as
the movie progressed it showed that the smaller earthquakes that happen can create a very large
earthquake such as a 9.7 in the movie. One of the simalarities in the movie that was kinda close was
scientists cant really tell that an earthquake is a foreshock until the larger earthquake happens. During
the movies what the scientists were doing, was they were trying to predict where the next earthquake
would happen and how big the earthquake would be to warn the people around them, and they were

studying about earthquakes over by the hoover dam, and they were using technology to help them
predict where the next one would be. And what they found out was there are thousands of earthquakes
a day but not very big ones. During this time of finding a lot of research on earthquakes the technology
that one of the scientist had started going crazy saying that there was going to be a huge earthquake
right next to him, so he started running to get out of the area that he was in so he wouldnt die. As they
were leaving they warned a lot of people to get out of there and they saved a ton of lives. Because the
dam was about to blow and make a lot of erosion happen to the surroundings. The funny thing about
earthquakes is that the main shocks will always have aftershocks, and in the movie it showed that quite
a bit, but enhanced of coarse because it is a movie. Now I want to talk about what causes earthquakes
to happen. The earth has four major layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust. Lets say theses
pieces are kinda like a puzzle, and lets call the puzzle pieces tectonic plates, and the edges of the plates
are called the plate boundaries. The plate boundaries are made up of many faults, and most of the
earthquakes around the world occur on these faults. Since the edges of the plates are rough, they get
stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving. Finally when the plate has moved far enough, the edges
unstick on one of the faults and there is an earthquake. So as the earthquake was happening hollywood
focused on one family during this ordeal, and it was the search and rescue guy, his wife and his
daughter, and a little back story on the dad, he had two daughters and one of them drown in a freak
acciedent and then after that he and his wife got divorced. So the wife is with some rich guy now that
really only cares about himself and doesnt really care about the kid. So the Rock told himself he will
never let his other daughter die. While the earthquake was going on he flew the helecopter over the city
looking for his ex wife, he found her on top of a building and picked her up and went looking for the
daughter but could not find her but they knew she was very strong and could handle herself for a little
while. So during this time not a lot of people know that after an earthquake what happens? Let me tell
you a little of what happens. The biggest thing that could happen if you are on the coast of anywhere,
where there is water, you can find yourself being inbetween a tsunami. Im going to give you a little bit

of information on what a tsunami actually is. Tsunamis are not always colossal waves when they come
into the shore. In fact most tsunamis do not result in giant breaking waves. Rather, they come in much
like very strong and very fast tides. Nevertheless, there is destruction of life and of property by floating
bebris and impact of water. The tsunami produces a series of rushing waves and also a series of
withdrawals. If you think about throwing a rock in water, a ripple is formed. It is the same principle
invoving a meteor or an earthquake, except they form bigger ripples. If you think about that ripple, it
seems to disappear as time goes on but in actuality, it does not stop. So in the movie it showed signs of
this ripple effect, because at the beginning the waves werent that big yet but towards the end it was
massive and destroyed the city with force that you cant even imagine. Tsunamis can be very destructive
and can cause more damage to the city than an earthquake can.