Megafault | |
---|---|
Genre | Disaster |
Written by | Paul Bales |
Directed by | David Michael Latt |
Starring | Brittany Murphy Eriq Lasalle Justin Hartley Bruce Davison Tamala Jones Paul Logan Jack Goldenberg |
Narrated by | Steven Parker |
Theme music composer | Adam Knapp Ralph Rieckermann |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | David Michael Latt |
Cinematography | Adam Silver |
Editor | Kristen Quintrall |
Running time | 90 minutes |
Production company | The Asylum |
Budget | $1.2 million |
Original release | |
Network | Syfy |
Release | November 24, 2009 |
MegaFault is a 2009 television disaster film by The Asylum, directed by David Michael Latt, starring Brittany Murphy, Justin Hartley, Eriq Lasalle, Tamala Jones, Paul Logan and Bruce Davison. [1] It is one of the last films to feature Brittany Murphy, as she died a few weeks after its premiere. [2]
In West Virginia, Charles "Boomer" Baxter is setting mountain-top depletion explosives. He detonates the TNT, and an unprecedented earthquake devastates the area. A few hours later government seismologist Dr. Amy Lane arrives at the quake's epicenter.
She realizes that the quake has opened a deep fault running through the center of North America, ending at the San Andreas Fault. Any further instability will cause massive earthquakes and tsunamis, devastating Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities all around the Pacific Ocean, leading to the deaths of millions.
Dr. Lane and Boomer chase just behind the expanding crack in the Earth's crust, developing a plan to stop the next quake. They decide to use a satellite orbiting above the continent which can trigger earthquakes. They fire it off when they reach the Grand Canyon, thinking that when the new fault hits the canyon it will be forced to turn south into the Gulf of Mexico. When the fault crosses with the canyon, they fire the satellite at the canyon but plan goes wrong. Instead of heading south, the fault travels north, towards the Yellowstone Caldera.
They realize that if the fault crosses the caldera it will explode, expelling several thousand tons of ash into the atmosphere, killing millions and causing a Volcanic winter. They decide to set explosives to block the fault's path. Later, when it reaches the park, Boomer detonates the explosives, causing the fault to stop just short of the volcano, but costing Boomer his life. In the end, an orbiting shot of the United States shows a giant canyon that stretches miles-wide across most of the continent.
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The film is a Sci Fi original film and is Brittany Murphy's final TV role as she died unexpectedly on December 20, 2009. [2] It was all shot in the Quad Cities' Davenport, Iowa, with Davenport mayor Bill Gluba making a cameo appearance.
The soundtrack featured Victoria Mazze, Chris Ridenhour, and The Divine Madness. [3]
It premiered on October 10, 2009 on the Syfy channel [4] and was released on DVD on November 24, 2009. [5] It premiered on December 10, 2010 in the UK on Sky Movies Premiere.
A caldera is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the structural integrity of such a chamber, greatly diminishing its capacity to support its own roof, and any substrate or rock resting above. The ground surface then collapses into the emptied or partially emptied magma chamber, leaving a large depression at the surface. Although sometimes described as a crater, the feature is actually a type of sinkhole, as it is formed through subsidence and collapse rather than an explosion or impact. Compared to the thousands of volcanic eruptions that occur over the course of a century, the formation of a caldera is a rare event, occurring only a few times within a given window of 100 years. Only eight caldera-forming collapses are known to have occurred between 1911 and 2018, with a caldera collapse at Kīlauea, Hawaii in 2018. Volcanoes that have formed a caldera are sometimes described as "caldera volcanoes".
An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume.
Lake Toba is a large natural lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia, occupying the caldera of the Toba supervolcano. The lake is located in the middle of the northern part of the island of Sumatra, with a surface elevation of about 900 metres (2,953 ft), the lake stretches from 2.88°N 98.52°E to 2.35°N 99.1°E. The lake is about 100 kilometres long, 30 kilometres (19 mi) wide, and up to 505 metres (1,657 ft) deep. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. Toba Caldera is one of twenty geoparks in Indonesia, and was recognised in July 2020 as one of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.
The San Andreas Fault is a continental right-lateral strike-slip transform fault that extends roughly 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) through the U.S. state of California. It forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. Traditionally, for scientific purposes, the fault has been classified into three main segments, each with different characteristics and a different degree of earthquake risk. The average slip rate along the entire fault ranges from 20 to 35 mm per year.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an Mw magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989.
The 1994 Northridge earthquake affected the Los Angeles area of California on January 17, 1994, at 04:30:55 PST. The epicenter of the moment magnitude 6.7 blind thrust earthquake was beneath the San Fernando Valley. Lasting approximately 8 seconds and achieving the largest peak ground acceleration of over 1.7 g, it was the largest earthquake in the area since 1971. Shaking was felt as far away as San Diego, Turlock, Las Vegas, Richfield, Phoenix, and Ensenada. Fifty-seven people died and more than 9,000 were injured. In addition, property damage was estimated to be $13–50 billion, making it among the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700, with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca Plate from mid-Vancouver Island, south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as northern California. The plate slipped an average of 20 meters (66 ft) along a fault rupture about 1,000 kilometers long.
10.5 is a 2004 American disaster film directed by John Lafia which aired as a television miniseries in the United States on May 2, 2004, and May 3, 2004 on NBC. The plot focuses on a series of catastrophic earthquakes along the United States west coast, culminating in one measuring 10.5 on the Richter scale.
It Came from Beneath the Sea is a 1955 American science fiction monster horror film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer, directed by Robert Gordon, that stars Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, and Donald Curtis. The screenplay by George Worthing Yates was designed to showcase the stop motion animation special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
The Phlegraean Fields is a large caldera volcano west of Naples, Italy. It is part of the Campanian volcanic arc, which includes Mount Vesuvius, about 9 km east of Naples. The Phlegraean Fields is monitored by the Vesuvius Observatory. It was declared a regional park in 2003.
The Cascadia subduction zone is a 960 km (600 mi) fault at a convergent plate boundary, about 100–200 km (70–100 mi) off the Pacific coast, that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States. It is capable of producing 9.0+ magnitude earthquakes and tsunamis that could reach 30 m (98 ft). The Oregon Department of Emergency Management estimates shaking would last 5–7 minutes along the coast, with strength and intensity decreasing further from the epicenter. It is a very long, sloping subduction zone where the Explorer, Juan de Fuca, and Gorda plates move to the east and slide below the much larger mostly continental North American Plate. The zone varies in width and lies offshore beginning near Cape Mendocino, Northern California, passing through Oregon and Washington, and terminating at about Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Maximillian Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill. He is portrayed by Christopher Walken.
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