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Artistic License Geology: Difference between revisions
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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 [[Screw the Rules I Have Plot|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. [[Outrun the Fireball|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 Fireball|Outrun the Pyroclastic Flow]]. Those travel near the speed of sound and will destroy anything in its path not strong enough to withstand a [[The Deadliest Mushroom|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", Paricutín, 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 [[Convection, Schmonvection|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.
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Of course, [[Narm Charm|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
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
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* Like ''[[Volcano]]'', ''[[Dantes Peak]]'' has several moments where the science doesn't add up. (The USGS even disputed a number of parts) Examples here include fluid lava in what is clearly a large explosive eruption, and being able to [[Outrun the Fireball|Outrun the Pyroclastic Cloud]].
** In ''Volcano'' the lava looks basaltic, but all volcanoes on the West Coast are gas rich felsic/intermediate andesitic volcanoes. Not to mention that the Juan De Fuca Plate that is subducted under the West Coast to produce volcanism is too far north to produce volcanoes in LA. In other words NO VOLCANOES IN CALIFORNIA.
*** [
*** Southern California is littered with cinder cones and massive basalt flows (drive 14 east from Mojave and up 395 to see a spectacular example near Fossil Falls, or climb Amboy Crater just east of Barstow). Not to mention Long Valley Caldera, the Mono Craters, and Death Valley's Ubehebe.
**** The same holds true for most of the American southwest-but the area's vulcanism is long gone, at least until the next continental collision.
** Hold your hand over the lava to make sure that it is in fact hot. [[Convection, Schmonvection|Professor! Lava! Hot!]]
* The volcano part of [[The Movie]] of ''[[Congo]]'' also has this. The lava flow cascading through the buried city of Zinj runs at seemingly tsunami speeds on-camera. To say nothing of other geological [[Incredibly Lame Pun|faults]]. (Diamonds in a basalt flow?)
** It should be noted Virunga region of the Congo is just about the only place in the world where lava actually moves this fast. Flows from Mount Nyiragongo have been clocked at about 60 MPH.
* ''[[Waterworld]]'': If you melted all the ice on the planet you could cause a 60m (180 ft) rise in sea level, which would suck for low-lying coastal areas, but is not nearly enough to create the ocean planet depicted. Also, it would take almost 6,000 years to do it at the current rate of global mean temperature increase. That's excluding reduction in warming rate due to [[CO 2]] saturation excluding negative feedbacks of the increased ocean area.
* ''[[Armageddon]]'''s first scene is a depiction of the meteor/comet collision which is widely believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, approximately 65 million years ago. Apparently so that we'll know what planet we're looking at, the continents are depicted in their modern positions, as opposed to where they actually were (which was more like [
* ''Crack In The World'' movie from 1965.
** An incredibly fast case of [[Science Marches On]]. They were in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made. By the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the Plate Tectonics theory was gaining ascendancy, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical.
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* There is a ''[[Hardy Boys]]'' novel wherein the boys experienced a powerful earthquake that lasted about a minute and threw them off their feet. We later find out that the quake measured "between 3 and 4 on the Richter scale." As any Californian could tell you, you might not even ''notice'' a tremor of that magnitude, especially if your attention was focused on something else at the time. And if you did notice it, your first reaction would not be "Yikes, earthquake!" but "That must be a pretty big truck."
* Stephen Baxter's ''Flood'' and ''Ark'' are a series based off the laughable notion that a crack in the ocean floor would result in untold amounts of water "trapped below" gushing up and basically [[Artistic License Geology|putting the planet straight into a Kevin Costner movie.]] Looking at the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico, the only liquid deposits are petroleum and the water level didn't rise a bit--it just got gunkier.
** Actually, the samples from the [
*** Keep in mind that this is water trapped deep under continental crust, unlike in the novel (where the water is coming up from the mantle). In particular, the research that Baxter cites at the end refers to a mass of water-bearing ''rock'', in which the actual water is a small percentage of the rock (although amusingly enough, the research paper author said he'd been getting letters and e-mails from people asking him if it was the water from Noah's Flood).
* Very common in [[Cthulhu Mythos]] stories. While some elements such as islands rising from the sea floor might be justified under [[Rule of Cool]] and/or [[Science Marches On]], other examples have no such excuse (e.g. Lin Carter saying that a creepy figurine doesn't look like jade, feels different than jade, and weighs more than jade ever could, yet continuing to ''call'' it jade).
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*** Another problem is that because of the presence of the ''hot magma'', the limestone should have recrystallized as marble, or melted to become a calcic igneous rock.
** This one does depend on the version, however. The very first version (which was far from finished) had fewer fantasy elements and was more a straight simulation of the real Bedquilt Cave in Kentucky, but later versions (including the first complete version, finished by Don Woods) included more fantasy and magic, including the volcano. The actual cave layout, being described by an experienced caver, is quite accurate to the real place.
* The mines of the ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games. Even discounting the one set in [[Convection, Schmonvection|a semi-active volcano]], you have mines where you can find gold, silver and copper, along with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds ''on the same level''. Older games at least tried to pay lip service to reality by having the precious gems and metals in different mines.
* Largely averted in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' except for some minor issues with [[Convection, Schmonvection]] and some dwarves being tough enough to drown in the lava before being burned in it.
* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', one of the female draenei jokes is "This planet has a tremendous supply of sandstone. The inhabitants must be wealthy beyond their dreams." (a nod to the TV show ALF). [[Fridge Logic]] sets in fast, causing people to wonder what Argus and Draenor were like to have had so little sandstone. This would require these planets to have a fundamentally different kind of sedimentation process, despite that fact that the geology of Outland looks little different from that of Azeroth. Considering that studies of the geology of Mars have shown it to be more or less similar to that of Earth, there is no reason to assume that Argus would be any different from Azeroth.
** Also a case of [[Artistic License Economy]]: Sandstone has no value ''because'' it's so common.
** Mind you, parts of Outland/Draenor have [[Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction|crystals the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza]] lying around.
* Lots of games have "diamond" weapons or armor, assuming that since diamond is hard, it must be very durable. In fact, diamond crystals have perfect cleavage in four directions and are therefore quite brittle: ''scratching'' a diamond is hard, but ''breaking'' it is not.
** An exception is ''[[Mass Effect 2 (Video Game)|Mass Effect 2]]'', where the ''Normandy'' can be upgraded with armor composed of carbon nanotube sheets interwoven with diamond [
== [[Real Life]] ==
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[[Category:Artistic License Indexes]]
[[Category:Artistic License Geology]]
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