Review of 2012 and Mythbusting on Hurricanes

I saw "2012" yesterday with Meteo Madness Man... it was the best natural disaster effects movie I've ever seen (and director Roland Emmerich has said it will be his last). It only got a 6.7 on IMDB which I was a little surprised at, but has made $65 million so far on this opening weekend even though being widely panned by critics.

Of course, the scientific accuracy of any of the things in the movie happening is near nil, but I don't go to the movies to be bored by realistic plots or science. I was disappointed that they didn't have any atmospheric chaos, but Roland has done that before and they were way too busy with geological effects, including major earthquakes and tsunamis worldwide, plus Yellowstone turning into a gigantic volcano.

If you're worried about the earth ending in 2012 you can relax after reading NASA's debunking page (of course if you're a conspiracy theorist you will point out that the government would cover it up anyway, as they did in the movie). According to NASA, there are no meteorites, solar issues, or planet alignments of note in 2012.

This movie was promoted hard by Sony so I feared that I would have already watched most of the movie in the previews and behind-the-scenes stuff, but because the movie was so long (nearly 2 hours, 45 minutes, but don't worry, the action never let up) and because they intentionally held back details and scenes from the "ship" ending (which I won't spoil you with here).

If I do want to see a show about realistic science, I tune in to Mythbusters. This weekend I also finally got around to watching the Mythbusters "Hurricane Windows" episode (check out that link for extra footage) where they busted the myth that opening your windows during a hurricane is a good idea. Note: this is not the other myth about opening windows during a tornado to equalize pressure,* the theory here is that the wind would flow through the house aerodynamically instead of just blowing the house over.

Initially, the idea was confirmed with a small scale model that had windows almost as big as its walls, but not after visiting the University of Florida Hurricane Research Facility (home of the world's largest portable hurricane simulator - the Wall of Wind (WoW) capable of delivering 1 million cubic feet of air per minute). There they subjected a correctly-scaled house to winds of over 100 mph - they said a Category 2 hurricane, not sure why they didn't test something higher, it says here it can produce winds of 140 mph. It's possible that they could have gotten different results at a higher wind speed but I doubt it.

During that test, there was less pressure on the walls and roof, but it was negligible and (as I pointed out to my wife and daughter before even beginning the episode) opening your windows during a hurricane will not only allow enough rain in to ruin your house, it will damage everything inside it!