Line #14 Headscratchers/TwoThousandTwelve


1	* This has bugged me the entire movie. Woody has a little video that explains what's happening with cute drawings and cartoons. In the video he says "This happens once every six-hundred-fifty-thousand years." I heard that and literally did a double take. 650,000 years? Really?! I don't know if that's a didn't do the research, or if they really think the dinosaurs were around less than a million years ago. So what was that?
2	** I think that was just the animator being cute. Also it can be assumed that the cycle is meant to have been around since the dinosaurs at least. Nevermind that the idea of the continents violently shifting every half-million years or so is rather ludicrous (albeit based on outdated science).
3	** My guess is that it's a lost-a-decimal-place flub, meant to make Charlie's video seem more like he doesn't necessarily know what he's talking about. He ''should'' have said 65 ''million'' years, but by having him get it wrong, the writers hoped to build suspense as to whether his entire "secret arks in China" story is bogus too.
4	** The Yellowstone volcano going super-eruption is supposed to be an every 600,000 year thing.
5	----
6	* Los Angeles and Yellowstone National Park are 17 hours apart. How did Jackson get home so quickly?
7	** He knew a short cut?
8	----
9	* I'd like to point out that both times the glider took off were impossible: the downdraft from a massive crack opening up would have pulled the plane into it, and when the plane is taking off at the volcano, the air is going about as fast as the plane, so no uplift?
10	** The Series/{{Mythbusters}} actually showed that a plane on a conveyor belt could still quite readily take off. Besides - RuleOfCool. Emmerich likes this kind of scene. He did something very similiar when Air Force One was taking off in "Independence Day".
11	*** Not to be a bugaboo here, but the original post was right insofar as the volcano takeoff goes. In the Mythbusters case, they were taking off from an improvised treadmill, which would only affect the wheel speed. But in the film's case, they're being chased by a large airmass. This would affect the speed of the air over the wings and prevent a takeoff. Think of it as encountering a massive tailwind, one moving faster than the plane's takeoff speed. Unless you can out-accelerate ''that'', the plane's not going to lift. (It also has exactly zero chance of outrunning that pyroclastic flow.) But, as was said, RuleOfCool.
12	*** not to mention the sheer amount of crap in the air would absolutely 1000% foul up any aeroplane's engines, fuel line and everything else...
13	----
14	* The apocalypse is supposed to happen just a few days short of Christmas but there are no decorations or even a discussion?
15	** It's not. The events are happening 6 months earlier, I believe.
16	*** As evidenced by the news of the cancellation of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
17	*** Actually, the Olympics are threatened to be cancelled due to the London riots, ''not'' due to the world supposedly ending.
18	*** Actually, the Olympics are threatened to be cancelled due to the London riots which are happening in response to the world ending. Remember, the news report that relates the story of the riots happens after both California has fallen into the ocean and Yellowstone has erupted AND is during the same broadcast that shows the destruction of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Also, please note that the London Olympics are to run from July 27th to August 12th. If it was December, they should have happened already.
19	*** Adrian Helmsley states several times before the beginning of the disasters that (paraphrasing) "it was happening sooner than expected" and that he "thought they'd have more time". If the apocalypse was supposed to happen on 12-21-12 and it was actually happening ahead of schedule....well...you do the proverbial math.
20	*** The weather/seasons do not match winter in the areas shown previous to the disasters. If it was winter, Paris, Yellowstone and Washington, D.C. would have trees with little to no leaves, people bundled up for the cold and so on; at the worst, they'd have snow. What is actually shown is the hotter temperatures, trees in full bloom, people not bundling up, etcetra of the months in the middle of the year.
21	** If they'd opted to stick with a December date for the movie's events, the volcanic ash falling all over North America would've looked too much like snow to seem appropriately-shocking.
22	----
23	* I managed to successfully suspend disbelief thorough the whole film, but the ending just bugged the hell out of me. I mean, are we supposed to accept that after only one month of such cataclysmic geological event tearing apart the planet, mother earth is once again ready to accept humanity on its surface, with the sun smiling in approval at these people about to inherit a brave new world? Just the Yellowstone Caldera becoming a Supervolcano, just that, would have changed earth's climate for decades, if not hundred of years. And similar catastrophic eruptions were happening EVERYWHERE in the world. Not only that, but isn't one month too little time for the earth's crust stabilizing after literally being liquefied by the magical mutant neutrinos? The fact that an entire tectonic plate JUST had risen up like that shows that no, the surface certainly isn't yet a safe place. Plus, wouldn't the continent of Africa (is it even Africa anymore?) be completely inhabitable after all the earthquakes and being underwater for a full month? Too much, too much!
24	** Africa was never under water. It had risen several kilometers Before the flooding. The month was because it took that long to contact their satellites to search for land. It still seems kinda silly, but hey.
25	*** The time between the beginning of the disasters and the survivors coming out of the Arks at the end of the movie isn't a mere month. The actual time they were on the Arks was likely something closer to six months. The disasters seemed to be happening in July(see arguments for that above) and they had been using that new calendar/time system(which would have likely been started at the beginning of the new year or what would otherwise be referred to as January) for 27 days. From July to late January equals six months and maybe some change depending on the exact date they boarded the Arks. However, we aren't given enough info to ascertain when that exactly was.
26	** The date marked in the calendar is not actually January, is the 27th day of the first month of the first year of a new Era. The new human calendar started, in canon, the day the Arks set ashore.
27	** To me it looks like the whole film is built around the arks being spaceships, with every indication that Earth is going to be utterly destroyed, except it inexplicably isn't in the end. The continents just stop sliding around like hot butter for no reason, Africa never moved for no reason, and the whole Earth's inside being a giant microwave issue is forgotten and stops being a problem for no reason. And hey, since we don't have the balls to destroy the Earth as advertised, why don't we make the arks regular ships instead of spaceships? What's that, we already shot three quarters of the movie? Eh, no one will notice. Why do they even make those giant ships at astronomic cost that puts several hundred thousand people in each hard to steer basket if they weren't counting on the ships having to survive indefinitely in space, rather than bobbing around in the sea for a few weeks?
28	*** The 'Arks being spaceships' is a RedHerring. Also, the neutrino cause is not forgotten; they and their effects just lasted much shorter than they had anticipated and planned for as is evident by what Professor West says near the end of the film.
29	** I have to agree that in the event of the Yellowstone supervolcano violently exploding like it did in the film, any survivors left wouldn't see sunlight in a while, certainly not within the time frame present on the film. And that isn't even countin the OTHER volcanic eruptions going on everywhere.
30	----
31	* If radios couldn't work, cell phones shouldn't have either.
32	** Radios would have worked fine but that's kind of moot if no one is alive to use them.
33	** It's actually entirely plausible that radio communications of all types would've been out of action for the duration. This is for two reasons: solar storms can play havoc with radios, and with an event the magnitude of the one shown in the film, it would be completely expected that no radio communication would be possible; volcanic ash clouds can produce tons of static electricity - given the ash plume expected from a supervolcano eruption, the amount of "noise" the cloud would produce would blot out radio communications over a wide area.
34	----
35	* The disturbing fact of the plot of this movie is that the title could have been "Oh thank God we weren't standing there five seconds ago" with no change.
36	** What disaster movie doesn't have the hero making at least a few last minute rescues and/or escapes?
37	----
38	* The arks seem to be rather poorly designed, as two tons of rock dropping on the roof was enough to halt the launching of one, and an extension cord and a jackhammer was enough to stop another. What kind of an idiot designs a boat whose engine can't be used without sealing the hatch? A submarine can use its engine without sealing its hatch...
39	** And the glass windows on the bridge that shatter when some debris falls on them. What the hell? You armour the rest of the ship, but leave the ''most vital part of it'' completely unprotected?
40	*** As an experienced sailor and navigator, I feel I should point out that a vital aspect of navigation at sea is using visual aids and having the ability to see what's ahead of you. Technology is great, but an experienced mariner can navigate very well visually. Covering the windows would have been a terrible idea.
41	*** Granted, although there's an invention - fairly new, only about 1500 years old - that solves both problems: shutters. Since the entire sides of the arks are giant shutters (which is just ridiculous on the face of it), slapping some shutters over the bridge windows would've been a prudent move. Then again, since the bridge windows don't even have ''one'' clearview screen[[note]](To the uninitiated: a clearview screen (or clear view screen, separate words) is the round feature you see on at least two bridge windows of large ships. They're a two-layer window, with the outside pane mounted on a motor at the middle of the circle. When turned on, the outside pane spins incredibly fast - about 1500 RPM - ensuring that no precipitation will stick to it and you'll be able to see outside no matter how bad the weather is.)[[/note]] it's pretty obvious the designers were pretty much out to lunch.
42	** YOU do better in the space of just under four years, completely out of sight of the public? Then you can complain!
43	*** ...How does being built in secret excuse such crippling design flaws?
44	*** Three Words: Made In China.
45	*** Not funny dude.
46	*** Those seem like problems that should have been resolved during the first preliminary design meeting.
47	*** On that topic, who's the idiot designer who used the Titanic as reference in building their watertight compartments? Emergency doors that go up and seal off an area...except for the top, so that water flows in anyway and fills it up like a giant ice cube tray? And for that matter, wouldn't watertight compartments inside the ship have solved every problem listed above?
48	*** The Empire State Building was built in one year, four months. I daresay four years should have been ample time.
49	*** I was more annoyed by the fact that even though they were counting on being flooded with severe external forces, they placed the arcs next to one another instead of on four different sides of the mountain.
50	*** Or on the ''opposite'' side of the mountain, so that the rising water would gently lift and carry the Arks instead of slamming into them at full force and careening them into each other.
51	*** Hell, it woulda been smarter just to carve out 4 doors: NSEW. That way, if 3 fail, at least one survives.
52	*** The boats were built on the right side of the mountain, but they got hit by a new tidal wave. If you take into account the recalculation, they probably expected to get launched easily. Aside from that, there are eight arcs so at least four of them were launched on another, better side.
53	*** Not to mention that the only reason the central Ark was in such dire straits had nothing to do with design but with external forces which really couldn't be planned for (people sneaking into the ship and mucking up the hydraulics and the extra tidal wave causing the planes at the airfield to be washed into the support structures/anchors).
54	*** I agree (that they had very little time to build the arks). Although, the time they had to build the Arks was likely far less than two years. The G8 summit, if it happened at the same time it did happen in the real world, would have occurred on the 25th and 26th of June, 2010 ; which would leave about 2 years and a month to plan, organize and then begin building the Arks.
55	*** Honestly, the whole project reeks of graft and poorly placed priorities. Giant shutters covering the staterooms (essentially the entire sides of the ships) and a ''telescoping bridge tower''; ignorance of basic marine architecture design safety; exposed, unshielded, mission-critical gearing and hardware (or any death-certainty machinery at all, really); lack of sealable bulkheads; large, open internal spaces (which can create a free-surface effect and end up capsizing the stupid thing); no propulsion redundancies; failsafes that are actually fail-deadly (e.g. can't fire the engines with a ''door open'')[[note]]By definition, a fail-''safe'' means that if the system fails, it fails in such a way that operators/passengers/the public are safe, whereas fail-''deadly'' means that unless everything's in perfect order, everybody's screwed[[/note]]; choosing to launch these giant, heavy ships in a valley that will flood chaotically and is bordered by sharp, hard-rock formations and yet building a hull like the Exxon Valdez...whoever was in charge of these decisions deserves to be left standing on the shore with an inner tube, a dunce cap, and a pink slip.
56	----
57	* Status quo at the end of the movie: thousands and thousands of humans and ''maybe'' 100 (optimistic estimate as there is no real on-screen evidence) other species dumped on one continent together. [[DownerEnding This is not going to end well.]]
58	** To be fair a lot of the ones shown were from Africa in the first place. Although I wonder how the Africans are going to feel with all these new people showing up? They did escape the flooding after all.
59	*** Would the Africans have survived the cosmic radiation in the first place?
60	*** This troper was under the impression that Africa HAD been flooded, and had just risen above the water.
61	** '''''How''''' would they have escaped the flooding? The film ends with "Africa has risen" which kinda involves the continent having been, well, under water for a while. Not to mention the very, very uncomfortable feeling I got from the film of "Oh hey, isn't it great? We finally have Africa without the Africans!"...sigh.
62	*** One of the characters comments that Africa "probably didn't even flood". "Africa has risen" means that, for whatever reason, Africa rose a few hundred feet rather then sinking like most of the other continents.
63	*** That would be Professor West making the 'Africa has risen' statement although I'm pretty sure it had been said to have risen several thousand feet and not several hundred.
64	*** Presumably ''something'' needed to rise, as there isn't enough water in the oceans to flood all of the continents at once.
65	** What is funny that everybody seems to take for a given that the Africans will welcome a bunch of filthy rich Westerners with open arms. The chances are that they'll be killed for including some of the worst exploiters of the continent in their midst, or else ignored, since the Africans themselves have their hands full surviving after the apocalypse, and a bunch of people with no useful skills or connections get to starve.
66	*** Maybe Africa suffered from a couple of earthquakes and volcanoes as well, killing lots of people? Or a supertornado that picked up the entire Sahara desert killing everyone in north-Africa by sand bombardment? Leaving it desertless with plenty of empty land? That last one kind of seems to fit the movie.
67	*** You do realize the Sahara is not just empty land with a lot of sand? And you cant just "remove" a desert by taking away all the sand. Deserts do not work that way.
68	*** My money's on the eruption of Kilimanjaro.
69	*** An entire continent (not to mention one of the largest) rising thousands of feet would probably cause more than just a "few" earthquakes. Lol. Also, any and all volcanic hotspots would likely have erupted. Anyone who managed to survive both of those events would still have to try to breath all of the ash thrown into the air by Yellowstone and any other volcanic eruptions that occured around the world. In other words, if there are survivors in Africa, they are few and far between (which makes anyone whose made jokes about how the Ark survivors will have to deal with Somalian pirates, aids and such when they make landfall look like complete fools).
70	*** The ending is hilariously lampshaded in "2012 in 15 minutes":
71	-----> Captain: "We're coming up on Africa. We can land there!"
72	-----> The many survivors in Africa: "Aw, hellz no!"
73	*** If Africa has "risen" that means it's a lot bigger (confirmed with the end shot) meaning that the survivors are going to have a lot of walking to do through a barren wasteland that used to be under the ocean. Good luck with that...
74	*** And, why wouldn't they use the helicopters seen buzzing around the Arks at the end of the film instead of walking? Or one of the many land vehicles they likely took with them on the Arks?
75	*** I think the landing in Africa part was meant to be symbolic, because the theory of evolution has it that Africa is where all human life began. So by having the survivors landing in (or on) Africa, is like going back to the beginning of the evolution of mankind. Starting over in fact. The film makers probably thought that idea was cool enough not to worry too much about the logistics of it.
76	** Don't let it bother you too much; everybody's dead soon, anyway. If the entirety of Africa rose by several thousand meters and Asia sank, the Earth is going to be incredibly misshapen. It won't be stable like that. So you're either going to get a planet that has to go through ''another'' colossal shift until it's stable again, or its orbit is going to become so erratic that it's not survivable, or - this will make for some ''great'' visuals for the sequel - the entire Earth will just tear itself apart. Handwave your way out of ''that'' one, Emmerich.
77	----
78	* If the Mayan prediction of the apocalypse is in fact true (and it was), then wouldn't others begin to think that the Mayan religion(s) were as well? Though, a resurgence of followers for those might not be a great idea.
79	** Presumably the Mayans either A. made a really lucky guess, B. noticed the effects of the previous upsurge of bosons(?) from the sun and used their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics to predicted the next recurrence, or C. had their perfectly real gods warn them. Of those, Occams Razor points to either A or B being the case. Still, people probably have more on their plate than reviving a dead religion (unless the arks carry a contingent of Mayan priest. Of course, if ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica\|2003}}'' has taught us anything it's that a charismatic genocidal scientist can convince people to join his cult. So [[@/{{Earnest}} my]] money's on the black science advisor starting said cult.
80	** The Mayans didn't predict the world's end. (They couldn't even predict their own demise). Remember, their calendar was based on Astronomy. The only thing they predicted was the alignment of the planets and the sun. That had nothing to do with the excess bombardment of neutrinos. So really, it was just a coincidence.
81	*** Their civilization just collapsed; the Mayan people are still around in the Yucatan, and some are still practicing their religion. And they're confused over the fact that white people believe the world is going to end in 2012. But if something did happen like in the movie, option C actually makes the most sense (Occam's Razor isn't a law, but a heuristic tool) - if the Mayan priesthood made a prediction and it's right, and the event violates all laws of physics, meteorology, and common sense (so is therefore supernatural), and it doesn't seem to correspond with any other religions... well, the Mayan Gods are real.
82	** Really, it doesn't matter what the Mayans predicted. They predicted something would happen and something happened. Many would question the coincidence, but some would would find it significant and might look into it. Also, it's possible the alignment of the planets is what caused the upheaval. Similar occurrences have always happened during an alignment, but this time the world is in a state where it creates apocalyptic changes.
83	** Name one time a planetary alignment caused ''anything'' to happen.
84	*** Name one time planets aligned "perfectly" period.
85	*** In 3D space, the planets are always aligned perfectly, depending on the viewpoint.
86	*** Um, no... no they're not. There is no possible viewpoint in 3D space that allows the planets of the solar system to align ALL the time. Alignment means you can draw a straight line through the centre of all planets.
87	----
88	* If the viewer is to assume that all the disasters take place and are shown in a chronological order, then how the hell does New York get buried by a pyroclastic cloud that came from Wyoming before Las Vegas?
89	** Prevailing winds?
90	** Said pyroclastic cloud seems to have magically vanished by the end of the movie. While we're at that, a gigantic eruption like that of Yellowstone didn't have much of an impact on post-crisis climate. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora Smaller]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinatubo eruptions]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chichón than that]] have been known to mess up the climate for months, if not years... What do you mean, it was probably drowned under a megatsunami? But [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa volcano + water]] = [[StuffBlowingUp Even]] [[FromBadToWorse more problematic!]]
91	*** You can just HandWave it, since there is enough action in the movie to keep someone from noticing it.
92	*** Or, since the pyroclastic flow is probably busy reacting with water...
93	*** A pyroclastic flow of that size would interact with water by getting ''bigger.'' Also, as happened with Krakatoa in 1883, a pyroclastic flow traveling over water creates a "cushion" of superheated steam that actually allows the flow to reach even farther than it would on land.
94	----
95	* Gordon dies a horrible self-sacrificing death, and then is never mentioned again by anyone-- including his girlfriend (who quickly gets back together with her ex) and the young boy who idolized him.
96	** Or in {{JustForFun/Troperithmetic}}: DerailingLoveInterests + FirstFatherWins + HeroicSacrifice = ForgottenFallenFriend.
97	*** It gets kinda fixed in the Blu-Ray alternate ending, where Noah sees a photo of him with Gordon in his cell phone.
98	----
99	* '' '''The entire premise of the film. ''' '' It would have been a thousand times better if they hadn't tied it in to that whole Mayan thing.
100	** Except it doesn't play a big part of it, minus background exposition that this happened before and the "Mayan calendar" marked the next such event.
101	** I agree. Let's not mention that the Mayans saw 2012 as a resetting of time, an entrance into a new age, NOT the end of the world.
102	*** In counter, I'd like to point out that "a resetting of time, an entrance into a new age" is ''exactly'' what happens in this move. The old one just has to be wiped away first, and there is nothing about the Mayan prophecy that precludes that.
103	*** Technically true, as there is no such Maya prophecy, period.
104	*** It's essentially like the turn of the millenium to the Mayans - really cool and worth celebrating, but not doom.
105	----
106	* Okay, maybe Anheuser made a few questionable moves, but why did there have to be a "villain" in this movie? He's got his hands full enough trying to keep a semblance of government alive for humanity, I'd think that alone would weigh heavy on the soul. Also, Adrian's little "lecture" about humanity? I can see how that would move some, but he's also got the leaders of ''Russia and China!''
107	** For some reason, Hollywood thinks that you have to have some kind of human antagonist in every movie, no matter what it's about. Even in a movie about the earth falling apart because of "natural" reactions, apparently you need a human villain to boo and mock and cheer against when he's defeated.
108	** Looked like China was, United States aside, spearheading the entire operation, so why wouldn't the good Chairman want to save as many people as possible? Maybe he was just convinced that they could manage it without damaging the ship (given that he'd probably know the details of the construction), and to be fair, the only reason it was damaged was because of everyone's favourite writer and family. As for including Russia in your argument - don't be so pessimistic! Comrade. Besides, Vladimir Putin jumped into a tiger enclosure to save some journalists, so why wouldn't his fictional counterpart take the same cavalier attitude? TL; DR - China built the arks for humanity and Russia can't really be grouped with that sort of government after, you know, the end of the Cold War.
109	** Disregarding common stereotypes, Russia's government is authoritarian but is not as cruel as some people think; it has a moratory on death penalty, Russia's prisons are recognized as one of the most humane in the developed world and they invest a lot of aid in developing nations. China's government is as cruel, but on the other hand the working was done on their land, thus most of the workers were theirs, making sense that they would want to let them in.
110	** I don't see this at all. Despite his position being clashing with Adrian's on some things, he pretty much is the one who put Adrian there in the first place and has a major role in '''saving the human race'''. Also, it's been made pretty clear in the movie that YMMV and both position have their pros and cons and that they both are trying to act for the best of mankind, not ForTheEvulz. They even deleted the scene where Anheuser resorts to petty insults and Adrian punches him out, exactly to reduce his "villainous" role to a WellIntentionedExtremist position.
111	----
112	* You have the full economic, industrial and military resources of the the most powerful nations in the world at your disposal. Why do you need to sell Ark tickets to billionaires again?
113	** Prepare to groan and/or be offended: The G8 believed that it's better to hide the Earth doomy-ness since no lay person or NGO initiative could have survived the sequence of disasters that hit, and they believed the resulting mass panics would make any effort at survival similar to the Arks far more difficult. However, without going public they could only commit so much money to the Arks without alerting ''someone'', One way to increase funding without getting the taxpayers to raise eyebrows was, you guessed it, selling tickets to the uber rich. Presumably each one of their tickets bought a space for three or four "plebeians" who would otherwise not live ''at all''. However, griping about the teeny tiny number of people their plan saved compared to what full spending from complete disclosure would have brought may be academic, likely no more than 1% of humanity would survive.
114	*** It's the end of the world, or at least the end of the current governments and their economies. They could have racked up billions of dollars in debt making the arks but it wouldn't matter. Funding is a non-issue
115	*** Yes it is, in the early years at least. The funding would need to be publically released, or else hidden in thousands of tiny slush funds. Slush funding works in the small term -- It's how the CIA gets its money for the year, by having Congress hide it in the national budget. You try hiding several trillion dollars a year for one project, especially in multiple funds, especially when those funds need to be public in order to justify the size (ie, 3 trillion for "healthcare" which never surfaces is fishy).
116	*** The entire premise pissed me off. I really, really hope that the series they're making will have survivors who survived through other means will find their way to Africa and take revenge on the people who, you know, abandoned them to die horribly.
117	----
118	* What the hell happened to the southern hemisphere?
119	** Early on in the film, Brazil is shown to be destroyed by earthquakes and such, so presumably the rest of South America was affected similarly, and Africa is where the Arks went. Australia and Southeast Asia, however, are not shown ''at all''.
120	*** Aren't the himalayas and thus the last third of the movie in southeast Asia? Aside from that, Tokyo was mentioned to have been wrecked by the same tsunami that wrecked the ship of the dad of the science advisor. I can imagine oceania having suffered the same faith. I don't think I saw a scene in Europe though.
121	*** Italy was shown, Russia featured and it was shown that Britain had canceled the 2012 Olympic events. Other than that we don't know about [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse Europe]].
122	*** The Himalayas and Tokyo aren't in the southern hemisphere. They're no closer to the southern hemisphere than San Francisco or New York. South East Asia is already a hotbed for floods and earthquakes, so I'd imagine they'd be gone forever.
123	*** Presumably the same thing that happened to the rest of the planet. It got wrecked by all kinds of fun natural disasters.
124	----
125	* The rooms on the Arks are large and could easily hold ten people each, as discussed in the movie. So why don't they cut the sizes of some rooms down and sell them for less money, '''so more people could survive'''.
126	** Because then we wouldn't have all of the wonderful conflict.
127	** I thought about it more around the lines of limited food supplies. Yes, you can store food, even for quite a long time, and supplement it by fishing, but if there's a disastrous change to the atmosphere due to the huge amounts of dust... well, how much food can you really store? And how long will it last? Frankly, I thought bringing the elephants were silly for that reason.
128	** Indeed. Also, for the time that they expect those ships to be operating, fitting 10 people into that amount space is not really a very good idea. Another thing that needs to be remembered is that the room shown is about the size of an average single person hotel room, not exactly somewhere I'd want ten people living for an extended period.
129	*** Hydroponics.
130	*** "Another thing that needs to be remembered is that the room shown is about the size of an average single person hotel room, not exactly somewhere I'd want ten people living for an extended period." So they should let thousands of extra people die so thousands of other people don't have to deal with not having elbow room for a month?
131	*** There's more than just discomfort involved. There are serious mental and physical health concerns being packed so tight that movement is difficult. One could argue for sticking a second or third person in that room, but not nine more. Especially since they had no way of being sure how long they'd be sailing.
132	*** Or how long it'd take to re-start agricultural production of food ''after'' the apocalypse. For all they knew, every inch of land on the planet was going to get submerged in seawater, so even if it rose back up it'd be too saline for crops for decades afterward. Cramming ten times as many people on the Arks wouldn't actually save that many lives, in the long term; it'd just mean a lot more riots and higher death tolls later on, when the food supplies run low. ''That's'' why letting the Chinese workers and ticket-holders on board was controversial: not whether they were worth saving, but whether they were worth risking chaos and infighting on the Arks if Africa ''hadn't'' risen.
133	----
134	* Why the hell would you put all your humanity-saving devices in ONE LOCATION? If the Himilayas were the first to get hit by the destruction instead of LA, everyone but Africa would die because they didn't have a backup plan. Rule one of any plan is to ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP. At least that's my rule.
135	** Because, sometimes, it's better to focus all of your resources on a single project, rather than several competing ones. As for doing it all in China, only China could get away with a secret construction project on that scale. Plus, they have the best manufacturing base to do it.
136	** The way I see it... it's because they had scientist working on it since years before, and they pretty much predicted that it would have been a safer spot than, say, California, Japan or Italy, which are placed on critical points and did indeed go destroyed quite soon. Also, the secret operation factor.
137	** The Himalayan Mountains are the thickest and most stable part of the crust.
138	*** Except for being the boundary between a subcontinent and a continent crashing into each other, causing the entire range to rise 5 millimeters a year. It is a very active, very unstable region. That's why the mountains are so high-they formed so quickly erosion hasn't had time to wear them down to a more average level.
139	*** Another fun fact is that continental plates are actually the THINNEST, with the oceanic plates being heavier. [[FridgeLogic That is why continents are above sea level: they float higher on the underlying mantle]].
140	*** Earth's continental crust is 30–70 km thick, the oceanic crustal thickness is 6–12 km. Your argument doesn't exist.
141	----
142	* What bugged me the most is the basic premise of building 4 huge arks and leave the rest of the worlds population to drown. The massive size to withstand the forces of nature of earthquakes and so forth. Why not blanket the world with semi-rigid, 20 person life-rafts/pods? Stock the rafts with food concentrates, water purification/desalination system, seeds and some how to manuals. The semi-rigid nature would allow a lot of banging about and still be functional. And even if half are lost from the disaster, they would still save a much higher portion of the population then they could with 4 arks.
143	** Look who [[Creator/RolandEmmerich the director]] is.
144	** Technically they built seven arks. They only got four finished and one of those got damaged. Granted, we're talking about a difference of ''maybe'' a couple hundred thousand people compared to billions dying, but still.
145	----
146	* Okay, if this is supposed to take place in December of 2012, why were they suspending the SUMMER Olympic Games in London?! Am I missing something here?
147	** I think there was a line in the movie from the main scientist about how the disasters started about 6 months earlier than they'd predicted (which is why the Arks weren't completely ready I think). 6 months earlier than December 2012 puts the movie's events in July 2012, which ''would'' be about the same time the London Olympics would be going on. So the timeline works.
148	*** Still doesn't make any sense. The movie is supposed to be based around Dec. 21, 2012, but as it happens six months early, it's June 21st. The 2012 Olympics start on July 27th.
149	*** The Olympics could have been canceled before it started. Also remember that the whole Mayan calendar thing is just shameless capitalizing on the end-of-the-world myth, and barely touched upon in the movie.
150	** Having the cataclysm strike in December would've made events like the Yellowstone eruption less visually-impressive, because a bunch of bare trees tumbling and snow flashing to steam that obscures the audience's view would've hidden the ground bulging and rupturing. Heck, it would've made it hard to tell the volcanic ash falling everywhere ''was'' ash, not snow. Plus, it's already implausible enough to have a bunch of Californians trudging their way among the Himalayan peaks in street-clothes without freezing to death in ''August''.
151	----
152	* Considering that all they ended up doing was build 4 large ships (with engineering so bad that designers should be tried and executed for neglectful incompetence), why exactly did they need the private sector again? Simply going public and diverting as large as possible a portion of available resources to the project could have saved a significant portion of the population rather then focusing on a bunch of bureaucrats and upper class people that can't actually support themselves (even if they didn't go public, wouldn't it be smarted to ditch the now powerless wealthy ones at the last minute in favor of people with a more relevant skill set for post apocalyptic survival on the water?). Sure, going public would have led to a certain state of panic, but good public relations could easily minimize the damage, and then get all national resources diverted to the project ASAP rather then keeping it under the table.
153	** Hell, when all you're doing is building a large ship, why complicate things with international cooperation anyhow? Individual nations are more then capable of constructing large flotillas (and even doing so secretly, just pass them off as aircraft carriers for use in the war on terror or something), and the added complication of working with other nations would have significantly bogged down the project with sheer translation, bureaucracy, old tensions, and ego (replaced by a clear chain of command)--all of which could be circumvented with the every nation for itself attitude. Just compare the time, money and effort it takes for the UN to get anything done as opposed to a single state taking up the task by itself.
154	** Of course, if every nation was left to build its own vessels or refuges, you'd probably wind up with stronger nations invading weaker ones to seize control of ''their'' ships. Getting every major nation in on a common endeavor at least averts the risk of the calamity being made worse by having a bunch of wars kick off in the final months of the countdown to Armageddon.
155	** There's probably an issue about secrecy. If they let the survival to each nation sooner or later the poorer countries would make things public when they find themselves unable to make a funcional surviving flotilla (I mean there are countries that literally do not have an army, do you really think the Palau Islands are going to be able to build even ONE ark?), thus the best way to maintain the secrecy needed is to buy the silence of the poorer nations inviting them in.
156	----
157	* JBM: How exactly would you keep the "End of The World" a "secret?" At least in The Core (A slightly less bad movie than this) actively keeping the public in the dark was "addressed" (handwaved?). In this movie's universe there are apparently no geologists, astrophysicists, seismologists, oil companies, mining companies, investigative journalists, bureaucrats leaking information for personal gain and no Internet.
158	** Woody Harrelson's character covered that. Anytime somebody looks to be getting too close to the truth, they suffer an "accident". The point stands though, since there are thousands of scientists who could have found out what was happening and gone public. Nobody can easily silence that many people.
159	** for the Trope the movie uses here to handwave, it's ApatheticCitizens.
160	----
161	* What about the fact that the Himalaya's get flooded in the first place? Where the hell is all this water coming from?
162	** Asia was sinking. The water wasn't rising, everything else was falling.
163	*** So where does it go after that? Land mass sinks all the time in between the tectonic plates, but where at one place the ground sinks in another magma is coming out somewhere, renewing the earth. Either way, land can't just sink into the earth without replacing land elsewhere, but the movie shows the entire earth covered in water...
164	** Africa rose up "several thousand of meters". The rest of the world got flooded: Himalayas got flooded last. It couldn't be simpler.
165	----
166	* The earth is solid. Highly pressurized magma (not a liquid in any conventional sense of the word) topped off by several kilometres of very solid, densely packed rock. The endless destructive sequences show the earth's surface crumbling into a gigantic void - not just ''cracking'' to create chasms, but falling away en masse. Ask yourself: [[FridgeLogic where is it all going?]] There's no room down there. It's already full of earth - that's what makes it the earth. The earth's crust is not made of cotton candy or yeast. RuleOfCool might have covered one or two sequences involving large chasms and holes in the ground, but this goes on and on for most of the movie, to the point where entire regions of America are falling down into some magical Deus Ex Vaccuum.
167	** It looked like one of the effects of the Earth's interior heating up was the Earth expanding, like a balloon. Or something, that's the only way to explain the bottomless chasms opening up everywhere without any magma welling out from them. Nearly every movie involving earthquakes does it, though, so it's nothing new.
168	*** FridgeLogic: if the Earth was indeed expanding, then that would mean more surface for the oceans to cover. More surface covered while keeping the same volume of water would technically translate to a ''diminution'' of the water's depth...
169	** The last parting shot of L.A. out the plane's window appears to account for it: the areas we see falling into the depths weren't just dropping into nothingness; the whole coastline was ''tipping upwards'' in miles-long chunks, and their elevated edges were crumbling off under their own weight.
170	----
171	* Why couldn't Creator/RolandEmmerich simply wait another three years before making this film? Releasing a film about the 2012 apocalypse in the ''actual year'' 2012 would have done wonders for marketing.
172	** Two words: panicking masses.
173	** Why didn't Kubrick wait until 2001 to release his movie? [[InsaneTrollLogic Because he was a stupid prick.]]
174	** 2012 was the "in thing" at the time, so it could make money. Even now, it's getting close enough that people are getting into "but seriously, nothing's going to happen" mode.
175	----
176	* How about those {{Too Dumb To Live}} emergency services in Las Vegas, eh? You're at an airport, planes everywhere, and a giant ash cloud is moving in. What to do? Move everyone into a building with a ''glass'' facade and then scream bloody murder at the one plane taking off because it doesn't have "clearance"...''as the ash cloud kills you.'' How about inspecting that giant Russian aircraft, booting off the cars and saving another 50-60 people minimum?
177	** Including those dancers who apparently didn't have time to change out of their enormous, feathery costumes... they go everywhere like that, do they?
178	** They have to show the normal brainless population being brainless in all disaster movies, no matter how stupid it looks.
179	----
180	* The fact that Creator/RolandEmmerich was such a greedy douchebag to make a film out of (and therefore promote) something that has some people so terrified they're actually contemplating suicide.
181	** I have a friend who failed doing research about the Mayan calendar, and admitted that he'll go around raping girls he fancy when 2012 hits. Huh, [[Film/TheDarkKnight The Joker]] was right. You do know who a person really are in their last moments.
182	*** The fact that some people take this stuff seriously. The world didn't end when my calendar ran out 3 months ago despite the fact that our civilization is more than a thousand years older, wiser and more advanced. If any calendar running out means Armageddon it would make far more sense for it to be the current civilization's. The Mayans couldn't make their population live about 80 years on average in luxury undreamt of by their kings, send some of them on the moon, use pieces of the sun for weaponry and (hopefully soon) energy, or write the Doom comic. Of course, that kind of thing doesn't happen, I just need to spend some money on a 2011 calendar.
183	*** Similarly, 32-bit Linux is designed to work until the year 2038; it's not because we figured the world would end before 2038 so we wouldn't need it to go further than that; it's because we decided that 32-bit was more efficient at the time and that we'd have something else figured out by then.
184	-----
185	* OK, I get that Woody explained how every single person trying to expose the years-long international conspiracy met fatal 'accidents' and thus nobody knows about the imminent apocalypse before it's too late. But how frigging stupid were all these would-be whistleblowers that they didn't think to upload all their information to the Internet, spreading the information everywhere and making it virtually impossible to cover up then? Really, a press conference was the best the director of the Louvre could think of?
186	** You believe everything you read on the Internet? You shouldn't, not until it's been confirmed by reporters that verify the information through original research...and press conferences.
187	*** Reporters? They don't do research anymore. You just need other scientists to peer review the paper, which would happen if a notable scientist publishes his paper online and then mysteriously dies. Especially when similar publish-then-die incidents happen all the time.
188	*** Depending on how efficient the conspiracy is, they'd have trouble proving who they are and publishing the paper to a legitimate site in the time it takes them to be captured or killed.
189	----
190	* Why did the Pope just stay behind? I can understand the Pope wanting to lead his people in praying but... there are going to be people needing leaders to guide them. Can't the Pope send someone like his second in command to take his place in guiding all the survivors and keeping the Roman Catholic religion going after the apocalypse?
191	** Because "religion is an empty promise in a cold, uncaring world" is a major theme of the movie. You can't have the Pope or any high-ranking religious figure survive because, being religious, obviously they would sit in their church or mosque or whatever and pray it out while completely ignoring the lifesaving '''science''' that only practical, secular governments and businessmen are smart enough to utilize. The only reason the filmmakers didn't show Mecca disappearing into a giant hole in the ground is because they were afraid of getting a fatwa issued against them...but they certainly wished they could have.
192	*** That's a broken moral then, because the Mayan religion was nothing but a (full?) promise that turned out to be correct. All praise Kukulkan! May he and the howler monkey gods preserve our culture! We must feed the monkeys maize!
193	*** Science just barely saved the scraps of humanity as it was, while "Pure Mad Luck" almost seems to win out as a survival tactic.
194	** Maybe the pope thought like the US president and didn't go along because of age-related reasons, instead opting to send a younger representative.
195	** There are Catholic cardinals in Africa, some of whom probably survived. The Catholic faith would likely be able to keep going, and choose a new Pope.
196	*** Indeed. Whoever was the most senior or most popular Catholic Cardinal in Africa at the time of the disaster will become--by default--the new Pope. In any case, the world governments probably didn't warn the current Pope about 2012 because they might have feared that he'd warn people out of a sense of moral obligation (YMMV as to whether he actually would or not, but I guess the world gov'ts didn't want to take that chance).
197	*** Also, the British Queen is still around, along with her heirs, so any Anglicans among the survivors at least still have a figurehead. And there are also Muslim religious leaders in Africa, so Muslim survivors will have leaders as well.
198	*** Islam, at least Sunni, does not require religious leaders, just scholars and a host of Hadith books and the Koran. Pretty sure there are arrangements made by the Saudi Royal Family to bring his Grand Mufti, a few attendant scholars, and a few texts along the ride. Shi'a faith may have a blow, however, as Ayatollah suddenly missing when his guidance is most needed by the people of Iran may bring great panic to the nation. Before the earth start cracking up and all that, I mean.
199	*** I think we can be pretty sure every Cardinal or Mufti or any other African died after one month under water.
200	** Most likely, the Pope volunteered to remain behind so that the many, many millions of Catholics who ''didn't'' get an Ark invite would know he was with them, praying for and comforting his flock in its darkest hour. His duty not to abandon them when they most need consolation ''far'' outweighs any expectation that he, not a successor, re-establish the Church post-cataclysm.
201	----
202	* Tsunamis don't happen in deep water, they only occur on the shallower continental shelf and places where islands jut up out of the sea. Pack as many ships as you can with as many people and supplies as you can, and send them out into deep water. Residential ships (cruise ships, ocean liners, large passenger ferries, and yachts), hydroponic farm ships (converted supertankers), and cargo ships could support many millions of people for a very long time with four years of planning and deployment.
203	** Even if the fuel eventually runs out, wind and solar power on the open ocean would be ideal for a drifting flotilla. Engine screws could even be converted to provide energy from ocean currents.
204	** In a movie, tsunamis will rise up and gobble up ships no matter where they are. And one did, the ship carrying the two old guys wasn't safe even out of sight of any land. (an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3okAimwWp4 alternate ending]] had them surviving, though)
205	*** They were still on the continental shelf between Japan and China, which isn't tsunami-safe.
206	** Rogue waves, however, do form in deep water. Rogue waves are also considerably taller (though not nearly as wide) as tsunamis. While the cause of rogue waves isn't completely understood, the fact that literally everything else was going to hell in this movie likely meant that rogue waves running rampant.
207	** And you're assuming the seabed is staying put. With all those huge cracks opening up and swallowing whole cities, ''something'' must be welling upward in exchange, because the displaced magma from the mega-sinkholes can't just have vanished. Africa aside, it's likely that the sea floor in places is just as violently unstable as the Yellowstone basin by the film's climax. That's probably where all those continent-flooding super-tsunami came from, in the first place.
208	-----
209	* There's an underwater shot where the ark scrapes bottom and dredges up ''silt''. Umm... we're in ''newly-flooded'' mountains which up until a few minutes ago were several miles above sea level. I doubt there would be any silt.
210	** It was probably supposed to be gravel crumbling off the mountainside from the impact.
211	----
212	* Why is it that no one was suffering from altitude sickness when they are at least more than a thousand feet above sea level? In fact, the climax was them almost running into the side of Mt. Everest when the peak was only a hundred feet above them. And for that matter, why is it that they don't freeze to death while swimming in a dark ship in the coldest place on earth!?
213	** You need to be ''way'' more than 1000 feet above sea level to start getting sick from it. For reference, Denver, Colorado is a mile, ''5,000'' feet, above sea level.
214	** On the other side, it would make some sense if you consider the theory that the sea didn't actually rise much, the whole continent fell down instead...
215	** Even if the seas did rise, the atmosphere would rise too. The water would literally push up the air. The expanded diameter of the surface of the earth would cause the atmosphere to thin ever so slightly, but not enough to be noticable. You would still be around "sea level" pressure even if the water rose twenty miles above its usual level.
216	* What I don't get is that, even in the trailer, the aircraft carrier that smashes the white house has its name ("USS JOHN F KENNEDY CV-67") printed all over its deck in a screen-filling manner. This is not the case with the real ship, which btw was already decommissioned in 2009. So, did Emmerich want to make some kind of statement abour Mr. Kennedy here?
217	** [[DramaticIrony Probably]]. And let's not question what kind of wave would bring the carrier to DC, considering that after being decomissioned it went to Philadelphia.
218	----
219	* When I was walking out of cinema and discussing the movie with my dad, he pointed out one huge-ass plot hole: why the hell they were going to save people they were going to save? They saved politicians and millionaires, who will be absolutely useless in rebuilding the civilization. Of course it was stated that instead of millionaires, it was planned to save sportsmen (like saving the earth's best), but thing is that sportsmen are competent only in their given sphere, outside of it they are equal to your average Joe. This doesn't make any freaking sense. And yeah, that guy was selling tickets - did he even think that he won't have any single chance to spend the money, since, you know, the world as we know it is dead. Instead of millionaires and politicians they should've saved scientists and... chinese workers who built the ships!
220	** And naturally, nearly all those millionaires and politicians were utterly selfish bastards out to save their own hides. Heaven forbid they should show, say, the Queen of England kissing her grandsons goodbye as they got on board to claim the seats she'd bought for ''them''...
221	** It was indicated that they saved a maximum of intellectuals, scientists, the such... The tickets were mostly for the room left after those were already selected. And since there was ''still'' room left after that, they ran a lottery.
222	** That would be because they were following the Golden Rule - whomever has the gold, makes the rules. Politicians and billionaires and celebrities were saved because, by an astonishing coincidence, they were the ones in position to decide who should be saved. Funny, that.
223	** The money from the tickets was spent ''building'' the Arks, when there was still a world economy and it still had value. They sold tickets years in advance, not at the last minute.
224	** Emmerich obviously wanted to give a political message as subtle as an anvil, but not quite unrealistic. Nevertheless most politicians are intellectuals, administrators, scientists and the like, with the exception of military dictatorships, most people in high ranking offices are there because they exceed in some profesional and intellectual field. Merkel is a scientists for example. Billionaires on the other hand are pretty useless, specially those that inherit their fortunes (the ones that make it may at least be useful in some ways). The irony here is that, unless they saved some common people, all the hard work that was gonna be needed to recreate the civilization (like growing food and build houses) would have to be done by rich people (although I guess now would be done by the workers they let in).
225	----
226	* I'm no naval architect, but those Arks don't look like they should float.
227	** They may not look like it, but so long as they have enough air inside to maintain buoyancy they're good. Ship building is a very old craft - humans know what they are doing, and the builders were probably top in the world.
228	----
229	* Does anybody know why they had to have Gordon, Yuri, and Tamara killed off toward the end?
230	** Moreover, what did they do with Tamara's body? Did they just leave her in there to marinate, or chuck her overboard, or what?
231	*** It's pretty safe to assume she got a burial at sea. Is this really that hard to imagine?
232	----
233	* Jackson got the map's location from Charlie, and he's driving the trailer back to the air strip. Why didn't he ask his daughter, who was with him in the car, to search for the map, instead of going back just in time to get swallowed by a fissure and nearly dying?
234	** His daughter had no idea where it was. besides, he did not want her looking back at the ash cloud about to overtake them, maybe you missed that.
235	*** He could have given the instructions for her to look. And yes, I knew there was an ash cloud (and that Jackson was firm on letting her panic, as he kept on saying things were OK to his daughter as they were driving downhill).
236	** That little girl couldn't have weighed more than forty-odd pounds, and the camper was jouncing around like crazy. You want him to send his own kid back there to bounce off the walls like a pinball?
237	** Alternatively, Jackson could've taken all of the maps from Charlie's trailer instead of trying to look for them there, which would've saved precious seconds.
238	*** Assuming a nutbar like Charlie actually remembered right about where he'd left the map.
239	*** Hell, Jackson ''could'' have just asked Charlie ''where the map led'', since Charlie'd clearly looked at it before.
240	** The answer is really very simple: in extreme situations, '''people don't always act rationally!'''
241	----
242	* The White House Chief of Staff has no formal place in the line of succession. Sure, they explicitly note that the Vice President and the Speaker are MIA, but where the hell is the Secretary of State? Didn't the rest of the Cabinet get a spot on the Ark? Obviously Anheiser needed to take charge in the heat of the moment, but it seems very odd that America's chief diplomat - or the Secretaries of Defense and Treasury - wouldn't be involved in such an international operation.
243	** Well since the end of the world started earlier than they intended, the rest of the Cabinet was out of position and couldn't make it to the Ark in time.
244	*** [[FridgeBrilliance They were all off on summer recess]].
245	----
246	* Why didn't Woody just put the map on the Internet for people to find rather than just keep it in his trailer? He could tell people, "Okay, here is a map to the spaceships. Go there if you want to be saved." Granted, a lot of people would not believe him but I'm sure that there are a few conspiracy nuts who decided to try going to China.
247	** For one thing, that would've gotten ''him'' on the Killed To Protect The Conspiracy list, rather than written off as a crank. For another, the Chinese would've pumped up their defense of the Ark construction site, and the film's protagonists would've been shot by those soldiers rather than just abandoned in the snow.
248	----
249	* I don't want to sound distasteful to any Brits on here, but why would the Queen get a ticket for the arks? Wouldn't she stay in England to comfort the people while having Wills and Harry (and maybe a few other of the younger Royals) get away?
250	** I think the reason why the Queen was there because the filmmakers knew that (before the Royal Wedding at least,) the Queen is the most recognized member of the royal family outside of Britain. If Harry and Will had been there instead, there would probably have had to be a few lines of dialogue explaining who they are to non-British viewers.
251	** That did annoy me - she would definitely have stayed behind. She and her family even stayed in London during the Blitz.
252	** Emmerich had the Royal Family die in ''DayAfterTomorrow'' (when their RAF transports crash). Maybe he was trying to make up for his previous regicide?
253	*** Actually, in that one we didn't get confirmation that they die. Their RAF transports crashed en route to the castle they were staying in. For all we know, they used a bunker that was built in.
254	** To extrapolate that point further, according to the movie, only the President of the United States and the Italian Prime minister stayed behind. Er, excuse me? Be as cynical as you like about politicians, but realistically I would imagine the majority of the world leaders would stay to comfort their respective peoples.
255	*** The Pope stayed behind too, which isn't unexpected.
256	----
257	* So They tried to build 8 arks, presumably one for each of the G8 nations, But with only 3 ready in time, the nations are forced to share. How come the Americans got one all to themselves?
258	** It wasn't one per nation, eight was just the number they thought they could manage to finish under the original timeline.
259	*** That doesn't answer the question. The question is why they aren't sharing like Russia and China? Surely it would be far more convenient to devote more space to the Chinese and Indians, being local and all.
260	----
261	* I don't understand why some people are so pissed that Roland didn't show Mecca getting destroyed. Having seen the film twice, it would not have added anything and just dragged the film with another identical scene of people getting killed in a religious location.
262	** Well, that, and risking being Fatwa'd.
263	----
264	* Why is a kid in 2012 playing a mint PSP? Also where are all the smart phones?
265	** Why not? I still have an original Nintendo DS in pretty much mint condition, and games to play on it. And they still sell them, too. Not everyone always has the newest toys.
266	** I was playing my Game Boy Color just last night. And for that matter, I ''hate'' smart phones.
267	** The film came out in ''2009''. [=PSPs=] were still at their peak at the time.
268	----
269	* Am I the only one who kinda want to see a followup of this with survivors that go to Africa and murders the folks who left them to die horribly? Seriously, not only did the rich and powerful get to lord over us before, but now they get to survive the end of the world?
270	** [[HeWhoFightsMonsters I think you fought one too many monsters there.]]
271	*** Really? So I'm the only person who took personal offense to "Oh by the way, the world is ending, and only the rich, powerful and intelligent get to survive. Guess it sucks to be average"? They got to play around with us like toys before, and now they get to make a whole new world and leave the rest of us to die? Am I the only one who finds that just a little bit infuriating?
272	*** In a scenario where billions die, it does indeed suck to be average. Morally speaking, you should try to do your best for as many people as you can, certainly, but in this movie, ''nothing can be done for most people.'' If you're going to make a whole new world from a tiny core of individuals, would you want those individuals to be average or extraordinary? The real beef of the OP seems to be the selection method for "extraordinariness," which is wealth and power for '''part''' of the Arks' passengers. Well, even if you cut them out, would you want extraordinarily intelligent, or charitable, or industrious, or compassionate people to replace them, or average people? And while some of the wealthy and powerful who board the Arks may have come into wealth and power purely by chance, many of them (hopefully most of them) could be extraordinarily savvy or zealous, which may contribute to a better chance of survival for them and their descendents. Being average shouldn't be a crime in everyday life, but it isn't an asset in extreme situations.
273	*** My main problem with the movie is that they don't even seem to dwell at all on the fact that billions of people are dead, and that they were basically just left to die, while the worlds governments were well aware of what was happening. Understandable? Maybe, but that doesn't change that if there are other survivors, I'd love to see them hunt down the bastards who just left them behind. Not that it's likely to happen since we're supposed to treat the survival of the lucky and powerful as a good thing, but thats my thoughts on it. I just know that I'd be pissed if someone else decided all I get is to be a corpse in the foundation of a new world.
274	*** This troper, while not as surprised that an awful lot of ordinary people were written off, was annoyed that they didn't show at least some preference for saving women and children. It seems like 90% of the people we see on the Arks are either men, or women past childbearing age, which doesn't bode well for the genetic future of the species. (Yes, the African survivors probably even the sex-ratio out, but nobody who stocked the Arks could've known that continent was going to survive, else they'd have left the freakin' ''giraffes'' behind.)
275	*** Overall, the point is "We have a bigger fish to fry (i.e the extinction of the entire human race), no time for petty class wars" (be they justified or not).
276	----
277	* So they built ships at the point they figured the high water mark would be. Why not just build structures in and around Everest? It's hundreds of feet above the new water level, and it saves you the problem of having to board the ships which are already at an inconveniently high altitude.
278	** Because then they wouldn't have been able to go anywhere afterwards. Sure, you COULD build settlements on top of Everest, but you couldn't sustain hundreds-of-thousands of people up there. Neither the climate nor the available space would allow for that level of farming. By building (mobile) ships they were able to go to Africa at the end.
279	----
280	* Gears the size of [=SUV=]s, powered by engines that could probably hoist an office building, and they get jammed up by a machinists' tool one man can lift? What was that drill/ratchet/whatever ''made'' of, adamantium?
281	** The first computer freeze up was caused by a fly cooking itself on a vacuum tube. Keep in mind the computer in question was the size of your average classroom. Size and material doesn't matter, any FOD in the wrong place at the wrong time will cause a machine to seize up, and stop working until repairs are made or the debris is removed.
282	*** Except those gears were specifically ''designed'' to keep rotating despite the resistance of the multi-ton doors they were shutting. They rightly should have '''chewed''' that tool into tin foil without even slowing down.
283	----
284	* I realize that RuleOfCool is in effect, but there's really not much reason to take animals like giraffes and elephants along on the arks when the goal is for the human race to survive. Why not save that space for more immediately useful animals like cows or chickens (or, assuming that they had some of those already, ''more'' cows and chickens)? Supplies? Tools? A few more passengers? One could argue that elephants could be used for heavy labor, but in the confines of even a large ship it would be impractical, and the giraffes really don't have much purpose.
285	** The idea here was to not only save the human race, but to save enough animals so that we can live in a balanced ecosystem again. The plan was likely to bring along a few dozen females of each species, and then use artificial insemination to breed more. After enough were bred that way, they could be released into the wild (what's left of it at least) and be allowed to repopulate.
286	*** Problem is, the people planning this don't know what kind of ecosystem there is going to be after the disaster. What's more, animals like giraffes and elephants aren't the most important species in their ecosystems. The smart thing to do would've been to take species that are adaptable, and important to the ecosystem and food chains. Preserving a species takes a lot of work and resources that they might not have. What would be the purpose of saving large, charismatic animals like giraffes and elephants? Elephants could at least be used for labor.
287	*** This isn't even touching the fact that populations of animals need a minimum viable population (MVP) to be able to survive in the long run because of genetic diversity or inbreeding. A paper this troper read cites the number for elephants to have >95% chance of surviving is anywhere between 100 and 200.
288	*** The whole saving animals scenes was an attempt by Emmerich to invoke Noah's Ark but for the XXI century.Realistically there is no reason to save elephants or rhinos never mind the fact that they need a lot more than 2 per species.Not to mention all of these animals need to be fed and kept in an enclosed space meaning a large number of individuals would be used just for that.Not to mention the fact that if they considered rhinos important enough to save then pretty much every species of animal that is at least somewhat recognisable is on those ships.Meaning a good chunk of them are occupied with just wild animals many of whom will not survive the drastically changed climate following this apocalypse.Maybe RuleOfCool doesn't work all the time?
289	** What's ''really'' a headscratcher is that the animals weren't tranquilized and crated for transport. Seriously, those giraffes and elephants and whatever are willing to just ''stand there'' atop little fenced platforms and get hauled up by helicopters, without panicking?
290	** No, the real headscratcher is how those animals didn't freeze to death. Giraffes and elephants are tropical animals that need a warm climate to survive. To give you an example even in a tropical country like Costa Rica they keep their giraffes in a zoo locate in the hotest coastal province of Guanacaste that ressembles the African climate the closest, as giraffes couldn't survive the colder climate of the central valley. If a giraffe would die of cold in San Jose, Costa Rica what possibilities it has of surviving in the Himalayas?
291	----
292	* Why were the Vegas authorities so intent on preventing the Antonov from escaping anyways? and why were there still people in the towers at all?
293	** Sometimes, when peoples' brains freeze up from sheer shock, they default to doing whatever they're used to doing, mechanically. The flight control worker was probably in the same state as a housewife who, informed that her whole family just got killed in a car crash, numbly wanders back into the kitchen and starts preparing dinner for them.
294	----
295	* Even if we excuse bringing the elephants and giraffes on the Ark as a token gesture, why was it considered necessary to bring the ''artwork'' on board the ships at all...? Sure, they wouldn't want such treasures destroyed, but there's no need for paintings and statues to be tended to around the clock, like living animals have to be: they don't actually ''need'' to be stored in the same vessels that humans and animals will be living on. Why not carve out some impenetrable underground warehouse in a geologically-stable location, seal it thoroughly against moisture and flooding, and leave the art there until the survivors can go back and dig it up again? It's not as if art-theft is going to be a major concern in the aftermath of the disaster, when food and shelter will be far more prized than Michaelangelo's ''David''.
296	** Whether valuable or not is very subjective. They are planning to recreate human civilization at some point and most of this arwork is irreplaceable. Future generations might want to see them, and it probably does not take as much space or resources as might be thought as art has to be seal in close compartments to be protected. Might sound frivolous but is actually what governments do in real life, lots of resources are taken on safeguarding historically valuable areas, even in countries with population living under the poverty line. About "Why not carve out some impenetrable underground warehouse in a geologically-stable location", there is no geologically-stable locations anywhere, they think the entire Earth's crust is going to melt.
297	----
298	* As the Antonov is preparing to ditch in the South China Sea, Gordon makes an offhand remark that at least they won't need the landing gear because "we lost it, in Vegas" - and, sure enough, we saw half of the main gear take crippling damage on screen. So how was the whole "refuel in Hawaii" plan supposed to work if they couldn't land and take off again? [[note]]Sure, you can ''land'' without the gear down, but the plane sure won't be usable for at least a good long while.[[/note]]
299	----
300	* When Jackson is looking for the right map in Charlie's van... why doesn't he grab ''all the maps'' and not hold his party up at the plane? Like, okay, RuleOfDrama, but ''why???''
301	** For all Jackson knows, Charlie stashed maps in lots of places. If he just grabbed all the maps he could see, he has no guarantee that the map he wants is going to be among them, and by the time he finds out, it would be too late to go back.
302

Context Headscratchers / TwoThousandTwelve