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Breaking the glass

  • When Ray is attempting to rescue Blake, why doesn't he simply take his shirt off, wrap it around his fist, and punch through the glass a la Kingsman: The Secret Service?
    • Haven't seen that film but punching interior wall glass, meant to not break even when people full on run at it, isn't going to be super effective.
    • It's also a terribly idiotic idea. A criminal once won a Darwin Award for doing what you just described, after the glass tore straight through his shirt and ripped open a massive gash on his arm, tearing apart his main artery. He bled out and died. As it turns out, cloth isn't very study!
    • If having gotten shaken and strained in a 9.6 earthquake and subsequent tsunami didn't already shatter that sheet of glass, a measly punch (even from the Rock) isn't going to do squat to it.
      • On top of all of that, punching through the glass wouldn't do anything noways because the glass Blake was trapped behind looked like that really thick glass that a lot of your skyscrapers have, in which case, it might not have been glass but acrylic or the polycarbonate, which takes A LOT to even crack.

Teleportation?

Feel no pain, bruh?

  • Why isn't Ben writhing in pain from the saltwater from the cuts? He's clearly an upper middle-class lad, and presumably hasn't had to sustain serious, temporarily debilitating injuries before, complete with saltwater coming in and irritating them further.
    • Adrenaline.
    • Rugby
    • The seawater is probably cold enough that he's too numbed by the chill to feel the salt-sting all that much. Particularly so, if the quake stirred up some really deep-down water.

The authorities ain't gonna like this?

  • Given that Ray effectively abandons his post when he's needed the most and pretty much steals a valuable search and rescue helicopter, is he likely to be arrested or dismissed once he reports back in?
    • Probably. Using it to rescue his wife was excusable due to the circumstances and the potential to rescue others that didn't pan out, but immediately after that it was time to call in or head back to base, not go racing off on a personal mission.
    • The loss of the helicopter in Bakersfield is absolutely going to be his fault - they certainly could have used it back in LA.
    • That's assuming anybody who knew where Ray was supposed to be is even still alive at the end of the movie, which is questionable. Even more unlikely that they could prove he stole it, given how much demolished crap would have to be dug through to find the evidence to charge him with.
    • Considering the circumstances - he went to rescue his daughter from an earthquake, and he's clearly a skilled and dedicated rescue helicopter pilot, he might just get a warning.
    • Odds are extremely high that thousands of other survivors could, hypothetically, be charged with looting, violence, or abandoning others in their frantic efforts escape, and that hundreds of other first responders deserted their posts in favor of their families when faced with a catastrophe of such magnitude. Prosecuting them for merely acting like frightened, fallible human beings in the clinch would be insane. Sure, Ray might be singled out to have an example made of him, but you'd think prosecutors looking to make a such point would pick a Dirty Coward who deserted his duty to save himself, not a Papa Wolf rescuing his loved ones.

Agony of the feet

  • How did Kim manage to penetrate his foot just by running into some rebar? It didn't reach out and stab him, the section he was on just collapsed, so he had no more force going into it than his running speed. For that matter, from what we see of how close he is, the section he was hanging on remained behind when they did the pull away shot, so he still should have been okay.
    • He was thrown to the ground when the dam began to collapse, and probably penetrated his foot with the rebar as he was thrown to the ground, and against the next section of concrete and tarmac.

Weird way to get readings, Kim

  • At the beginning, exactly why did Kim have to be in the pipe at Hoover dam to get readings? I don't see how the readings in the pipe on Hoover dam could have been any different than anywhere else nearby.
    • Possibly he needed to be as close as possible to the dam's core for the seismic readings to capture the best quality of data.

Huh?!

  • How does Emma manage to crash a speedboat with inflatable pontoons through super-strong glass to get to her family and the brothers and not puncture the rubber?
    • The boat may have had some extra covering over its bow to prevent its pontoons from being ruptured on submerged rocks.

Building plans

  • This is entirely some SF local The Graduate grade nitpicking but what kind of magic did Daniel Riddick have to do to get cleared to build a skyscraper in Nob Hill?
    • Threw obscene amounts of money at local government units, promised ridiculous levels of opulence to the local affluent population who would then lobby on his behalf - the usual stuff rich guys do to skirt rules.
      • Yeah, but isn't all that countered by ruining their view?

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