In Dante's Peak - a movie portraying the eruption of a big volcano in a small town was unrealistic. This is shown in many ways such as; bathers dying in hot springs, thin lava flows, dramatized earthquakes, robots for making observations and the driving of motor vehicles across hot molten lava.
From the very beginning this film was found to be unrealistic. Two bathers went for a swim in a hot spring, two minutes after getting in - the temperature suddenly changed and they were burned alive. .
According to scientists - although the temperature of hot springs can increase or decrease to higher or lower temperatures it takes days or weeks for these changes to occur. Therefore the two minute change in temperature was unrealistic.
The lava flows in Dante's Peak flowed very fast and almost like rivers or streams. Lava flows are usually thick and slow moving, with the exception of Hawaii, where their lava flows are fast moving - but still not as fast as in Dante's Peak. This proved to be very unrealistic; it even looked unrealistic to, as it just looked like muddy rivers with lots of sticks and trees in them had overflowed.
Earthquakes in this movie were overly dramatized. The earthquakes caused by Dante's Peak erupting destroyed many buildings and bridges. The biggest earthquake ever caused by a volcanic eruption had a placing of 5 on the Richter scale. And 5 is nowhere near big enough to destroy buildings - let alone whole towns.
In Dante's Peak they relied on the help of a robot called Spider Legs. Spider Legs was a robot donated to them by NASA - but he had many faults, causing them to spend more time fixing the faulty robot than actually putting it to good use. Using this robot was unrealistic as observations and measurements are made by the keen eye of experienced scientists. Also the help of instruments installed around the volcano like; seismometers, tilt meters, Global Positioning System receivers, gas sensors, mudflow sensors and temperature probes all help the scientists with their measurements and observations.
