2029: "Disaster Movie"

[Soupspoon]

Title text: Really, they'd be rushing around collecting revisions to go into the next scheduled quarterly public data update, not publishing them immediately, but you have to embellish things a little for Hollywood.

"…and somebody tell OpenStreetMap that they will need to dissect and discard a lot of the street data!"

[rhomboidal]

Hollywood would still demand that the scientists update their data sets while shooting at lava monsters.

[keldor]

In the long run, when this all becomes history, proper documentary of the disaster as it unfolds will be invaluable.

[gd1]

Hollywood would still demand that the scientists update their data sets while shooting at lava monsters.

To be fair, games have unrealistic expectations of scientists too:

[Soupspoon]

Archaologists:

Spoiler:

vs


…and…


vs.

(Note how much happier the RL ones are!)

[Jonathan589]

The volcano in the Scottish Highlands has affected the mountain heights for fifty miles around. How many surveyors are on the emergency call list to get in there and update the Munro tables?

[Jonathan589]

We need professional scientists with the right experience for this job. Right now!
Call in the CSI Miami team, YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

[qvxb]

The actress to play the head of the Institute will be either Meryl Streep or Stormy Daniels.

[Krenn]

As a disaster/ meta-comedy, It might actually work...

Our hero could be... The Deputy Science Advisor to the President?

In scene 1, he's minding his own business, chairing a committee or hugging his family or something.

In scene 2, disaster strikes... let's say, the Cascadia subduction zone triggers. 9.2 earthquake all along the US/Canada Pacific borders...

Scene 3, our hero makes a stern statement about how we always knew this day was coming, and begins issuing a broad array of competent orders... put an aerial geographic survey on standby, call seismic stations on the opposite side of the world, to see if they detect the seismic echo. Alert Volcanoligists to cancel their vacation plans. Make sure the airport and harbor weather reporting stations are wired to keep reporting in real time, right up until the moment that the tsunami kills them. And get him a personal AWACS plane with an uplink to the major scientific database servers.

In Scene 4, his boss, the chief Science Advisor, tells him to stand down, stop making a fuss, and allow the rescue workers to go in first. Our hero makes a passionate speech about the importance of up-to-the-minute long-term rainfall predictions to Oregonian Farmers on the far side of the mountains, and something about tsunamis transporting illegal mass quantities of supermarket dairy into Canada.

in Scene 5, our hero disobeys orders, stages a mutiny, and coordinates dozens of risk-taking graduate students as they romantically endanger themselves and others to get the data.

Scene 6, Vancouver Island sinks into the sea, and some power-hungry attorney in the State Department files a briefing with Canada, claiming that several hundred square miles of Exclusive Economic Zones in the Pacific now belong to the US.

And in Scene 7, our heroic protagonist gets his AWACS plane into the air above Vancouver, where a dying grad student manages to transmit the final piece of data proving that the tallest rock on Vancouver Island has re-emerged above the tsunami, thus invalidating the State Department's power grab.

and in Scene 8, the epilogue, relief convoys begin to arrive, making key use of meticulously updated maps showing which bridges and InterStates don't exist anymore. Beautiful shots as a farmer battling a drought succeeds in his gamble that a major increase in available irrigation water will occur over the next three months...

[Farabor]

Archaologists:

Spoiler:

vs


…and…


vs.

(Note how much happier the RL ones are!)

Not to mention more attractive!

[sotanaht]

Archaologists:

Spoiler:

vs


…and…


vs.

(Note how much happier the RL ones are!)

Open mouth, teeth showing. That's a fear grimace.

[rmsgrey]

Archaologists:

Spoiler:

vs


…and…


vs.

(Note how much happier the RL ones are!)

Open mouth, teeth showing. That's a fear grimace.

But you mustn't neglect the relaxed posture, which supports the "happy" interpretation. And confirms that these aren't photos of archaeologists at work...

[Eid]

I registered just to make this one comment:

We science/resources folk mapping the Wildfires each day.... we actually do this as described in the cartoon.
Seriously, we have infrared mapping crew in a helicopter, and produce new GIS outlines each morning.

....from an archaeologist.

[KarenRei]

I would totally watch this movie. It'd be hilarious.

[Jonathan589]

As a disaster/ meta-comedy, It might actually work...

This is it; very definitely it.

[Mjb]

More broadly, since any change disrupts an ordered system and simultaneously produces diverse data - every funnel cloud has a scientific lining.

Supernova or impact? Astronomers take note.
Economy crashes? Hyperinflation? New fodder for the rival schools.

Starvation? Diet research.
Plague? Human clinical trials get fast-tracked.
War? The new field hardware finally gets tested and the military science revised.
Death? Bodies (for the paleontologists/archaeologists/anatomists depending on when) and/or wealth donated to science.

The key thing is to be out of the way, because any of those too close to your institution correlate with loss of funding.

[SuicideJunkie]

Hollywood would still demand that the scientists update their data sets while shooting at lava monsters.

To be fair, games have unrealistic expectations of scientists too:

Publish or Perish is taken to the extreme at Black Mesa.

[rmsgrey]

Hollywood would still demand that the scientists update their data sets while shooting at lava monsters.

To be fair, games have unrealistic expectations of scientists too:

Publish or Perish is taken to the extreme at Black Mesa.

When did Freeman ever publish anything?

[chenille]

Speaking of funnel clouds, if you really want a Hollywood disaster movie that is all about rushing to collect data, that was Twister.

[SuicideJunkie]

When did Freeman ever publish anything?

He was trying to! It is hard to get your papers reviewed when all your peers are running away from lasers and headcrabs, and you've got misguided inspectors making a mess of things in the lab.

[thunk]

Speaking of funnel clouds, if you really want a Hollywood disaster movie that is all about rushing to collect data, that was Twister.

Indeed, I remember a sort of similar occurrence last year, with a team driving the radar trucks across the US Gulf coast, just to get the precious data from the eye of a hurricane. That might have made a nice story.

[Soupspoon]

"Gone With The Wind", obviously.