Dante’s Peak Reflection Paper

Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan), is a lone, workaholic volcanologist who

gets sent out to the Cascade Range in Washington State by the U.S.
Geological Survey to check up on a mountain which has been rumbling. The
town on the slopes of Dante’s Peak has just been honored with the “second
most desirable place to live in the United States, population under 20,000″
award and the mayor (soon to become Harry’s love interest) has done a great
job in making the town a prosperous, happy place to live. It’s the perfect setting
for a natural disaster.

Harry soon finds signs that the supposedly dormant Dante’s Peak volcano
was awakening, and calls in a team from the USGS to monitor the volcano
more carefully. From here, the movie does a really great job of depicting the
difficulties that arise during a volcanic crisis. Not all the scientists agree that
Dante’s Peak is something to worry about. Harry’s boss alludes to a crisis at
Mammoth Mountain in California, where the USGS was monitoring a volcano
and considering putting the town on alert—except in this case, nothing
happened and the town’s tourist industry was devastated.

Predicting a volcanic eruption is not a simple formula. There are certain

signals of activity that can be monitored at volcanoes, but interpretations can
often be contradictory, especially if these signals are only monitored when you
think a volcano might be reawakening. So scientists will differ as to whether or
not they should put a town on alert when they start seeing signs of volcanic
stirring. Dante’s Peak captures this well, and gets most of the monitoring
techniques correct—although sending a robot into a volcano’s caldera isn’t a
particularly common method. You also can’t tell how recently a volcano
erupted by looking at a rock, like Harry does at one point. Dating rocks is a
long and complicated process involving detailed lab work.

Most of the individual volcanic phenomena shown in the movie are

relatively accurate. Volcanoes do release gases which can kill vegetation and
wildlife and can even turn lakes acidic. However, the speed of the
transformation of the lake from picturesque boating spot to deadly acidic lake
is ridiculously fast. Other worrying signs that a volcano may erupt include
earthquakes, though volcanic earthquakes are not normally strong enough to
fell buildings like they do in this film. At one stage Harry yells that the
earthquakes are magmatic, not tectonic, which would be an important
distinction. But there is no way to tell what kind of earthquake it is by feel and
this can only be done by studying the data collected on the seismographs at
their makeshift volcano observatory.

Once the volcano starts erupting, we are treated to incredible special-effects

portraits of volcanic phenomena, starting with a beautiful eruption column that
rises up several kilometres into the sky. Put this scene next to a scene of a real
plinian volcanic eruption and you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

A plinian eruption is the biggest kind of eruption volcanoes can undergo, and it
occurs at volcanoes that have a particular type of magma such as andesite or
rhyolite. This type of magma is very sticky and produces lava which doesn’t
flow very fast or very far—which is not like the lava that comes gushing down
the side of Dante’s Peak, destroying an old granny’s house and forcing our
heroes to brave the acidic lake in a boat (which would not dissolve as fast as
shown in the film). The lava depicted in this film is much more like the lava
seen at volcanoes that have basaltic magma, as seen in Hawaii.
Volcanologists also wouldn’t drive through lava; that stuff reaches
temperatures of up to 1000°C, so it would quickly melt your tires and ignite
your gas tank.

Overall, Dante’s Peak is probably the best volcano movie out there. It
dramatizes the real-life problems that scientists and communities face when a
volcano becomes active. The film depicts many of the different volcanic events
really well and captures many of the real volcanic hazards that exist around the
world.

Jeveb Joseph Apuya