is it bollocks?

Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.

Outrunning volcanoes.

This month The pyroclastic cloud in dante’s peak Pierce Brosnan’s volcano expert guns his truck and crashes it into a disused mine shaft to escape a pyroclastic cloud. Is it really possible to outrun Mother Nature? david pyle, volcanologist at The university of oxford Pyroclastic clouds (sometimes called nuées ardentes) can move very fast (60-100km/hr and faster), so while you wouldn’t be able to outrun an advancing cloud on foot if it’s heading directly towards you, there are examples where people have managed to escape in trucks and cars. At Mt. St. Helens [in 1980], a few people were in the forest when the volcano erupted and several managed to escape by driving as fast as they could along the rough logging tracks. Few people have survived being engulfed by a pyroclastic flow: the combination of the energy of the flow (enough to knock you over/unconscious) and the hot, fine ash (causing severe burns and asphyxiation) is usually a fatal combination.

After 1902’s Mt. Pelée eruption, the only survivor was a prisoner in a cell with no windows. On St. Vincent, another Caribbean island that also erupted in May 1902, people caught out in the open by the pyroclastic flows died; those who managed to shelter under, or inside, buildings tended to survive. So if Pierce Brosnan’s character drove the truck deep enough inside the mine, it should be enough to save them! verdict not bollocks