Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7283 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-03-14
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 118 minutes

Synopsis
The year is 2020 and the world faces the ultimate threat. Not nuclear war or a terrorist attack, but the eruption of a gigantic 'supervolcano' simmering beneath Yellowstone Park. The last eruption of this kind plunged the world into darkness for six years, triggered the last Ice Age and reduced the human population to just 2,000 people. Scientists know that the molten lava bulging against the Earth's crust in Yellowstone will explode; it's just a question of when.

This powerful, reality-based thriller explores the environmental, political, economic and social impact of such a cataclysmic event. After witnessing the build-up and devastating climax, viewers are projected into the aftermath: a post-apocalyptic world. Can the human species ever recover? Local news feeds, diary footage, CCTV, family camcorder and real archive footage are simulated in gritty detail, while human drama overlays the factual scenario, shaping events into a compelling experience.

Customer Reviews

Like Dante's Peak - Only Better.
For a BBC TV Movie, this ain't half bad. The story is simple. Based on scientific fact, this movie shows us what could happen, if we suffered from a Super volcanic eruption today.
Deep underground in YellowStone national park, something is brewing. Thousands and thousands of cubic feet of Magma is bursting to get out. And it does, in a SuperVolcano. The United States is thrown into complete chaos, as thick clouds of ash, pumice and sulphur dioxide begin to snake their way around the globe. Utilising state of the art graphics, documentary style story telling, and the movie itself, you have yourself a geeks dream. The special effects are pretty good. Almost believable. The acting is consistent and strong through out, and it has enough edge-of-your seat moments to keep hardcore disaster movie fans happy. It's nice to see the BBC put a lot of time, effort and money into something. I would recommend this to anyone who saw "Volcano" and was disappointed.

Consequences of a super volcano
I am not sure whether one can classify this DVD as a movie or a documentary as it explains in movie format what happens when a super volcano erupts. Maybe a better classification would be docu-drama or perhaps a futuristic documentary – I don’t know. As the focus of the video is to explain the consequences of this type of volcano, this DVD is more of the documentary side of the divide albeit in movie format.

Based upon Yellowstone in Wyoming USA, this DVD takes one through the consequences of this type of volcano erupting. Apparently volcanoes come in two varieties viz the normal one with the familiar cone shaped mountain like Kilimanjaro and the second being underground volcanoes with no structure protruding above ground. This type is potentially more dangerous is that they are largely unknown due to their lack of visual structure.

The DVD takes one through the consequences day by day. The killing is done by the ash which is lethal. In spite of its benign appearance and being as fluffy as snow but grey instead of white in appearance, it comprises microscopic chucks of rocks which have lethal consequences if inhaled.

Not only dangerous to human but devastating to machinery & power lines, due to quantity of ejecta being spewed into the atmosphere, an ice age is induced.

Accompanying this excellent DVD, are two equally excellent documentaries which even if one is not a connoisseur of this genre one will find them fascinating.

Impressive and gripping
We seem to have an insatiable appetite for disaster movies, an appetite whetted by the prospect of the disaster in question being something that could affect us directly. There have been several made-for-TV drama documentaries tapping into this - in my opinion this one is the best of them.
Supervolcanoes are occasional but massive phenomena with dramatic implications for the human race: it's not so much a matter of "if" we will encounter one (the last took place 75,000) years ago) but "when". As regards the "where", Yellowstone Park in the USA is a likely candidate, it is now known that the park itself sits in the caldera (volcanic crater) of previous huge eruptions, and another one is due... sometime.
That, then, is the basis for this film. The run-up to the eruption is well-done, and the tension expertly built as the scientific team move from scoffing at the very idea to a fearful realisation of what is happening. The acting is uniformly good, and the team-leader conveys very well the picture of a naturally cautious man so afraid of sparking a panic (and subjected to political pressure) that he is virtually in denial of what is happening.
Minimal liberties have been taken with the science, and while there are the inevitable coincidences and fortunate events that move the plot along, the general air is one of great realism (strengthened by the way the film is shot). It is a tribute to how far the technology has come that a TV programme can now boast special effects that a big-screen movie would have struggled for even a few years ago, and that effects technology is very well used here.
All in all an excellent piece of work, impressive and gripping.