# Really bad geography faux pas on Season 3 ep 2 of "Billions" on Showtime (SPOILER ALERT) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 8, 2018, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020 "2018-04-08T10:01:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/1 "2018-04-08T10:01:04Z")
Main part of the plot includes a major earthquake in Mozambique, and a subsequent tsunami in Brazil A quick look at the globe would reveal that Mozambique is on the Indian Ocean, while Brazil is on the Atlantic, which is on the OPPOSITE side of the African continent, I would guess 500-800 miles from said Mozambique. Making this scenario even more difficult is that any tsunami energy from an earthquake in Mozambique would most likely be absorbed by the island of Madagascar which all but shadows it 500 miles away. You would THINK the scriptwriters would have if not knowing this from basic High School education already at least took a look at a globe, and realize that it is nearby impossible for an earthquake in Southeastern Africa to cause a tsunami in Brazil. But it gets worse. During the episode the main character Bobby Axelrod berates his underling Taylor for not anticipating the tsunami and making the proper trading decisions on Brazilian assets because of the sure to come magical tsunami that would leap over Madagascar, Australia, the Andes and leap into the Atlantic Ocean 12000 miles away, turn around and strike Rio. Can TV scriptwriters be THIS this geographically moronic??? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/2 "2018-04-08T11:18:31Z")
That is indeed bad! We’ve had threads about these sorts of things. I think I contributed the high waterfall/cliff in the “Illinois” of the early 90s film _The Fugitive_. Hey, at least you’re not an ornithologist, like our dear Colobri. They are constantly annoyed when watching films, by the shouldn’t-be-in-that-supposed-location bird sounds the rest of us never notice. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/3 "2018-04-08T13:04:20Z")
That does seem silly. An obvious bit of “competency porn\*” that got botched. \*hearing experts sound all expert-y, Sorkin/West Wing style. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/4 "2018-04-08T13:38:26Z")
I saw this explanation offered up on reddit: > [@](#): > > Actually it is very feasible. There is a phenomenon called tectonic shift. African tectonic plate meets the South American plate in the south Atlantic Ocean and if a submarine earthquake (deep underwater quake) occurs on the African plate region, the highest likelihood of a tsunami occuring lies on the boundary of highest/most surface contact. Which in this case, if you consider Mozambique as the eye of the quake, then the boundary in the Atlantic has both the proximity and contact area to spin up a tsunami in the Atlantic. And because water moves away from the prime meridian, it would head Brazil’s way. Sounds like horseshit, but what do I know? It’s hard to imagine a writers group dreaming up such a scenario without doing any research, though. Perhaps an expert will wander by and give us the straight dope. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/5 "2018-04-08T15:50:49Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > I saw this explanation offered up on reddit: > > Sounds like horseshit, but what do I know? It’s hard to imagine a writers group dreaming up such a scenario without doing any research, though. Perhaps an expert will wander by and give us the straight dope. I’m a human geographer, but I know enough physical geography to know this is horseshit. Each plate has plenty of flex in it. Seismeic activity at one plate boundary will not effect activity at the opposite side of the plate. MAYBE, a pattern over millions of years could be noticed, but certainly not a single, immediate event. Even the pattern-over-millions-of-years is unlikely, except in a small plate (e.g., the Arabian plate, where a million year period of faster spreading in the Red Sea might be correlated with faster stretching in the Persian Gulf foreland basin). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/6 "2018-04-08T16:02:44Z")
I like the show enough that I’m willing to forgive this minor error. The rest of it is so good, and funny, that it’s worth watching. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/7 "2018-04-08T21:45:02Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > I saw this explanation offered up on reddit: > > Sounds like horseshit, but what do I know? It’s hard to imagine a writers group dreaming up such a scenario without doing any research, though. Perhaps an expert will wander by and give us the straight dope. Even if this Rube Goldberg of an explanation was true, it would be so much easier to write the earthquake in the Indian or Pacific oceans and have the tsunami lap up on a number of countries across the ocean from it with viable businesses you could short on. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-bad-geography-faux-pas-on-season-3-ep-2-of-billions-on-showtime-spoiler-alert/812020/8 "2018-04-09T00:51:41Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > That does seem silly. An obvious bit of “competency porn\*” that got botched. > > \*hearing experts sound all expert-y, Sorkin/West Wing style. The West Wing was more fanciful than Game of Thrones.