And still the guy who peddled this bullshit got a lifetime achievement award by the British Science Writers Association. (In fairness, though, he since appears to have disowned that particular work—although not before trying to argue that in fact the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens vindicated the ‘theory’, despite occurring two years before the planetary alignment. :rolleyes:)
You’d be surprised how many loopy predictions are actually inspired by pop culture events. Most UFO sightings and descriptions of aliens, for example. I could certainly believe that this ridiculous nonsense was predicated on a release date of a disaster movie.
The Ides have come and gone. The biggest earthquake in California yesterday… A 2.6 in California itself, a 3.5 in Baja California.
We will rebuild!
If we’re feeling generous, this prediction was off by 6 orders of magnitude. If we’re only going to count earthquakes in California itself, seven. That’s an impressive level of wrongness.
I hope you weren’t up all night worrying about an earthquake. It’s ungodly early in California now, get some sleep!
Would that I could right now. Been up since 2:30. But it makes me feel better to alternately blame your fear mongering and the aftershocks. 
Best. Dirtnap. Ever.
I kind of wish I could go see it. I do like a good cheesy disaster movie (and it looks like it is one, from the reviews). I got some good laughs watching 10.5. But it’s been a long time since I got to watch anything on TV that wasn’t a show to placate my toddler. Seeing a movie in a theater- between the toddler and running to the bathroom every 15 minutes because of being in my third trimester of pregnancy, fuhgeddaboutit. Also, Mr. Neville does not want me letting Lil’ Neville watch geological disaster movies. I think he doesn’t want her to be a geologist when she grows up.
I remember the “planetary alignment” in 1982. I was 7, and I remember seeing something on TV news about the planets all being lined up. I was so disappointed years later when I found out they did no such thing. It was the astronomy geek kid’s equivalent of finding out there’s no Santa Claus.
I must confess, if there WAS supposed to be an apocalyptic event recently, I hadn’t heard about it.