San Andreas: could it happen?

California is nervously watching and waiting after the Nepal earthquake, and its subsequent natural disasters, claimed over 6,000 lives. Yet, this month, Warner Bros are releasing the a disaster movie about an earthquake shattering the state's San Andreas fault - could the timing be worse?

Earthquakes along the San Andreas fault were shown to be increasingly likely in a study from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in October. While the recent events in Nepal do not increase the chance of a Californian quake, it has heightened public and scientific awareness about a similar disaster happening along the West Coast.

Dr Lucy Jones, a seismologist working with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on earthquake resilience, has made the facts clear: "Plate tectonics tells us that the San Andreas will continue to move and more great earthquakes are in our future", she wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News last week. 

On Sunday, her prediction came true: at least five earthquakes struck San Francisco on Sunday, although no injuries were reported.

Warner Bros's action disaster movie, also called San Andreas, follows a couple’s search for their missing daughter in the wake of a massive earthquake in California.

Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as The Rock, plays an LA-based helicopter pilot whose search and rescue mission gets personal as he battles a magnitude 9 earthquake to find his estranged daughter in San Francisco.

A spokesperson from Warner Bros told Variety that the studio would not be changing San Andreas’ release date, despite recent events. The film will be released in America on May 29, and should be in cinemas worldwide within a fortnight afterwards.

A statement read: “We will continue to evaluate our worldwide marketing campaign to ensure that we are sensitive to those affected by this tragic event.”

The studio are adding information about how people can contribute to relief efforts to their promotional materials for the film, and brought forward a previously planned campaign which included tips on how people can prepare for natural disasters, and added in references to Nepal.

However, the graphic trailers and artwork are still being released as planned.

Johnson explained in an interview that the film “is about the largest earthquake ever recorded hitting California, and the effects of that.” At magnitude 9, the film is stuff of worst imaginable thought: the most recent quake in Nepal measured 7.8-magnitude. The largest the San Andreas fault has experienced reached 7.9 in 1906, killing 3,000 people.

San Andreas is the first earthquake film since Earthquake was released in 1974, and modern CGI meant that disaster scenes filmed in Brisbane as well as San Francisco could make whole tower blocks collapse and tear huge crevices in the ground.

However, estimates undertaken by the USGS suggest a 7.8-magnitude quake would cause similar destruction. Depending on where the quake would take place, up to 18,000 people could be killed - especially if it happened on the Puente Hills fault, which runs beneath downtown LA.

If the quake took place further along the fault, 150 miles from LA, it could kill 10 per cent of that number. The quake would cause 1,600 fires, internet and water outage for weeks and at least 50 seconds of shaking.

Members of the public have noted the awkward collision of San Andreas' promotional campaign with the events in Nepal – and the risk of an earthquake in California.

Who knows how chillingly appropriate the movie’s tagline will come to feel should a natural disaster strike: “Where will you be, who will you be with, when everything falls apart?”