Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored.

When I was a TA in graduate school, I always gave students the chase to earn some extra credit - and every semester it was always the same assignment.

“Write 800-1000 words comparing the science in disaster movies to the actual science in real life.”

I usually let students pick whichever disaster movie they wanted, but provided a list of suggested films that I thought would make for a fair essay.

If you’re a disaster movie nerd like me, you’ll enjoy this list.

My all-time favorite over the years has been The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Call me biased since it’s a climate-related disaster film, but what I’ve found most interesting is that some of the science once ruled as fantastical has since become reality (specifically the disruption of the North Atlantic current).

Dante's Peak (1997) - A volcanologist warns a small town about an impending volcanic eruption and is ignored and even disciplined by town officials and his supervisors, respectively. Dante’s Peak is one of the more scientifically accurate disaster films on this list, mostly because it drew inspiration from the real-world events prior to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, as well as the 1985 Nevado del Ruiz eruption in Colombia.

Though watching Twister (1996) became difficult for me for personal reasons, it’s a great film for weather junkies. Storm chasers predict tornadoes, but their warnings often go unheeded. The warnings made in Twister aren’t quite like the Day After Tomorrow or Dante’s Peak in which one major event looms on the horizon. Rather, scientists issue several warnings - to the public and even to each other - that are ignored.

Volcano (1997) is one of my favorite schlocky disaster flicks. Two seismologists who believe there’s a secret fissure beneath Las Angeles must convince authorities of an impending volcanic eruption. One of the scientists dies, and the main character (played by Tommy Lee Jones) repeatedly ignores and even scoffs at the warnings.

Two of my all-time favorite foreign films - The Wave (2015) and The Quake (2018) - are Norwegian disaster films about landslides and earthquakes, starring the same cast and concerned with the same issues of warning the public, balancing caution and hysteria, and on the more meta level, scientific obsession. The lead character in both films does everything he can to convince his fellow scientists and even his own family that he’s not crazy. Turns out, he wasn’t. The Wave is based on the true story of the 1934 rock-slide triggered tsunami which destroyed Tafjord, Norway.

If you haven’t seen Ray Liotta’s 1994 film “No Escape,” you’re not alone - the movie absolutely bombed. “No Escape” fits squarely in the post-apocalyptic action genre with films like Mad Max, but between all the gunfire and chaos is a climatologist whose warnings are completely ignored. The original film title was “Prison Colony,” but like Waterworld and to a lesser extent the Hunger Games, the film’s premise is intimately tied to climate change.

If you want a film where the main cast are not politicians or experts, but straight-up ignore warnings from scientists, friends, and family, then “The Perfect Storm” (2000) fits the bill (Not to be confused with the 1999 Stephen King thriller “Storm of the Century,” which also takes place in New England). The Perfect Storm is based on the real-life story of the Andrea Gale, a fishing vessel sunk by Hurricane Grace (1991) which, as described in the movie, was absorbed by a nor’easter which started as a cold front, and then combined to form a new hurricane. In meteorological terms, it was bonkers. Neither the ship nor anyone from the crew were ever recovered.

If you’re interested in more science-fiction or other-worldly type disaster movies ignoring scientists, then The Thaw (2009) or “The Thing” (1982/2011) may be more in your comfort zone. I’m personally not into the alien sub-genre of disaster movies, but they often bring the same themes of ignoring the warnings before all hell breaks loose (think "The Andromeda Strain" (1971)).

While the fiction might be fun, the real world is much more grim.