At the end [of Deep Impact], there’s a massive traffic jam on a freeway leading west out of Virginia Beach – thousands of people are tyrying to escape from the coast before a comet blasts into the Atlantic and sends the largest tsunami in modern history hundreds of miles inland. (Let’s say that word together: tsunami!) Most of them are too late; a wave roars across the land and right down the road, and people flee in a futile grab for survival.
Well, in the real world down near Virginia Beach, the freeway out of town (I-64) runs southeast-northwest – so actually the westward-flowing wave would have hit the freeway at an angle, which might have been cool to see. Some characters on a motorcycle start driving up a high hill, and manage to get up far enough that the wave doesn’t hit them. At this, I laughed to myself. Guess what’s most of Virginia is down in the southeast corner? It’s swamp. Just south of Virginia Beach is the Dismal Swamp. Just northwest in the Jamestown/Williamsburg area is more swamp. High hills and swamps do not exactly go together – that part of Virginia isn’t even in the Piedmont, which is a land of gently rolling, low hills – but in the film, that part of Virginia looks like the Shenandoah Mountains! Okay, the Shenandoah area is very pretty, but the geographic mix-up makes me chuckle.
I have absolutely no idea how interesting this is to anyone, but I thought I’d mention it.
