Fact-Checking is Gone

This is Steven Petrick Posting:

I have been watching several movies on the sci fi channel. The one thing they all hve in common is how sloppy they are. There are stories, but there is also frequently a clear indication that there is no one doing any fact checking.

If you ignore the major premise (the impact of a shard of a comet shifted the crust of the Earth 10 degrees out of alignment with its magnetic core, and this problem can be resolved by detonating a 100 megaton device in the Marinas Trench that will somehow shift the crust perfectly back into alignment), the concept that a submarine can get from the West Coast of the United States to the Marianas Trench in less than 48 hours is not that hard to fact check.

There is no submarine in the world that could make that schedule.

It would require a submarine able to reach a sustained speed of (roughly) 200 Kilometers an hour (roughly 165 miles an hour).

And the submarine that does do this task is not a modern nuclear boat, but an aging diesel-electric boat. Mind you this boat was also capable of diving to a depth of 9,000 meters (or a little more than 6 miles). There are a few research submarines that can do that, but none of them are capable of the speeds needed to reach the Marianas Trench in time.

Even if a film is dealing with totally outlandish things, the "real facts on the ground" out to be checked and be consistent.