Corrected entry: When the plane takes off from Yellowstone after refueling, it begins its takeoff roll on runway 15. This means the heading is 150 degrees (South southeast). As it lifts off and clears the other end of the runway, we see it is runway 32 (320 degrees). The opposing ends of runways are 180 degrees apart. So the opposite end of runway 15 (150 degrees) should be 33 (330 degrees), not 32.
Corrected entry: After the survivors escape from Las Vegas in the Antonov they are obviously worried about fuel and making it all the way to China. As any fool knows, lightening a plane increases range and yet, oddly, it never seems to occur to them to ditch all the heavy and now useless automobiles into the ocean. Luckily, the cars come in handy to manufacture an exciting exit from the plane at the end of the flight.
Correction: For the first leg of the trip there is no reason for them to ditch the cars, as they fully expect to be able to land and refuel in Hawaii. After they realize Hawaii is gone, there is no point in ditching the cars as they are going to be short by "thousands of miles", and lightening the plane would make no difference.
The Antonov was still well under its maximum payload with all the cars on board. It could have made it to Hawaii and beyond, assuming there's time planned to refuel in Vegas. Seems like they took off with whatever was on board, and that was just enough to get to Hawaii.
Question: How did the Russian girl end up in the end, did she drown? And if so, why, if the compartments were sealed closed, how would water get into it and kill her, if it didn't kill the others on the other side of the compartment?
Chosen answer: The Russian girl drowned. The boarding gate was not closed properly as it was jammed, so water got in to some of the compartments and drowned the people in them.
How did the water pass through the first containment room into the second without drowning those in the first? Makes no sense.
Corrected entry: All throughout the movie the 1 phone you see most of the government officials using was in fact the iPhone 4! Now if you do the research you will find out that the iPhone 4 wasn't even released to the public yet. Also Apple denied even the phones existence.
Correction: So, we have a film set in 2012 where you can see government officials using a model of phone that was released in 2010. Hardly seems like a mistake to me. More importantly, given how tightly Apple locks down its releases, and that the movie would have been filmed before the iphone 3GS was even released, most likely they're just using a phone which happens to resemble the iphone 4.
Possibly a Sony phone (because Sony made 2012, and they usually add all their products into their movies).
Corrected entry: On many occasions we see whole cities give way and fall into gigantic holes in the earth. So how can there possibly be a Tsunami that covers the whole planet? Much of the water would have poured into the enormous holes and and made it completely impossible.
Correction: Not so. Actually much of Earth's water is underground. In other words, the underground water is more than enough to replace the area left by cities sinking into the Earth. Which could actually contribute to the tsunami, not detract from it.
Most of the Earth's water is not underground, the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth's water, aquifers account for a small percentage of available water.
Recent studies have suggested that the amount of underground water can be 3 times as much as what is in the oceans. However, this water is trapped in damp ringwoodite, so it's not flowing water like you would find in aquifers.
Question: At the end of the movie, it is stated that the Drakensberg mountain range in South Africa now has the highest altitude in the world, since the "entire plate of Africa has lifted". Isn't this highly unlikely, seeing as the Drakensberg is incredibly far away from any tectonic plate lines? Wouldn't it rather be Mount Kilimanjaro, which is not only already the highest point in Africa (the continental plate of which is implied to have been raised as a whole), but is also a volcano (thereby being more likely to be raised should there be lifting within the plate itself)? I am South African myself, and though I am incredibly proud of our mention, I wonder if it really is plausible.
Answer: It's really impossible to say, given all of the massive land shifting seen in the film. We see the entire coast of California fall into the ocean. It's reasonable (in the film) to assume some cataclysm struck Kilimanjaro to lower or destroy it, or that the continent has been tilted.
In the movie, it was implied that the continent of Africa as a whole remained unflooded. So it stands to reason that the millions of inhabitants of the various countries may have survived intact. And so, the animals and plant life as well. So the question of saving the human species may be mute in this scenario. It's ironic, since most of the scientific community believes that modern humans evolved there first anyway.
Correction: Runways names are rounded to the nearest 10, so if the runway headings were 147 and 323, it would round to 150 and 320, explaining the unusual markings.
The correction is incorrect; assuming one end is marked as Runway 15, its reciprocal would be Runway 33.