Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Science, Spain, Social Media, Technology
Ellie Kemp
A new disaster series that's been streamed for more than 40,000,000 hours has a major plot hole that's driving people crazy.
Netflix has recently added a fair few high-octane TV shows to counteract the festive joy so many of us are already sick of.
These include a 'masterpiece' series with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and a 'classic' comfort series people think is the 'best think you'll ever watch.'
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But it's a Norwegian miniseries people are binging in one day that's topped the Netflix charts worldwide this week.
Called La Palma, the four-part miniseries has already been streamed for more than 40 million hours by subscribers.
Having released on December 12, the new series centers around a family vacationing on one of Spain's popular Canary Islands, La Palma - which is also the title of the show.
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Hoping to catch some winter sun, their break is upended when scientists discover worrying activity from a nearby volcano which triggers a mammoth tsunami.
The family - portrayed by Alma Günther, Thea Sofie Loch Næss and Anders Baasmo - must fight for their survival, combatting ash clouds, lava and huge tidal waves.
While the series is fictional, it's based on a very real possibility - that a chunk the size of Manhattan could break off La Palma's Cumbre Vieja volcano and collapse into the Atlantic ocean.
This could trigger a colossal tsunami that travels 5,570 km (almost 3,500 miles) to the east coast of the US, wiping millions of us out.
The terrifying theory was first proposed by Steven N. Ward and Simon Day in a 2001 paper. And the mega, 82-foot waves portrayed in La Palma have certainly been a talking point.
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Taking to social media, viewers have been questioning the 'math' behind the huge tidal wave - and the likelihood of anyone surviving such a tsunami.
Turns out, a wave of such proportions would actually never occur, with new research disproving the initial 2001 theory.
As the United States Geological Survey explains, the ‘mega-tsunami’ scenario would need 'a single, coherent, massive collapse block' (so, the Manhatten-sized chunk of volcano) to reach 'a high velocity very quickly.'
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But ocean floor mapping surrounding the Canary Islands indicates that 'collapses instead occur in incremental or piecemeal fashion'.
The USGS explained: “In addition, geomorphologists found, via slope stability analysis, that the potential collapse volume is much smaller than was simulated by the 2001 paper.”
New tsunami modelling technology has since suggested that an 82 foot wave reaching the east coast of the US is pretty unlikely.
A ‘worst case scenario’ collapse would instead result in a wave of between three to seven feet, which USGS warned would still be 'hazardous, but similar to common storm surge.'
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La Palma is available to stream now on Netflix.