While the premise of the movie - that a tornado can cause a nuclear reactor to go into a near meltdown - is a bit far fetched, I find it funny that so many of the reviewers (including some who confidently claimed they worked in the industry) thought the possibility of a reactor going unstable due to a natural disaster was "impossible".I wonder what they would say today, with FOUR of Japan's nuclear reactors going hot. Obviously, cascading failures ARE not only possible, but under the right circumstances (or the most horrific collection of bad luck), probable.Granted, it wasn't a tornado. Heck, it wasn't even the earthquake itself that caused Japan's nukes to go hot. It was the tsunami that followed the quake that led to the disastrous failure of not one, not two, but FOUR reactors. So far the Japanese are barely keeping the rods covered with water - sea water, because they have no pumps to pump in the fresh water that should be used (JUST like in the movie). Even so, 3 of the 4 plants have now suffered major explosions that blew the roof off - literally - and all are emitting unacceptable radiation levels just from the steam releases alone.Turns out the writer of this script was a lot more prescient than anyone gave them credit for when the movie came out! Let's just hope that the ending of Japan's very real nuclear crisis is as good as the ending of the movie - or else it is not just Japan that will pay the price for our foolish arrogance.

Yep: total trash. Every time the script brought in another detail my response was either disbelief or pain. The whole movie is a study in the "how not to" of film making. A nuclear plant in the US was actually hit by a tornado well before this movie was made. It shut down safely and its back up systems functioned as required. Does this movie highlight any serious technical, social, or other reasons why nuclear plants are endangered by tornadoes? NOT! I always wondered why a "plot device" is a bad thing -- don't all plots rely on them? This movie is an example of why plot devices that are noticed, noticed to the point of being shoved at the viewer, really are annoying and disrupt continuity. Speaking of which: a lot of continuity problems. The whole movie is one giant plot device: atomic plot twister indeed. The characters and their relationships seem very contrived. Some key dialog between Jack and his (?) girl are totally unbelievable considering their circumstances. The movie is supposedly set in West Tennessee: sure didn't look that way to me, either demographically or geographically. I could understand a naive person thinking that a fire hose and a fuel transfer hose could be or would be used interchangeably -- but not the on-scene fire department officer. There are a lot of technical problems: nuclear plant design, nuclear plant operations, sheriff department procedures, etc. None of the professionals looked professional -- they looked like actors without even a superficial background on what the character's job required. The movie consistently dissed about every type of worker in it. Some reviewers have described this movie as a comedy because it is so bad. For me, it even fails to be funny: mostly painful to watch. Was this the director's fault? Very noticeable when some characters tell themselves why they're acting the way they are ... as if memorizing what the director just told them. I just wanted to scream, DON'T DO THAT! Oh well.

One of the greatest film masterpieces i've ever seen. An excellent mixture of suspense, drama, and comedy. The climax; when the town is about to explode in a nuclear holocaust, a tornado is baring down on a over-turned car that is leaking gasoline and sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a young girl in it, when Jake heroically put himself in harms way to save the girl, who was his ex-girlfriend, just in time before the car plummets over the cliff. Our hero Jake again proves his manhood as he stares down death by facing off against a semi-truck. The movie comes to a suspenseful end as the nuclear supervisor shows her skills as a diesel mechanic to save the country from disaster.

A reactor hit by a Tornado? Plausible. Damage, Inplausable. This movie is filled with technical inaccuracies, Phony physics, and a poor understanding of how a reactor is run. Waste pools water will not boil, and has no links to reactor coolant. Movies like this have killed the nuclear power industry unjustifiably. The only reason my family and I continued watching was to make fun of it, like Mystery Science Theater 3000. In fact, I think any physicist watching this would vomit. A Chernobyl like event is impossible in the United States, since we use an ingenious device known as a Containment Building. Chernobyl did not have a containment building covering it's reactors.