Earthquake on East Coast: 5 Over-The-Top Hollywood Portrayals (Video)

Fortunately, Tuesday's tremors were decidedly less disastrous than Tinsel Town would have made them out to be.

1:25 PM PDT 8/23/2011 by Jethro Nededog

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The 5.9 earthquake that originated in Virginia and felt in other cities on the East Coast, including New York City and Washington, D.C. was decidedly less disastrous than Hollywood has portrayed the rare natural occurrence.

STORY: Earthquake Sends Shocks From Washington DC to New York City; Industry Reacts

In several movies and television specials, the film and TV industry has tried to instill fear in the minds of East Coasters who aren’t used to the land tremors like those of us who live on the West Coast. Crumbling buildings, huge tsunamis, and people running in fear – that’s how we’re told an East Coast earthquake is supposed to go down.

PHOTOS: Earthquake on East Coast: Scene from New York and D.C.

Here are 5 outrageous Hollywood portrayals of earthquakes hitting the East Coast.

Aftershock: Earthquake in New York – This two-part series aired on CBS in 1999 and starred Charles S. Dutton and Sharon Lawrence. Let’s just say the poster portrays the Statue of Liberty’s head lying in the New York Harbor.

STORY: East Coast Earthquake News Coverage Interrupts Programming

The Day After Tomorrow – The 2004 Jake Gyllenhaal starrer portrayed the effects of global warming, which included the the collapse of large ice masses (yes, we're pushing it here) triggers a tidal wave that envelopes New York City.

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Mega Disasters: East Coast Tsunami – History Channel presented this documentary as part of its Mega Disasters series in 2006, which shows how a massive land fault from Africa can produce a tsunami that would ravage New York, Boston, Baltimore and Miami.

STORY: Discovery Headquarters Evacuated After Earthquake

2012 – The 2009 film starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet played out the supposed events of the apocalypse scheduled to hit us next year, which included earthquakes happening in not just the East Coast, but everywhere.

MegaFault – Syfy’s 2009 original film stars Brittany Murphy as a seismologist who tries to stop an enormous manmade earthquake fault in Iowa before it reaches other parts of North America. We also learn in this flick that fault lines chase us.