Independence Day, the Secretary of Defense not revealing key information to the President before the aliens launched their initial attack on Earth's cities.

the stupid thing about the library in day after tomorrow is they could have burned the solid oak tables or the bookshelves and would had fuel for the fires for months

Ruth's demise was the most rewarding moment of "Dante's Peak."

As a fellow Asian, if I’m not gonna survive the apocalypse like everyone else in that scene, I’m gonna carry on with some retail therapy.

Not sure if it’s a “disaster movie”. But the annoying teenage son in War of the worlds, abandoning his sister and putting his family in danger to “fight the aliens” with the army. Surprisingly surviving at the end.

In 28 Days Later, I'd say the dumbest characters were the scientists who created the rage virus!!

You missed out the "Let's all get in the outside elevator peeps" in Towering Inferno.

Cant believe the girl chasing the dog in Dawn of the Dead didn't get on this list.

I don't buy that Ruth was stupid for getting out of boat. It may have been yards from the jetty but had no means moving as the acid had decayed it's rotor. Someone had to sacrifice themselves.

2012. The air traffic controller at Las Vegas airport who yells at the main characters in the Antonov plane that they don't have clearance to take off while a giant volcanic cloud is barreling towards the airport, eventually destroying it and killing him and everyone in it.

Honorable mention the " biologist" from Prometheus might not be a disaster movie but him and the " biologist " from halo tv series are on par!

Almost everyone I've talked to, who remembers the Mt. St. Helen's tragedy, and who have seen _Dante's Peak_ have told me that Ruth is loosely based on a local resident of the area in which Mt. St. Helen's is located, named Harry R. Truman (not the president). Apparently he told reporters, "This mountain would never hurt us," when they asked him whether he would evacuate his home, which was located very near the mountain. He did not, and he did not make it out alive, either.

This wasn't exactly a disaster movie but Anne Hathaway's character in Interstellar (?) stupidly ignoring McConaughey's orders to get back to the ship with a tidal wave seconds away. Then when she finally grows some brain cells and recognizes the impending threat, has to be rescued like a damsel in distress, at the expense of a male colleague's life.

Nobody mentioned Tom Cruise's kids in War of the Worlds... The teenager practically jumps into a fireball and then just shows up at the end 😂😂😂

Earthquake(1974): The idiot who runs into a gas filled house with a lit cigarette. To be sure, there are more than a few idiotic moves in this film(Getting into an elevator during an earthquake, anyone?), but the random idiot who's told "turn off the gas", and runs into the house with a lit cigarette in his mouth is like something out of Looney Tunes.

Add in the helicopter pilots from The Day After Tomorrow. They fly right into the eye of the storm and die because the air is so cold that it causes the aviation fuel to freeze within seconds. A crucial deleted scene has them looking down and seeing the people frozen in their cars, as stated by Rapson in the following scene. "On the ground, people froze before they could get out of their cars".

in defense of the shopping lady, that had no clue why traffic was stopped. They didn't see the impact of the meteorite and the driver even assumed a businessman didn't get a raise and jumped out a window. It wasn't until the rest of the meteor shower started that they realized they themselves were in danger.

That guy in volcano still makes me sad when I watch it because he knew he messed up. He did what he could to pay for it instead of innocent people

Twister is my favorite disaster movie ever. The scariest part I noticed while watching it was how eerily similar the final Twister tornado looks just like the Jarrell Texas monster that hit a year later.

Anyone who reads the book of the dead out loud? 37 pages written in blood beg you not to say the name out loud is probably a warning

In Dante's peak I believe it was implied that without Ruth getting out of the boat and pulling it to the doc then they may not have made it since the water was getting in too fast and they were losing momentum.

We saw "Poseidon Adventure" in a theater in Times Square with an awesome sound system. When the alarm went off warning of the approaching wave it went off in the theater itself, from speakers positioned all around the room, and at top volume. Talk about an "immersive" experience!

"The Towering Inferno" is the best disaster movie ever.

I love Twister, Dante's Peak & Volcano

The Poseidon Adventure: "It's one inch less than two inches."

I find it amusing how one scene of "sit tight and wait for rescue" was the obviously smart thing and another "sit tight and wait for rescue" scene was a room full of idiots because they couldn't foresee explosions going off and compromising the room's integrity.

How about everyone in Dante's Peak who did not notice that light flashing for 3 days.

Honorable mentions: James Duncan in The Towering Inferno. He cut every corner possible in design and budget to build a massive skyscraper that ended up being a massive fire-deathtrap. VP of the United States in The Day After Tomorrow. The cop with the badge was bad enough, but this guy actually had some authority and blatantly ignored every warning about what was going to happen. Nearly everyone in Mars Attacks! Yes, it's a silly spoof, but it's disaster-y enough that it warrants mention. I know it's not technically a disaster movie, but the category of people definitely fall into what this video describes.

The people who stayed in the library - They had all kinds of wooden furniture they left intact in favor of burning books. The wood from the furniture would burn much hotter.

To be fair to the lady who wants to go shopping in Armageddon, I can think of things I'd rather be doing than hanging with Mr Cooper in a NYC cab as well.

I believe Ruth was supposed to represent Harry R Truman who famously refused to be evacuated before Mt. St. Helens exploded. His house and the lake it sat on was totally destroyed.

The Poseidon Adventure will always be the king of disaster movies

Look up "Harry Truman and Mount St. Helens". It's not THAT Truman but just soome guy too stupid to leave his cabin. True story.

For me what made Ruth the dumb character was her almost religious belief in the mountain, the way she talked about it and firmly believed it wouldn't hurt them I wouldn't have been shocked if she had an alter and worshipped it.

Grandma from Dante's Peak hands down. I was a kid when it came out and to this day I maintain my position on the dumb stubborn grandma. I still have it on VHS lol, I might go watch it now

In regards to Grandma Ruth, people have blatantly refused to ignore warnings of an impending disaster multiple times in real life (read: the very real case of Harry Truman, vaporized by the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980, on which Dante’s Peak is loosely based)

Independence Day - the greatest disaster movie of all time...Airplane! No2.

I disagree somewhat with the explanations in Dante's Peak and Volcano. Both characters were insufferable way before their stupid decisions but were ultimately redeemed somewhat by dying trying to save people. We were actively rooting for their deaths but when it finally came--we were a little conflicted because in their final moment, they showed glimmers of being decent. Grandma HAD to die. She had put her beloved family in incredible peril just because of her pride and stupidity. If she had lived, she would just have kept on being a burden.

Haven't seen Dante's Peak, but I've come across this nit before. Figure jumping out of the boat is less a question of the character's good judgment and more about misportrayal in-scene. What level of acidity and what distance from boat to dock would make sense? Under what conditions would such a heroine's self-sacrifice seem truly necessary to save a boatload of family members? Adjust accordingly to fix the error. Don't just pick on the martyred madame. It's same token as how Cameron told the Mythbusters: if physicists prove the driftwood could save Jack & Rose both, the fix would be less buoyant debris. Loosely same token: Luke safely soft-lands in Hoth snow after a quick jump down. The film forgets the imperial walker he just fragged is supposed to be 80+ meters tall. Don't fix the scene by killing or injuring Luke. Fix the scene by contriving a plausible way for Luke to clear the blast area.

Technically Dante's Inferno happened in real life during the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. A guy named Harry Truman (not the American president) refused to leave even though he was told the volcano would erupt and he'd die a horrible death. The stupidity is real.

Your search is over my friends, *The Cassandra Crossing* is a steaming mess. Two critics wrote "profoundly, offensively stupid" & "an unintentional parody of a disaster film" A semi clever idea with *Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen & OJ Simpson* 129 minutes of your life you'll never get back, no refunds!

I'd like to nominate Noriko from Godzilla Minus One since she shoved Koichi into safety and just stood there for a few seconds before being blown away from the shockwave caused by Godzilla's Atomic Breath.

Remember "EARTHQUAKE" in "SURROUND SOUND" - "you will feel the earth shake" - where the heroes decide to tie a a firehose to an office chair to lower some poor extra down to the next level of the stair well.I never could figure out the purpose of the HEAVY chair in their plan. Also; all the characters in EARTHQUAKE who took shelter UNDERGROUND after the 1st quake. Can you say "aftershock" and "crushed to death by collapsing building" above you?

Maybe the people in the library in The Day After Tomorrow thought they would die like the people in The Poseidon Adventure if they stayed there. And maybe the people in The Poseidon Adventure thought they would die if they tried to escape, like the people in the library in The Day After Tomorrow.

I always thought Outbreak was crazy stupid. Now CONTAGION was nail bitingly awesome.

I think the reason why Ruth (stupidly) sacrificed herself was because, even though they were almost to the other side, the propeller for the boat was eaten away by the acidy water.

I love disaster films and my favorites are The Towering Infurno, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, Volcano, A Night to Remember, The Perfect Storm, and Twister.

Now, ignoring the warnings about volcanoes in Los Angeles was totally intelligent.

Andrea from The Walking Dead show (she was awesome in the comic). Literally every single thing she did made every possible situation worse.

That son in Spielberg's War of the Worlds 😤

Here are my favorite disaster films: Towering Inferno: Just an amazing film from start to finish, and one that still holds up today. Poseidon Adventure: Another fun Irwin Allen film from the 70's. The Core: OK, it's not a classic like the previous two, but I enjoy the hell out of it every time I watch it. In particular, I like how they avoid the cliche of characters not believing the hero when he claims that the earth is doomed.

So is 28 Days Later a tie-in with Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back?

The fact that Elijah Wood’s bike wasn’t just commandeered when he propped it up to rescue his girlfriend in Deep Impact boggles my mind.

Twister: No that driver should have just turned around is what I thought as a kid😂 Dante’s Peak: omg yes! I was like…that was useless as they were already near the shore

I love Dante's Peak. It is my #1 comfort movie. And also... YES. The grandma bothers to no end.

People don't understand that Ruth in Dante's Peak got out of the boat into the acid to pull the boat with her family to shore. The prop was gone and they were sinking fast. She sacrificed herself to save theirs.

Everyone has their own favorites, but Titanic is clearly the most revered disaster film of all time given its countless accolades. Also, Hard Rain is kinda underrated.

In Silent Hill, when the regular warning siren goes off, and town residents know they need to get inside, a stupid homeless bag lady refuses to save her own life, ranting and raving some apocalyptic gibberish while the main character begs her to follow the crowd up the steps into a building where they will be free of the threat.

the movie was made long before whiz-bang sfx but When Worlds Collide from 1951 remains my top choice for fictional disaster for quite a few reasons.

Earthquake... man runs into his damaged house with a broken gas main... while smoking. Towering Inferno: the idiots who swarm the Breeches Buoy at the end and collapse it.

"A tunnel gets improbably caved in at both ends" and that's my one per list.

Check out Earthquake and Towering Inferno.

I don t know about how dumb is Stan in the Volcano movie but for me the dumbest character of this film is the Mike Roarke’s daughter

Dumb characters are a staple of disaster movies, needed to demonstrate hazards, provide foils for the heroes, and often advance or inject twists into the plot (usually by imperiling the heroes). Remove all the dumb characters and most disaster movies would get a whole lot shorter, less perilous and far less dramatic.

Ruth wasnt stupid cuz the boat emgine even stopped working cuz of the acudic water. So they were stuck. Go back and watch it buddy. Ruth wasnt dumb or stupid. She sacrificed herself to save her family.

Actually, the Poseidon Adventure did have a scene where Gene Hackman's character runs into the other priest leading survivors to the bow. So, the precedent for the 'following the wrong character in a disaster movie' trope?

The Day After Tomorrow is my favorite.

My favorite disaster movie is definitely The Poseidon Adventure. I've watched it many times, and I'm sure I will again. The effects were simple yet effective, the acting was great, and it's a good length.

I've met two actors that were seen in here: Cary Elwes and Linda Hamilton. Both of them were wonderful. Cary I met in January of 2020 (before the bug shut down all of Louisiana), and Linda I met in January of this year. Cary is actually quite soft spoken, and Linda is from my home state, which she thought was pretty cool.

Ruth and Stan sacrificed themselves to save other people’s lives.

Pretty much every character in any Roland Emmerich film...

Prometheus. She ran in a straight line. She could have moved 5 feet to the left or right at any moment but she ran in a straight line while the hula hoop ship rolled over here.

Wasn't it just a traffic jam when the Asians were saying that they want to go shopping on Armageddon? The meteor shower hadn't started yet. If you want to call out anybody, then you should have called out Rockhound for all the stupid stuff he did.

I am going shopping after this video 😮😂😊

If you didn’t have idiots in these movies causing death and disaster then there wouldn’t be a movie

The grandmother dying in Dante’s Peak was completely stupid. Everyone put themselves in danger’s way to save her, only to have her die pretty quickly

When I saw "The Poseidon Adventure" back in the 70s, they were climbing up to the bottom of the ship where the hull was "only an inch thick" to get out. HOW? How do you get through 1in thick steel plate? Lucky for them a helicopter with cutting equipment arrived, and cut a hole they could get out. I kept wondering, even if the ship is upside down; aren't there hatches in the side; (where passengers and cargo come onboard; which may or may not have been above or below the water level outside; that they could have opened to get out? Why trap yourself in a room at the bottom/top of the boat with no exit.

Ok we can easily break the list of possible greatest disaster movies into 3 groups, Twister (insert whatever storm movie you want, but Twister wins), the 1970's big disaster films so depending on how you rule it chose: the posidon adventure, airport films, or my personal favorite of these the towering inferno. Then lastly we have the last 90's to now mega disaster film where the world is at stake. Of these I say 2012 is the better of all of them. So, in the end, we are left with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt standing in a field as the aftermath of all of the other contenders fail to take down the massive F5 tornado that is Twister.

A dangerous animal movie not necessarily a disaster movie but the mayor from Jaws

I'm originally from Oklahoma, we got to see it in a drive in. But then there was a tornado that night. true story

Pete in Into The Storm, constantly puts his comrades in danger to get a money-making shot of a tornado, then dies trying to save them from an EF5 tornado that was too powerful for his vehicle.

Maybe not a disaster movie, but I want to nominate the mayor in Jaws. He constantly ignored Chief Brody and encouraged people to go in the water despite suspicion of a killer shark in the area.

I would argue that in the case of Outbreak and 28 Days Later, the dumbest characters are the scientists doing the experiments in the first place. One, the facility isn't properly secure, and two, the fact that there was clearly no contingency in place in case the animals escaped.

One could argue that the scientist in Outbreak is a bit of an idiot too. He should be well aware of the safety precautions needed as to not get yourself infected. But judging from the clip he opened the lid while the machine was still running. But correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't actually seen the film

The women in Armageddon didnt know what had happened yet.

Harry Truman was a real life Ruth..

Rebecca, Sam, Holly In The Descent

The scene in The Day After Tomorrow where Laura gos back to fetch a french woman's purse annoys me because Laura SOMEHOW doesn't see or hear the tsunami heading right towards her even when she looks in it's general direction and this idiocy near cost Laura and her friends their lives. Side note: I think the french woman and her daughter are completely pointless characters because they hardly do anything to help the other survivors and we barely see them. Even when I watched the movie as a kid, I never noticed them again after the tsunami scene.

i felt so bad for Eddie in Twister, jonas on the other hand had it comin. and the grandma jumping out of the boat into the acid lake to save her fam in dantes peak was heroic

5:22 Uhhhh, no, they clearly state they were not gonna make it if Ruth did not push the boat... rewatch the movie

Everyone who stays in the water in Piranha 3D. The coastguard (Elisabeth Shue) tells everyone to get out of the water but they ignore her.

I actually knew all these movies for the first time. Keep up this type list please

The kids in Dante's Peak were the stupid ones. The mother was willing to let Ruth die, but she had to go after her kids.

TV Miniseries probably don't count, but if they did, I'd say the hacker that causes a Chicago blackout in advance of the biggest storm in history has to rank up there as one of the stupidest chacaters in disaster films.

It's wasn't Ruth, it was the fault of the Kid's mom for leaving them alone when a natural disaster was about to hit.

In defense of the police officer in Day After Tomorrow, he had no way to confirm what the kid was telling him. He made a bad call that got himself and other people killed, yes, but he made a decision he thought made sense at the time. Would you believe some random guy who says his father works for the government?

😂😂 the cover photo, that shit traumatized me as a kid.

Deep Impact, of which you guys shared a couple of clips; Lelee Sobieski's parents get Elijah Wood to promise to marry her and adopt their son, then choose to stay with their car instead of going for high ground with the trio.

I don’t think Ruth was dumb. If you look closely, she was helping to push the boat closer to shore. Rather than stupidity I think it was a form for self sacrifice.

What's the point in highlighting a dumb character in "Armageddon", one of the dumbest movies ever made?