10.5 (miniseries)
10.5 is a 2004 American disaster television miniseries directed by John Lafia that aired on NBC on May 2–3, 2004. The cast includes Kim Delaney, Beau Bridges, John Schneider, Dulé Hill, Fred Ward, David Cubitt, and Kaley Cuoco.
The story follows a string of powerful earthquakes along the U.S. West Coast, culminating in a massive 10.5 magnitude quake. Seismologist Dr. Samantha Hill and her team warn that the west coast could be destroyed and propose a drastic plan: heat the fault to weld it shut using nuclear bombs. The President approves, and a disaster response team, including FEMA director Roy Nolan, works to place five warheads while a sixth is lost during an earlier quake. As Seattle and then San Francisco are struck by major quakes, the team pushes ahead with the plan to stop the fault. Dr. Hill and Nolan discover the plan comes with grave risks. Despite evacuations and heroic efforts, a final, massive quake hits, the coast buckles, and the southwestern edge of California is torn away, forming a new island.
The miniseries was widely ridiculed by critics and geologists for its science, but it drew strong Nielsen ratings. A sequel, 10.5: Apocalypse, aired in 2006. The film received several nominations, including an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Special Visual Effects and a NAACP Image Award nomination, and won an Award of Distinction from the Australian Cinematographers Society.
In response to the film’s depiction of science, the Southern California Earthquake Center added a page to their site noting the major scientific inaccuracies depicted in 10.5.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:17 (CET).