Life imitates art.
It appears that evidently the Netflix movie “White Noise” one way or the other eerily predicted the train derailment in Ohio earlier this month, because the fiery crash and fictional blockbuster share a few of the same details.
East Palestine, Ohio, resident Ben Ratner, who also played an evacuee extra in “White Noise,” told People that the situation was “scary.”
“Speak about art imitating life,” the 37-year-old father-of-four told the outlet.
The 2022 film is about in a small town where Adam Driver’s character, Jack Gladney, is a Hitler studies professor. Husband to Babette, played by Greta Gerwig, he’s forced to navigate his family through a toxic airborne event after a train derails mere miles away from their home.
“And you’ll be able to nearly drive yourself crazy enthusiastic about how uncanny the similarities are between what’s happening now and in that movie,” Ratner said.
Created as fiction, the flick, based on the 1985 book of the identical title, strikes haunting similarities to the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster that occurred lower than two weeks ago.
On Feb. 3 about 50 miles from Pittsburgh, the small town of 4,700 people was shocked by the catastrophic derailment of a train carrying toxic materials.
Igniting in flames, the blazing train sent plumes of smoke into the air above the crash, and nearby residents were urged to evacuate their homes and flee.
The train was reportedly transporting vinyl chloride, phosgene and hydrogen chloride, amongst other chemicals.
The 50-car derailment burned for multiple days and posed an explosion threat early on, however the emergency has since been deescalated. Last week, evacuation orders were lifted, but reports of nearby animals falling sick and dropping dead still circulated.
On Tuesday, officials announced that more toxic chemicals were present within the train cars than initially believed. Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene were among the many other toxins on board, which may pose adversarial health reactions starting from minor irritation to bloody urine or nervous system depression.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently working to screen the air and houses to make sure the security of neighboring residents, adding that they’d not yet discovered any concerning levels of poisons.
While officials deemed the world secure up to now, “White Noise” now hits just a little too near home for Ratner – each literally and figuratively.
“I went and tried to observe the film a number of days ago and couldn’t,” he said. “It wasn’t something I desired to be entertained by because, for us, it’s a real-life situation.”
But this isn’t the primary time a fictional work has seemingly predicted real-life events.
“The Simpsons” has been largely credited for predicting many current events appropriately – years prematurely.
The sunshine-hearted series has shocked viewers time and time again for supposedly guessing the outcomes of Super Bowls, presidential campaigns and even Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
