Life imitates art.
It seems that the Netflix movie “White Noise” somehow eerily predicted the train derailment in Ohio earlier this month, as the fiery crash and fictional blockbuster share some 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.”
“Talk about art imitating life,” the 37-year-old father-of-four told the outlet.
The 2022 film is set in a small town where Adam Driver’s character, Jack Gladney, is a Hitler studies professor. Husband to Babette, played by Greta Gerwig, he is forced to navigate his family through a toxic airborne event after a train derails mere miles away from their home.
“And you can just about drive yourself crazy thinking 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 same title, strikes haunting similarities to the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster that occurred less 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, among other chemicals.
The 50-car derailment burned for multiple days and posed an explosion threat early on, but the emergency has since been deescalated. Last week, evacuation orders were lifted, but reports of nearby animals falling ill and dropping dead still circulated.
On Tuesday, officials announced that more toxic chemicals were present in the train cars than initially believed. Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene were among the other toxins on board, which can pose adverse health reactions ranging from minor irritation to bloody urine or nervous system depression.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently working to screen the air and homes to ensure the safety of neighboring residents, adding that they had not yet discovered any concerning levels of toxins.
While officials deemed the area safe so far, “White Noise” now hits a little too close to home for Ratner – both literally and figuratively.
“I went and tried to watch the film a few days ago and couldn’t,” he said. “It wasn’t something I wanted to be entertained by because, for us, it’s a real-life situation.”
But this isn’t the first time a fictional work has seemingly predicted real-life events.
“The Simpsons” has been largely credited for predicting many current events correctly – years in advance.
The light-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.
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