In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley visits astrophysicist Satnam Tsurutani in India and learns that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth's core to rapidly increase. Arriving at a party in Washington, D.C, Helmsley presents his information to White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser, who takes him to meet the President.
Raymond "Ray" Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) is a Los Angeles Fire Department Air Rescue pilot in the midst of a divorce from Emma (Carla Gugino) and planning a trip to San Francisco with his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario).
In 1928, a solitary mountaineer encounters a glowing sphere. He loses consciousness and when he wakes, the sphere has gone and there is a scar on his hand where a sample of his DNA has been taken.
Henry Bennett (Ewan McGregor), his physician wife Maria (Naomi Watts), and their three sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Tomas (Samuel Joslin), and Simon (Oaklee Pendergrast) go on a Christmas holiday in 2004 to Khao Lak, Thailand. Arriving on Christmas Eve, they settle in and begin to enjoy the brand new Orchid Beach Resort. Two days later the massive 2004 tsunami inundates the area.
In 1918, the young Jiro Horikoshi longs to become a pilot, but his nearsightedness prevents it. He reads about the famous Italian aircraft designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, and dreams about him that night. In the dream, Caproni tells him that building planes is better than flying them.
Stewart Graff (Heston) is jogging near the Hollywood Sign. Back home, his wife Remy Royce-Graff (Gardner),a foul-mouthed bitter woman, starts her morning by picking a fight with him. After he has showered and is preparing to leave, Stewart finds Remy unconscious with a bottle of pills nearby. Accustomed to her periodic suicide attempts, Stewart prepares to induce vomiting when a violent tremor shakes the bedroom. Remy bolts out of bed, revealing that she was faking.
Located on the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula, Haeundae district of Busan, South Korea draws one million visitors to its beaches every year. Several years ago, Man-sik, a Haeundae local, lost Yeon-hee's father due to his mistake in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake while deep-sea fishing together at the Indian Ocean. Because of this, for years, Man-sik wasn't able to become involved with Yeon-hee, who runs an unlicensed seafood restaurant, despite her attempts to start a relationship (Yeon-hee doesn't know that her father was killed due to Man-sik's mistake.).
The film opens in Japan in the wake of the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami. As emergency personnel work to reach victims trapped underground, one rescuer tries to keep the victims calm by telling the story of how he came to have five fathers, all killed during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). The trapped victims are young German students and the rescuers are Russian.
Submersible pilot Toshio Onodera wakes up pinned inside his car in Numazu after an earthquake wreaks havoc in the city and nearby Suruga Bay. As aftershock triggers an explosion, a rescue helicopter led by Reiko Abe saves him and a young girl named Misaki.
"Blackie" Norton (Clark Gable), a saloonkeeper and gambler in the notorious Barbary Coast, owns the Paradise Club on Pacific Street. He hires a promising, but impoverished, classically trained singer from Benson, Colorado named Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald), who becomes a star attraction at the Paradise. The piano player at the club, dubbed "The Professor" (Al Shean), can tell Mary has a professionally trained voice. Mat (Ted Healy), Blackie's good friend at the Paradise, wisely predicts that Mary is not going to stay on the "Coast".
An earthquake in rural Australia causes a dangerous leak at WALDO (acronyms of Western Atomic Longterm Dumping Organisation), a nuclear waste storage facility. Heinrich Schmidt (Ross Thompson) an engineer badly contaminated in the accident, knows that the leak will poison the groundwater for hundreds of miles around and wants to warn the public. His boss, however, is only interested in protecting himself and believes that the accident should be covered up, when in fact the contamination risks thousands of lives. Heinrich escapes from the facility but is badly injured. Lost in the woods and suffering from amnesia, he is rescued by Larry Stilson (Steve Bisley), a car mechanic on holiday, and his wife Carmel (Arna-Maria Winchester). As Heinrich tries to piece together his memories of what happened, his boss' thugs are quickly closing in on the trio.
A Greek military hero named Darios (Rory Calhoun) visits his uncle Lissipu (George Rigaud) on the island of Rhodes in the year 280 BC. Rhodes has just finished constructing an enormous colossal statue of the god Apollo to guard its harbor and is planning an alliance with Phoenicia, which would be hostile to Greece.
A 19th-century opera singer is murdered on-stage shortly before her forthcoming wedding. Soon after being slain by the nefarious Dr. Emmanuel Droz during a live performance, Malvina van Stille is spirited away to the inventor's remote villa to be reanimated and forced to play the lead in a grim production staged to recreate her abduction. As the time for the performance draws near, piano tuner of earthquakes Felisberto sets out to activate the seven essential automata who dot the dreaded doctor's landscape and make sure all the essential elements are in place. Once again instilled with life after her brief stay in the afterworld, amnesiac Malvina is soon drawn to the mysterious Felisberto as a result of his uncanny resemblance to her one-time fiancé Adolfo.
In 1906 San Francisco, Frisco Jenny Sandoval (Ruth Chatterton), a denizen of the notorious Tenderloin district, wants to marry piano player Dan McAllister (James Murray), but her saloonkeeper father Jim (Robert Emmett O'Connor) is adamantly opposed to it. An earthquake kills both men and devastates the city. In the aftermath, Jenny gives birth to a son, whom she names Dan.