WTF: Netflix 2022 Film “White Noise” About Train Derailment Carrying Toxic Chemicals was SAME Town As Recent OH Incident

Decider.com: By Liz Kocan @lizburrito Feb 13, 2023
In the 2022 Netflix film White Noise, a train carrying toxic chemicals gets into an accident and is derailed, unleashing fumes that create an “airborne toxic event.” This chemical spill requires everyone nearby to evacuate the area and seek shelter far from the crash. Last week, in an instance of life imitating art (or vice-versa), a train carrying harmful chemicals derailed in the very same town used as filming location for White Noise‘s on-screen crash.
The real-life crash occurred on Saturday, Feb. 4, when a cargo train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, per CNN. The train was transporting several chemicals — including the highly combustible vinyl chloride, as well as butyl acrylate — which both spilled from the cars they were carried in. A huge fire resulted from the crash, and officials feared that the chemicals might cause an explosion, prompting thousands of local residents to evacuate the area.
One resident, Ben Ratner, had the crazy experience of not only having to evacuate his own home this week, but also acted out the scenario earlier as an extra in White Noise. Ratner appeared in a scene in which Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig‘s family are caught in a traffic jam with hundreds of others as they try to evacuate their town after a train filled with toxic chemicals derails.
“The first half of the movie is all almost exactly what’s going on here,” Ratner told CNN, adding that the parallels between real life and the movie are “uncanny.”