Blindsided by Ferocity Unleashed by a Fault

[n2doc]

By KENNETH CHANG
Published: March 21, 2011


On a map of Japan that shows seismic hazards, the area around the prefecture of Fukushima is colored in green, signifying a fairly low risk, and yellow, denoting a fairly high one.

But since Japan sits on the collision of several tectonic plates, almost all of the country lies in an earthquake-risk zone. Most scientists expected the next whopper to strike the higher-risk areas southwest of Fukushima, which are marked in orange and red.

“Compared to the rest of Japan, it looks pretty safe,” said Christopher H. Scholz, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, referring to the area hit worst by the quake on March 11. “If you were going to site a nuclear reactor, you would base it on a map like this.”

Records kept for the past 300 years indicated that every few decades, part of the Japan trench, an offshore fault to the east of Fukushima, would break, generating an earthquake around magnitude 7.5, perhaps up to magnitude 8.0. While earthquakes that large would be devastating in many parts of the world, the Japanese have diligently prepared for them with stringent building codes and sea walls that are meant to hold back quake-generated tsunamis.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22predict.html?ref=science

[DeSwiss]

1. Tsunamis caused by undersea earthquakes.....

...are absolutely terrible.

But if you can imagine it, a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhNHeAFdsUw">Mega Tsunami which is caused by landslides are even worse.

- And that's what will some day hit the entire U.S. eastern seaboard. As the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Palma">La Palma Island volcano in the South Atlantic has done at least once before.....



K&R

[n2doc]

2. And Hawaii as well

Molokai had one. The big Island will likely do so also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami

[laconicsax]

3. Hmm.

That show uses the score from The Matrix for its soundtrack.

[DeSwiss]

4. I thought the Matrix theme was....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFnveEQYbFA">Clubbed To Death?

:shrug:

[laconicsax]

5. I meant the orchestral score.