Tokyo - "The City Waiting to Die"

Last year I read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.  It was a fantastic read of basically the history of modern scientific discovery.  I recommend it.

When I read it last year, there was a quote that caught my attention on page 138:

The most common types of earthquakes are those where two plates meet, as in California along the San Andreas Fault. As the plates push against each other, pressures build up until one or the other gives way. In general, the longer the interval between quakes, the greater the pent-up pressure and thus the greater the scope for a really big jolt. This is a particular worry for Tokyo, which Bill McGuire, a hazards specialist at University College London, describes as “the city waiting to die” (not a motto you will find on many tourism leaflets). Tokyo stands on the boundary of three tectonic plates in a country already well known for its seismic instability. In 1995, as you will remember, the city of Kobe, three hundred miles to the west, was struck by a magnitude 7.2 quake, which killed 6,394 people. The damage was estimated at $99 billion. But that was as nothing—well, as comparatively little—compared with what may await Tokyo. 

Tokyo has already suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes in modern times. On September 1, 1923, just before noon, the city was hit by what is known as the Great Kanto quake—an event more than ten times more powerful than Kobe’s earthquake. Two hundred thousand people were killed. Since that time, Tokyo has been eerily quiet, so the strain beneath the surface has been building for eighty years. Eventually it is bound to snap. In 1923, Tokyo had a population of about three million. Today it is approaching thirty million. Nobody cares to guess how many people might die, but the potential economic cost has been put as high as $7 trillion.

Japan endures 20 percent of the world's powerful earthquakes and the reason is obvious.  The country lies at the crossing of four tectonic plates - the Eurasian, North American, Philippine and Pacific plates.  A major fault line goes directly under the world's largest city, Tokyo.  Although this latest earthquake was horrific, it happened off the coast and not below a major metropolitan city.  Most of the totaled economic destruction from this earthquake will be a result of the tsunami that followed it.  Also, the tsunami took time to travel across the ocean and residents along the coastline had advanced warning to evacuate to higher ground.  Japan, thanks to their preparations and advanced warning systems, did a tremendous job to minimize the loss of human life.  Eventually, however, Tokyo is going to take a big one and there is nothing that they can do to prevent an even worse tragedy than the one that has taken place this week.