Over 1,300 earthquakes hit Japan’s Tokara Islands in two weeks, urging the evacuation of dozens of residents from the remote archipelago on the southern tip of the country.
No major damage has been reported and no tsunami warnings have been issued, but the Japan Weather Service warns that tremors could continue as strong as Japan’s seven-level earthquake intensity scale “Lower 6” as that occurred Thursday.
The Lower 6 shows strength that makes it difficult for people to stand up without retaining stable support.
On January 2, 2024, people pass by a fallen building after trembling in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.
(AP News)
“Seismic activity remains dynamic,” JMA’s official Ayataka Ebita said at a press conference on Sunday. It promotes the fear of megakoki.
Temblors coincides with the virus panic caused by the 2021 reprint of the comic book, which many now interpret as a major earthquake prediction. “The actual disaster will take place in July 2025,” he read the cover of manga artist Ryotatsuki’s “The Future I See.” The graphic novel exploring Tatsuki’s dreams also features a panel that says, “The seabed between Japan and the Philippines cracks.”
Over the past few months, the predictions have been subject to intense online speculation. It also spreads to nearby countries like Hong Kong. There, the recent decline in tourists to Japan has been criticized.
Last month, Hong Kong Airlines suspended all flights to Kagoshima and Kumamoto’s southern provinces, saying that demand was low.
In South Korea, seismic panic has been cited as a reason for the cheapest flights to Japan compared to last year, but industry experts say that increasing competition between airlines and stronger yen will reduce the purchasing power of Korean tourists: increasing competition.
On Saturday, Korean singer Taemin from band Cic, who was in Japan for the concert, referred to Tatsuki’s predictions on LiveStream, joking that he was safe and joking about his performance as “looking cool.”
However, in the face of backlash to reveal the natural disaster, he later announced apologies from Japan and South Korea.
There’s a reason why comic books’ scientifically unfounded predictions are currently gaining so much traction. Tatsuki was just before (something). The first edition of the graphic novel published in 1999 referred to “Major Disasters” in March 2011, and said, “I dreamed of a major disaster. The waters of the South Pacific Ocean in Japan’s archipelago rise.”
The California Highway Patrol Officer will check for damage to a car that fell when the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsed onto the lower deck after the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco on October 17, 1989.
(George Nikitin/Applications)
The forecast appears to have been achieved in the massive Tohoku earthquake in 2011, which killed more than 19,000 people and caused the tsunami that led to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. With an estimated $360 billion in economic damages, the earthquake remains one of the most expensive natural disasters in history. We have registered 9.0 on the Richter scale, which measures the size of an earthquake. Sind, a Japanese earthquake intensity scale, measures strength at specific locations.
The coincidence drove Tatsuki to fame and made her comic a bestseller.
However, in recent weeks, Tatsuki has tried to quell her panic over her latest predictions.
“I believe that everyone should be free to interpret themselves,” she told Japan’s Mininch newspaper in May. “But I think it’s important not to be overswept in the process and act appropriately with expert opinions in mind.”
Officials and scientists in the Japanese government struggle to uncover the theory, and emphasize that it is scientifically impossible to predict earthquakes with such accuracy.
“It’s absolutely a coincidence. There’s no causality,” JMA’s EBITA said on Saturday. “In Japan, earthquakes can occur at any time. Always prepare.”
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Japan is one of the most seismic prone countries in the world, considering it lies in the ring of the Pacific Ring, a 25,000-mile-long belt of earthquakes and volcanic hotspots that loop around the periphery of the Pacific Ocean, including the US west coast.
The country experiences approximately 1,500 earthquakes per year. In other words, it is almost one-fifth of the world’s total, and earthquake evacuation drills are regularly practiced by government agencies and public schools.
On New Year’s Day last year, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in nophinsula, central Japan, killed more than 500 people, destroying or destroying at least 37,000 homes.
As they sit across two overlapping tectonic plates, the Tokara Islands are prone to seismic activity, such as “earthquake groups,” and produce relatively small bursts of earthquakes that last up to several months. (Southern California is another common site of earthquake herds, but many are very minor and rarely recognized.)
The archipelago spans 12 individual islands – only seven of which have around 660 inhabitants – and the current earthquake herd is the most important since 1995.
It is unclear why the current herds are much larger than those examples, but Nishimura Takayama, an earthquake expert at Kyoto University’s Institute for Disaster Prevention Research, says it could be the result of volcanic activity.
“I think the underground movement of magma caused serious seismic activity,” he said. “Several previous studies have shown submarine volcanoes around the herd area, suggesting the presence of magma under the ground.”
On January 2, 2024, a building in Anamiz Town, Ishikawa Prefecture will collapse. An estimated 7.4 earthquake struck the Ishikawa Prefecture border prefecture around 4:10pm the previous day.
(Noboru Hosono/Applications)
Despite the current virus attention around Tokara Swarm, experts like Nishimura are more interested in another, much more reliable earthquake forecast that has been looming across the country for years.
Earlier this year, a government panel estimated that there could be a magnitude of 8-9 mega-kaki on the Richter scale that will occur along the Japanese daytime KAi trough over the next 30 years.
There was a 559-mile fault line located outside Japan’s Pacific coast, characterized by subduction, and one tectonic plate was forced under another, causing catastrophic earthquakes every 90 to 200 years. The last one happened in 1946.
Under the worst-case government scenario, the next Nanjing Megus Last Earthquake is predicted to kill around 300,000 people. Most of them could reach 100 feet in the tsunami, causing up to $1.8 trillion in damage.
In comparison, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake (the two biggest seismic events in recent California history) had 63 and 57 deaths. Meanwhile, experts are studying the southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault.
“The future great Nankai earthquake is certainly the most anticipated earthquake in history. It is the original definition of “big things,” wrote 2024 geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A. Hubbard.
Earlier this month, the Japanese government announced a series of measures aimed at reducing deaths by up to 80% and reducing structural damage by 50%, including improving evacuation protocols.
“The national government, local governments, businesses and nonprofits need to come together and take measures to save as many lives as possible,” the Japanese Prime Minister said.
However, earthquake expert Nishimura says more needs to be done to meet these ambitious targets.
“Reducing structural damage can be challenging due to limited budgets, but deaths can be reduced through softer types of measures, such as training and evacuation drills,” he said.
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