Japan Plans For 100ft Tsunami (thesun.ie)

schwit1 shares a report from The Times: It will shake houses and tall buildings, and unleash a 100ft tsunami on one of the most densely populated and industrialized coastlines in the world. It could kill and injure close to a million people. It will almost certainly come in the next few decades. Now, the Japanese government is making plans to evacuate millions of people in anticipation of what could be one of the worst natural disasters in history (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). It is known as the Nankai Trough megaquake. The Japanese government has previously estimated that there is a 70 to 80 percent chance that such an event will take place in the next 30 years and that the earthquake, and subsequent tsunami, could kill 323,000 people and injure 623,000. Unfortunately, the report doesn't outline how the government plans to get people out of harm's way. The city with the most people in the danger zone is Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city and home to 2.3 million people. "The home of the nation's industry Hamamatsu is also at risk and home to over 800,000 people," reports The Irish Sun.

Comments

1923 Yokohama Earquake killed about 250,000

[BoRegardless]

People seem to have forgotten the 1923 earthquake and FIRE that destroyed Yokohama and a quarter million lives, without even a hint of a tsunami!

It was around 7am and people getting breakfast off of wood or coal fires in the homes leading up the hill from Yokohama bay. The quake hit, upset all the cooking fires and lit the upper reaches of the hill on fire and the Westerly winds blowing over the top pushed the fire ... and people who survived down toward the bay.

Unfortunately, the major industrial port's fuel tanks burst covering it with fuel and oil which quickly lit off when the windborn fires reached the bay and very few people survived. The photos taken by local photographers just after the ashes cooled made Yokohama look almost exactly like Hiroshima after the nuclear bomb. I have a two volume set of books summarizing the events.

Yokohama harbor had about a 9.5 foot elevation change after the earthquake in some areas. This is a similar elevation change to what was detected in the Seattle area after an earthquake in the early 1700s before westerners populated the area. It is predicted to hit again. Good reason Amazon is looking for another location!

In other words, there are a whole lot of ways to destroy a city in & after an earthquake and then isolate people after the earthquake when the ground elevation changes wipe out roads, bridges, trains, etc.

Re:Do Japanese citizens even know what a "ft" is?

[vtcodger]

All four common options for energy -- BTU, Joule, Calorie, Kilocalorie leave something to be desired. The problem is that the Joule and Calorie are too small to be convenient for a lot of real world stuff. Kilocalories would be better except that folks are prone to leave the "kilo" off and they then get confused with calories. (e.g. the "calories" in food are actually kilcalories) Often it's easier to just work with BTUs (roughly a quarter of a kilocalorie) which are a convenient size and aren't ambiguous.