Living in a dangerous place.

[Bubbles]

The events in Japan got me thinking.

Would you continue to live on some islands with 108 active volcanoes, regular earthquakes and tsunami?

There is no fertile land and they are all packed in coastal areas.

IMO that's a recipe for disaster.

About 73 percent of Japan is forested, mountainous, and unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use.[2][87] As a result, the habitable zones, mainly located in coastal areas, have extremely high population densities. Japan is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.[88]

The islands of Japan are located in a volcanic zone on the Pacific Ring of Fire. They are primarily the result of large oceanic movements occurring over hundreds of millions of years from the mid-Silurian to the Pleistocene as a result of the subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate beneath the continental Amurian Plate and Okinawa Plate to the south, and subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate to the north. Japan was originally attached to the eastern coast of the Eurasian continent. The subducting plates pulled Japan eastward, opening the Sea of Japan around 15 million years ago.[89]

Japan has 108 active volcanoes. During the twentieth century several new volcanoes emerged, including Shōwa-shinzan on Hokkaido and Myōjin-shō off the Bayonnaise Rocks in the Pacific. Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century.[90] The 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people.[91] More recent major quakes are the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, a 9.0-magnitude[92] quake which hit Japan on March 11, 2011, and triggered a large tsunami.[63] Due to its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes and tsunami, having the highest natural disaster risk in the developed world.[93]


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan

So why do people choose to live in places where disaster happens regularly ?

It's home, I know, but really?

Why?

I get it when it only happens every hundred years or so, and the land is fertile, but when disaster seems to happen every year?

 

I like volcanoes, have been up a few, but not sure I could cope with 108 active ones in the uk, let alone the earthquakes and the tsunamis.

Is it just me? 

[Bubbles]

Here is a humorous look at living in Japan by an American

 http://www.cracked.com/article_20118_5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-living-in-japan.html

Not once does he mention natural disasters.

[ekim]

They probably don't have a choice and suffer from the effects of population expansion, just like the millions who die as a result of rivers like the Yankse and Yellow rivers flooding and the Bangladesh cyclones.

[ippy]

Here is a humorous look at living in Japan by an American

 http://www.cracked.com/article_20118_5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-living-in-japan.html

Not once does he mention natural disasters.

My brother in law lives in Christchurch NZ it's a fantastic place but we do worry about him, the big earth quake didn't do much damage to his house, it wrecked his computer school.

My wife has just come back from there, she was driving when there and was warned to like the rest of the drivers out there, to take it easy on the pedal due to unexpected cracks in the roads, it affects so many things and NZ's, so I'm told, always on the rumble, they have to get used to it.

I'm not sure if I would want to learn to live with it.

ippy 

[Bubbles]

My brother in law lives in Christchurch NZ it's a fantastic place but we do worry about him, the big earth quake didn't do much damage to his house, it wrecked his computer school.

My wife has just come back from there, she was driving when there and was warned to like the rest of the drivers out there, to take it easy on the pedal due to unexpected cracks in the roads, it affects so many things and NZ's, so I'm told, always on the rumble, they have to get used to it.

I'm not sure if I would want to learn to live with it.

ippy

I'm glad they were all OK Ippy.

🌹

[Brownie]

I'm glad too Ippy.

No, Rose, I wouldn't choose to live somewhere that has earthquakes frequently, such as Japan.

It always strikes me as very odd that some choose to live on or by the fault in San Francisco.  It's almost a badge of honour to do so.

[Harrowby Hall]

I haven't lived in Japan, but I have visited Japan for two weeks at a time on four occasions. I suffered earthquakes - there was a report of an earthquake almost every day.

But I loved the place and would have liked to have stayed there for much longer than I did. From the windows of the train there appeared to be quite a lot of fertile land with lots of paddy fields and tea plantations. There is fertile land in the mountain valleys, too. But people do live in very crowded crowded conditions (well, by our standards).

Japan's population is twice that of the United Kingdom. They are used to earthquakes and have devised strategies for living with them, include devising buildings which can survive them. My understanding is that under "normal" circumstances the casualty rate from earthquakes is remarkably low

[Brownie]

That's very true and is the reason why the traditional Japanese home was so flimsy with screens instead of walls, they would be less likely to hurt someone if they collapsed.  A different world to ours, you're fortunate to have been there.

[jeremyp]

The events in Japan got me thinking.

Would you continue to live on some islands with 108 active volcanoes, regular earthquakes and tsunami?

I've been to Japan, never seen a volcano erupt, or a tsunami. I was once in an earthquake though (magnitude 6 according to the news) in which nobody died.

My cousin was in Japan during the dreadful Earthquake and tsunami that did for Fukushima. She didn't die.

There is no fertile land and they are all packed in coastal areas.

This is not true.

[Khatru]

I spent the best part of five years in the Philippines.

In that time we had plenty of typhoons, one (Typhoon Yoling 1970) destroyed our house with wind speeds of 155 mph.

I've been in two earthquakes.  The first one was 7.3 magnitude and was fucking scary.

I've also watched Taal Volcano erupt on two occasions.

[Aruntraveller]

We were in San Francisco in Oct 1989 when an earthquake struck. It was a 6.9 iirc.

Bloody scary. Didn't like it. Resolved to remain in the UK.

Still as ever Americans very impressive in their ability to turn a fast buck, the very next day T-shirts were on sale with the legend "I survived the 1989 SF quake".

I thought this was tacky in the extreme as some 60 people had died - but that's capitalism for you.

[L.A.]

We were in San Francisco in Oct 1989 when an earthquake struck. It was a 6.9 iirc.

Bloody scary. Didn't like it. Resolved to remain in the UK.

Still as ever Americans very impressive in their ability to turn a fast buck, the very next day T-shirts were on sale with the legend "I survived the 1989 SF quake".

I thought this was tacky in the extreme as some 60 people had died - but that's capitalism for you.

The miracle was that so few people died when a major quake hit such a highly populated area - maybe that had something to do with capitalism too?

[Aruntraveller]

The miracle was that so few people died when a major quake hit such a highly populated area - maybe that had something to do with capitalism too?

No - I believe it had to do with the way the quake hit, how far underground it was, and various other seismological factors which when I read about it at the time made little sense to me.

[Leonard James]

The miracle was that so few people died when a major quake hit such a highly populated area - maybe that had something to do with capitalism too?

It wasn't a "miracle", it was merely a demonstration of the unpredictability of chance.

[L.A.]

It wasn't a "miracle", it was merely a demonstration of the unpredictability of chance.

I think it was more to do with the fact that buildings were generally built to a high standard.

[Leonard James]

I think it was more to do with the fact that buildings were generally built to a high standard.

Well, that is one of man's ways of thwarting the cruelty of the environment we have evolved in.