Why I'd Never Live in Japan...or California

Of all the natural disasters, I think I fear earthquakes the most. I've just always conceptually regarded the ground both symbolically and practically as a bastion of stability, so it disturbs me to think that something I've always relied on could be so unstable.

Being such an earthquake-prone (and generally prosperous) country, Japan did extraordinarily well considering the sheer magnitude of their recent earthquake. Apparently they had earthquake response plans in place, which is more (I think) than I can say for most of the United States.

But with that said, Japan seems to be one of the most unfortunately located countries in the world. As most people know, the most massive earthquakes generally occur via movement at the tectonic plate boundaries. California, of course, has the boundary between the North American and Pacific plates running up its entire coastline, making that area very seismically active.

But as bad as that is (and that is BAD, because I love California), poor Japan. The Tokyo area lies on the intersection of FOUR plates:



(The 8.9 Sendai quake, I believe, was due to movement between the Pacific and Okhotsk Plates)

Anyway, the thing about earthquakes is that they are not really random. In fact, they are reasonably predictable (at least in the grand cosmological scheme of things), so lots of areas are due for an earthquake. Vancouver, San Francisco, L.A., etc.

Of course any slight variance could mean +50 years and thus probably out of the scope of my lifetime. But it still weirds me out - like living on top of a powder keg.