Japan's massive Nankai Trough earthquake – could you predict it?

Thursday's earthquake did not cause major damage.

On the surface, the earthquake that struck southern Japan on Thursday wasn't a big deal.

The 7.1-magnitude quake caused minor damage and tsunami warnings were quickly lowered.

But the earthquake was quickly followed by a warning – one that had never been issued before.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said there was an increased risk of a “major earthquake.” Japan's prime minister canceled a planned trip to a summit in Central Asia to stay in the country next week.

For many Japanese, their thoughts turned to the “Great Earthquake” — a once-in-a-century earthquake that many had grown up warning about.

Worst-case scenarios suggest more than 300,000 people could be killed, with a 30-metre-high wall of water potentially hitting the East Asian nation's Pacific coast.

It sounds terrifying. However, the overwhelming feeling Masayo Ushio left in himself was confusion.

“I'm confused about the consultation and don't know what to do with it,” she told the BBC from her home in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

“We know we can't predict earthquakes, and we've been told for a long time that the big one is coming one day, so I kept asking myself: Is this it? But it doesn't seem real to me.”

So, what is the “big event,” can it be predicted — and is it likely to hit anytime soon?

What worries the Japanese authorities?

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The last Nankai Basin earthquake occurred nearly 80 years ago.

Japan is a country accustomed to earthquakes, as it lies on the Ring of Fire, and as a result experiences about 1,500 earthquakes annually.

The vast majority of earthquakes cause minor damage, but there are some that do — like the 9.0-magnitude quake that struck in 2011, sending a tsunami to the northeastern coast and killing more than 18,000 people.

But the virus that authorities fear could hit this densely populated region to the south could – in an absolute worst-case scenario – be even more deadly.

Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough—a seismically active zone that runs along Japan's Pacific coast—have already killed thousands.

In 1707, a 600-kilometer-long fault triggered the second largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji.

The Nankai Basin lies between Suruga Bay in central Japan and the Hyogana Sea in Kyushu to the south.

These so-called “megaquakes” tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last two were in 1944 and 1946.

Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake occurring somewhere along the basin in the next 30 years, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it could cause trillions in damage and possibly kill hundreds of thousands.

This long-awaited event is, according to geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A. Hubbard, “the original definition of a 'big earthquake.'”

“The history of major Nankai earthquakes is so compellingly frightening that it's alarming,” the duo admitted in their Earthquake Insights newsletter on Thursday.

But can they really predict an earthquake?

No, according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“The warning issued yesterday has almost nothing to do with science,” he told the BBC.

He believes that the reason for this is that while earthquakes are known to be a “combined phenomenon,” “it is not possible to know in advance whether an earthquake is a foreshock or an aftershock.”

In fact, only about 5 percent of earthquakes are “precursors,” Bradley and Hubbard say.

However, the 2011 earthquake was preceded by a 7.2 magnitude aftershock, they note, which has been largely ignored.

The warning system was put in place after 2011 in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this magnitude from happening again, and Thursday was the first time the Japan Meteorological Agency used it.

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A massive earthquake in 2011 killed more than 18,000 people.

But more importantly, the hurricane did not order anyone to evacuate the area, although it did ask people to prepare. In fact, people were careful to minimize any imminent danger.

“The possibility of a new major earthquake is higher than usual, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

However, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he had cancelled his plans to travel outside Japan “to ensure that our preparations and communications are in order.”

He added that he feared people would feel “worried”, given that it was the first time such a warning had been issued.

But Masayo Ushio doesn't seem to be like that.

“I feel like the government is overdoing it,” she said.

Professor Geller was even more scathing when he said the consultation “was not useful information”.

So why issue this alert?

The system allows for a warning or a lower-level alert to be sent. On Thursday, it was an alert advising people to prepare to evacuate.

And it seems to have worked. Even in a country where people are used to getting alerts on their phones, the impact of the Nankai Trough — and the threat of a “super typhoon” — made people stop and take notice.

“One of the things I did when I saw the consultation was to check what we had at home and make sure we were prepared, which I hadn't done in a while,” Masayo Ushio admitted.

This has been repeated along the Pacific coast.

In the city of Nichinan in Miyazaki Prefecture, near the epicenter of Thursday’s 7.1-magnitude quake, officials were checking conditions at shelters that had already been opened. In Kochi Prefecture in western Japan, 10 municipalities had opened at least 75 evacuation shelters by Friday morning, according to Kyodo News.

The thermal power plant operator, JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Holdings and Chubu Electric Power, said it was on emergency alert and had confirmed communication routes with fuel tankers and evacuation protocols for the docks.

In the town of Kuroshio, also in Kochi, officials urged the elderly and others to voluntarily evacuate to safer places. Officials in Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, confirmed evacuation routes in cooperation with local municipalities.

Professor Geller says – despite all his skepticism – it is a good opportunity “to make sure you are taking all the routine precautions that you should be doing anyway”.

“Have enough water to last you a week, some canned food, and maybe even some batteries for your flashlight,” he advises.

Additional editing by Chika Nakayama and Jake Lapham.

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