Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
11d ago
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Transnational Thursday for September 5, 2024
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Notes -
Japan
Although I am not particularly educated in seismology, I have long assumed that it was somewhat like climate science: One can model it, one can draw conclusions from the past, but it is difficult to precisely make predictions with current technology--and predictions necessarily involve changes or events that occur over vast periods of time, not in days or weeks. With these assumptions I am not sure how to take the now month-something old predictions that Japan is due for a massive quake.
The term Nankai Trough you are starting to see a lot now. This trough is a subduction zone, a deep underwater trench off the southern coast of Japan, where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting (or being pushed beneath) the Eurasian Plate. Seismologists have (somehow) made enough of a determination that there is an impending event in this area that they apparently prompted the Japanese government to make public statements about it, namely that the population should be aware and take precautions in the event of a major quake, or "mega-quake" as you are sometimes now seeing written.
All this has had predictable consequences. There is a rice shortage due to various factors (including considerably more tourism than the last few years), but exacerbated when people have begun buying up essentials (of which rice, yes, is one in Japan.) Bottled water and bread are also thinner on the shelves. The sections of hardware stores that normally carry emergency goods such as solar radios/lanterns, MRE-type pouches, mylar blankets, etc. are also bare. It's not as bad as it might be, but it's noticeable.
As in the COVID years, it's difficult in the middle of such a frenzy to know whether to take it more seriously than usual, or just shrug it off as probable fearmongering for some tedious purpose unknown to me. After the last biggish earthquake near my home (the street up from my house cracked open in places--nothing like the bad earthquake of 95 or even the one I felt in 2011 that caused the tsunami, but pretty jarring) we stockpiled quite a bit, but that was a few years ago and much of the foodstuffs were near expiration so we ate them.
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