in one of the world's most Quake prone countries experiencing around 1,500 Tremors per year the 7.1 magnitude Quake last week was considered unique occurring on the active fault line known as the nankai trough it led to fears that it could trigger a much bigger Quake we looked into whether the possibility of a future earthquake has increased or not we concluded the possibility is higher than normal the government took the unusual step of issuing a formal warning leading to some Panic buying as people try to assess the danger we're all concerned but don't know how to prepare in our neighborhood all the rice toilet paper and water are sold out and disrupting travel plans at a peak vacation time for many Japanese so large numbers of cancellations so a lot of hotels are out of pocket uh people when they go to the beach find that you can't swim for the next week because of a heightened uh anxiety in the government that maybe the big one will happen this week studying records of quakes going back hundreds of years many seismologists in Japan have concluded the country is due to experience a so-called Mega Quake the kind that modeling shows could cause a 30 m High tsunami wave with hundreds of thousands of deaths but the lifting of this warning after an uneventful week has left other experts questioning how predictions are made there's a kind of childlike belief among some researchers that Quakes occur in regular patterns but um research has shown that that belief is rubbish there there's absolutely no scientific basis um for conflating the patterns past Quakes with what's going to happen in the future and as life returns to as near normal as it can in a country under constant seismic threat there's the knowledge that whether they're predicted or not there will be more Quakes Rob McBride Al jazer make sure to subscribe to our channel to get the latest news from Al jazer