7.6 earthquake off the coast of Japan
34 comments
·December 8, 2025throwup238
markus_zhang
I heard that smaller (relative) earthquakes actually lower the prob of larger ones, so maybe it is a good thing? A bunch of 7.X earthquakes in the ocean are not going to be hugely destructive.
lostlogin
> A bunch of 7.X earthquakes in the ocean are not going to be hugely destructive.
New Zealand’s 5th most deadly disaster was Christchurch’s 6.2 which killed 185 people. It was a shallow aftershock from a larger, less destructive quake.
The damage was huge.
lagniappe
Somewhat offtopic curiosity: Is there anything that Japanese fishkeepers do to keep the water and livestock inside the tank during earthquakes? Here we have no such risk for earthquakes, so a 600lb tank of water 4ft off the ground isn't much of an issue, even when bumped. I'd imagine earthquakes of this frequency could complicate that.
octaane
https://www.tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2025/12/08/25342050/2/WEPA40
Shouldn't be too bad; USGS forecasts up to 1 meter tsunami.
e12e
Nhk has some more information - looks like the areas hardest hit will have been hit by now, with 3m high waves:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/weather-disaster/tsu...
Kye
1 meter is bad. That's a lot of water full of things you don't want slamming into you or any structure.
linhns
Epicentre very deep underground, so shouldn’t be dangerous aside from small tsunamis.
onceiwasthere
Your comment prompted me to go read about epicenters and I learned something new. The hypocenter of an earthquake is apparently the point of origin of the earthquake and the epicenter is the point on the earth's surface directly above the hypocenter. Had never heard of a hypocenter before.
rpozarickij
I didn't know about hypocenter before too but it's neat how you can sometimes deduct the meaning of a word from its parts (because "hypo" means "under"/"below" in Greek, like in hypodermic, hypoglycaemia, etc).
nonethewiser
Gojira kimasu.
kachapopopow
When I was in japan the earthquakes were oddly exciting rather than scary, had three different ones while I was there that visibly shook rather heavy objects around. Two being in a building and one outside.
It was rather interesting seeing things shift around leaving a permanent imprint that there was in-fact an earthquake and it wasn't some kind of illusion when earthquakes these size couple of decades ago would cause non zero amount of damage.
Although, I am scared for tokyo about the predicted earthquake that would push all these systems near the breaking point and even beyond it, but hopefully the past in not prediction of the feature and instead it'll just be a lot of smaller earthquakes.
jacquesm
Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. Things I had taken for granted all my life suddenly became un-anchored and as a result so did I. I have never felt an actual feeling of panic that threatened to overwhelm me before that happened and it was a very mild earthquake. I had to really force myself to calm down and stay rational and do what was the safest rather than to give in to the 'flee' reflex.
The problem with earthquakes is when they start you know you're in one but you have no idea where you're headed, whether this is as bad as it gets or whether you're going to end up in a pile of collapsed rubble and what is the best decision greatly hinges on something you can't know ahead of time, which is the peak magnitude and the kind of earthquake you are experiencing.
throwawaylaptop
99% of your problem can be solved by studying statistics for your area, and having a plan... So that you aren't just at the whims of the moment when it's actually happening.
kachapopopow
I always was in one of the major cities so I had full confidence in them. Lacking the natural fear of death probably has something to do with it as well.
embedding-shape
What seems to matter greatly how affect someone is by an earthquake, seems to also be related to how used people are to being unbalanced. I was once with a group of friends who most of them were skaters and snowboarders, so used to thinking about balance and being in situations where they can't do much about it, standing on relatively unbalanced things. During the earthquake, similarly to parent, most of them were fascinated, while the non-skaters quickly panicked and threw themselves on the ground.
Of course, just an anecdote, and those people could also have a general lack of fear of death, but the difference between the two of you made me think of the event again.
null
i4k
Does anyone has information if any prefecture got hit by big waves? If none, how much time usually before the warnings are lifted?
meindnoch
We're seeing the buildup for a 9+ megathrust earthquake.
anthk
It has recently been a 4th degree one at Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the North of Spain. One of the least probable places you would even think of have an earthquake...
ChrisMarshallNY
Damn. That sounds bad. Hope it didn't trigger a tsunami.
I guess we'll know, soon.
null
This would be the tenth major earthquake (7+ magnitude) along the Pacific ring of fire this year.
With the Kamchatka and other earthquakes in the news recently I had a fear that were building to some major event but turns out that this year is about average if not slightly below average for major quakes along the ring of fire.