When is there going to be a earthqake in 2012?

Answer 1

There are, in general, a couple dozen earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater EVERY DAY. Bigger ones, in the 6+ range, happen every few weeks. Following an especially big earthquake, you may see several dozen or HUNDREDS of fairly substantial aftershocks.

We are unable to predict when or where big earthquakes will happen, or what effects they will have. The Japanese have long known that the Japanese islands are very quake-prone, and were as ready for "The Big One" as they could be. Notice that there were NO major buildings destroyed by the 9.0 earthquake last week, and that the big high-rise buildings in Tokyo were virtually undamaged. In fact, very few people were killed by the earthquake itself!

Tsunamis (the very word "tsunami" is of Japanese origin) are common following major ocean earthquakes, and the Japanese authorities were ready for one - but their defensive seawalls were only about 20 feet high, while this tsunami was nearly 30 feet. Most of the 10,000+ people killed were killed by the tsunami. In fact, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were essentially undamaged by the earthquake; it was the tsunami that flooded the backup generators which were supposed to provide cooling while the reactors were shut down, and it was the failure of the generators that has caused most of the problems there.