The upcoming earthquake of unprecedented destructive power in Japan was thought of for a long time: at least half a century ago. But it did not happen exactly where it was most feared, and it did not bring exactly the disasters that were first prepared for. Mother Nature lives by her own laws. The trouble came not so much from underground as from the ocean. It was assumed that the earthquake will be in the area of Tokyo, and it occurred not in the country at all, but in the Pacific Ocean, 130 km from the north-eastern coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu. Most of all, people were afraid of cars thrown from multi-tiered city highways and people who died under collapsed skyscrapers (in the spirit of the Oscar-winning Hollywood disaster film of 1974 "Earthquake"), and thousands of people in villages and towns were swept into the ocean by a 10-meter tsunami wave. E. M. RUSAKOV Candidate of Historical Sciences Japan Keywords:, earthquake in 2011, tsunami, accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant They assured themselves and others that nuclear power plants were reliably protected from any natural disasters, but in Fukushima something happened that even according to some nuclear experts "could not happen." After all, unlike the explosion of Unit 4 in Chernobyl, located in the open air, in Fukushima, the reactors were in sealed reinforced concrete containers and were shut down, and the disciplined, corrosive Japanese do not seem to have the infamous Soviet bungling. And in general, Japan belongs to a select circle of high-tech countries. It is also not the first time that the Japanese face tsunamis and typhoons (typhoon - big wind). These very words of Japanese origin have entered many languages of the world. Twice a typhoon saved the country in the XIII century. from the naval armadas of the Mongol Kublai Khan. Those tsunamis earned the beautiful name of" divine wind " - kamikaze. The current tsunami is one of those that have been called "killer tsunamis". Al ... Read more