User blog comment:Agent M/Shout Box V.2/@comment-2165165-20110312004926/@comment-1915803-20110318222318

Earthquakes happen all the time. Almost constantly. Most of them are very minor, and some of them can't even be felt at all. However, no, earthquakes don't just happen "anywhere", per se, they happen around fault lines. They're very common in areas like the Ring of Fire (an excellent Johnny Cash song, but I digress…). That's why you see so many earthquakes around the edges of the Pacific Ocean.

As for the situation in Japan, it was extremely bad and many more lives were lost than just 300. The earthquake and tsunami both did a whole lot of damage to the northern areas of Japan. Fortunately, though, Japan was pretty well prepared and were able to deal with it well, and foreign aid helped a lot. If this had happened in a less-developed country, it would be much worse and more lives would be lost. However, the thing that mostly worries me still is the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. I do not believe it's likely that the world will see another Chernobyl unfold out of this, but the situation is still pretty serious.