Inside Japan’s Earthquake Simulator

The timing of this video is crazy. My thoughts to the people affected by the new years 7.5 earthquake.

Props to all the engineers and architects and workers who built such a cool place. That amount of knowledge in that building is awesome.

This was timely.

I myself am a survivor of the Kobe earthquake. It was such a traumatic experience for me, even today, a minute earthquake gives me a chill. It is good to see these advances in technology so that we don't have to go through I had to go through back in the day.

Imagine telling someone about an earthquake you survived and they were like "It couldn't have been that bad i mean it wasn't a MAJOR earthquake"

They can replay any earthquake?! That’s pretty incredible. What an amazing experiment.

After watching this video, some people may wonder why buildings collapsed due to the recent 1/1 earthquake. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the countryside, an area with many traditional houses and buildings that were built before the current seismic standards were set.

Jan 1 2024 a 7.6 (on the Japanese seismic intensity scale) earthquake hits Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa. Just 150 KM from where it was predicted by semiologists, and reported by the Veritasium team in this video, uploaded 13 days ago. Mind blowing how accurate this was. So far only 1 reported fatality (due to building collapse)

The pure scale of everything from the engines to the hydraulics is blowing my mind. Looks like the sort of thing you'd see in a steampunk game.

Time and time again human technology amazes me. The fact that people can simulate an earthquake on a 10 story building at that. Feels like science fiction

A few errors: - confusion between seismograph (the instrument) and seismogram (the recording) - on the magnitude scale, it's not an increase of 1 that represents 10x of the energy of the earthquake. It's actually an increase of 2 on the scale that represents an increase of 1000x of the energy (so an increase of 1 is ~30x)

The power of Japanese engineering is no joke. In 2011, my father, sister, grandparents, and I lived on the 9th floor of a Japanese apartment building. From our location, the shock was approximately equivalent to a 6.1 magnitude earthquake. Despite this, only one item broke in our house, some unimportant, glass object. No one from our floor was hurt, none of our standing cabinets or dressers had fallen over, and everything that had fallen was easily repositioned. That was the only earthquake that made me feel scared while I lived there. I’m truly grateful for the work these people do to mitigate future disasters.

I worked for 41 years at a testing lab. We owned and operated two earthquake simulators. One with a 10 x 10 foot table and one with a 20 x 20 foot table. The heaviest specimen I ever remembered testing was a 12 cylinder diesel generator, use for emergency power for hospitals in earthquake zones. The generator weighted 65,000 pounds. I've got to witness hundreds of earthquake tests through the years. I'm now retired but was very lucky to have had such a enjoyable and rewarding career.

Its crazy how this video was made 2 weeks prior to a deadly earthquake in Japan.

The timing of this video is uncanny

The immense dedication to safety and preparedness is so essential, especially in places prone to seismic activity like Japan. It's remarkable to see how the continuous research and progress at facilities like E-Defense contribute to saving lives.

Its crazy that the exact same building that I live has been tested like this. And they showed us the video before we buy it. Kinda scary to imagine being shacked in the building I live rn

This video was uploaded in the third week of December 2023. Less than two weeks later, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Japan on January 1, 2024.

I love the quickness and implied obviousness of his response to "how do you predict the earthquakes" with "ask the seismologists", because even though he is an expert in simulating and testing earthquakes, studying how they happen is an entirely different area of professional experience. That's a sure sign that someone is truly intelligent, no speculation, no half-assed answer based on something he sort of knows about, just "ask the experts of course!"

The timing of this video is eerie.