As many as 323,000 people in 30 prefectures could be killed by a major earthquake and ensuing monster tsunami that scientists say could hit in the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coast, the Cabinet Office's Central Disaster Prevention Council said Wednesday.
The estimated toll was raised dramatically from a projection in 2003 of 24,700 deaths from such a one-two punch.
The disaster council assumed extreme conditions in a worst-case scenario, learning lessons from the March 11 quake and tsunami disasters of last year that killed about 19,000 people in the Tohoku region.