The government's revised quake-tsunami estimates have sent shock waves across Japan and forced local municipalities to reassess their worst-case scenarios.
The new estimates, based on a tremendous earthquake striking in the 750-km Nankai Trough running from Honshu to Kyushu, warn of devastation far worse than last year's megaquake and tsunami.
A magnitude 9 quake in the trough would create higher and faster tsunami than those of March 11 and kill tens of thousands — possibly hundreds of thousands — of people in the Chubu and Shikoku regions and destroy several coastal towns.