It was the deadliest day in modern history for both countries and more than 75,000 separate buildings were destroyed.

If you're wondering if it's somehow Erdogan's fault, the answer is basically yes, but also just this time, a little bit no.

It does admittedly make sense that these countries weren't totally prepared for an earthquake like this.

The last time this region saw a larger earthquake was more than 80 years ago, but that doesn't mean that earthquakes of this size are rare it's just as they happen in other parts of the world.

Specifically here.

This region is called the Pacific Ring of Fire and it's the most seismically active place on Earth.

Why? It doesn't really matter. It has to do with old rocks and stuff.

But all you need to know is that if you're planning on building the largest city on Earth, you should probably do it anywhere other than in this red area here.

Now unfortunately this video was slightly delayed and we didn't get it out in time for the founding of Japanese society 14,000 years ago so they didn't get the memo

And now you have Tokyo the largest city in the world and home to 14 million people built on an island that gets hit with earthquakes the same size as the one that leveled Turkey every few years, sometimes multiple times per year.

And though these earthquakes do invariably lead to some casualties and some destruction, Tokyo isn't this. But how?

Well, the main ingredients in any municipal mering is buildings and while the buildings in Tokyo, look like the sort of buildings that might turn to soup with enough vibration, there's a lot going on behind the scenes to keep them in one piece.

Every building in Tokyo falls under one of Japan's three different tiers of earthquake-proofing.

Except for a small handful of buildings built before 1981, these are pretty much all low-cost residential buildings so fortunately the only ones who are going to die are poor people.

Anyway, we don't need to worry about those buildings because they're all going to be gone soon enough whether Japan wants them to or not.

So instead, let's talk about the buildings that do fall under Japan's three tiers of earthquake-proofing.

The first and most basic set of standards is called the taishin and it applies to every building constructed after 1981 from simple detached houses to everything else.

This mostly just dictates a building's general sturdiness, having a certain thickness of walls and a certain strength of beams and columns.  

Pretty much every low-rise building in Japan is built in a frame of steel or wood.

You won't see the sort of stone houses you might find in Europe or America because, unlike a flexible wood frame, a stone frame is either upright or it's not.

That being said, this tier is only the baseline.

These buildings will still shake during an earthquake and your Funko Pops are still at risk of falling off the shelf.

Taishin buildings are mostly built to resist the smaller four to five-magnitude earthquakes that Japan experiences every day, and to avoid total collapse in the event of something larger.

But for buildings taller than a simple detached house or small business, this might not cut it which is what the next tier of earthquake-proofing is for.

This tier called seishin are features you'll find in many of Tokyo's high-rise office buildings and they're designed to counteract the sort of swing that might shake a house but top a skyscraper.

This is typically done with a device called a seismic damper which can look like a whole bunch of different things.

If your building's engineer is boring, they'll install a bunch of giant industrial springs in your building's frame that essentially pulls it back upright when an earthquake shakes it in one direction or another.

But if your building's engineer is cool, they'll install a giant swinging egg that weighs several hundred tons and swings through your building to remind everyone that deadly city-ending earthquakes are inevitable.

This basically does the same thing as the springs by moving opposite to the building's frame and pulling its momentum backwards while also keeping everyone in the building humble.

Japanese buildings have actually had some version of this for well over a thousand years.

If you look at for example old Japanese pagodas, you'll see that they're built differently than Korean or Chinese pagodas.

They have a central wooden column called a shinbashira that essentially acts as a seismic damper.

Some buildings actually still use this exact method like the Tokyo Sky Tree which is supported by a massive concrete shinbashira running through the full height of the tower.

But the Sky Tree, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world needs more than just that to survive an earthquake.

That's why it's one of the 2600 or so buildings in Tokyo designed for the third tier of earthquake resistance called menshin.

These buildings which are usually over 20 stories are constructed in such a way that they are almost entirely isolated from the ground itself.

It sounds weird but pretty much all of Tokyo's skyscrapers aren't actually on the ground.

Instead, they're built on top of extremely thick rubber legs that allow the building to sway independently from the earth and when combined with seismic dampers and decent enough construction, even the tallest of SkyTree's can live to do whatever the Sky Tree does another day.

Now, well-designed buildings are great and all, but they're not worth much without their plucky sidekick: responsible, municipal infrastructure.

Marvel might have turned me down, but I am right.

The city needs to be able to detect measure and respond to earthquakes in a matter of seconds because here's a fun fact: it's not actually possible to predict earthquakes before they happen.

The forces that cause earthquakes build up really slowly over hundreds or thousands of years, so even a fairly accurate earthquake forecast is give or take a few centuries. And that doesn't really answer my question of: Do I have to go to work today, or will I be dead by noon anyway?

All that is to say, once an earthquake has started every second matters and Tokyo is designed to use those seconds well.

The entire country of Japan and much of its surrounding ocean floor is covered in a network of 4,235 seismometers, all of which are recording the Earth vibrations around the clock.

And they're there to buy Tokyo and other Japanese cities about half a minute of time before the actual earthquake hits.

To explain how this works, I need to say science words for like 15 seconds so just plug your ears if that goes against your morals.   

Basically, an earthquake happens in two waves.

There's the S-wave, which is the thing that actually causes major tremors, and there's also a weaker but faster traveling P-wave, which is like a polite little Messenger to tell you that the S-wave is on its way to come mess your whole day up.

So when one of the nodes in this massive, country-size grid of seismometers detects a P-wave, Japan can immediately calculate where the earthquake is coming from, how strong it is, and when it will hit which parts of the country.

With these 30 or so seconds, the government can activate pretty much every phone and television in the country to tell people to take cover and even more pressingly, they have time to stop the trains that would otherwise be derailed in the earthquake.

And all that, in addition to being about 5,000 miles from Erdagon's sphere of influence is why Tokyo is still here today.