Yay, you now know enough to find our what happened during the Kobe earthquake of 1995. The Kobe earthquake was held in Kobe, Japan, one of the most beautiful cities in Japan next to Tokyo (just like Kobe, Tokyo was another city that was hit by an earthquake in 1923, during WWII). On the morning of January 17th, 1995, instruments found bursts of electromagnetic radiation that would soon spread throughout Kobe. Backing up 11 days before the earthquake, Shoko Asahara, leader of the Japanese Aum Surpreme Truth Cult sector predicted that an earthquake will soon hit Kobe, and he was right. Yet no one listened to him, it's most likely because of his group status globally  people have known it as a terrorist group that other people wouldn't imagine people like this would do such a thing. Anyways, moving back to the topic, Asahara states that "foreign power" will trigger an earthquake, resulting in electromagnetic systems involved with the situation.The plates that were involved in the earthquake were the Philippines plate that subducted under the Eurasian plate.This area that the plate subducted under was called the destructive plate margin. The earthquake was classified as a strike slip fault, that happened along the Nojima Fault. Kobe caused 20 by 4 km worth of mass destruction. A year before Kobe on the same date, Northridge, California was experiencing a very close magnitude earthquake like Kobe, a 6.9 (7.2 on the richer scale), yet Kobe had more destruction...The Japanese were so known about making durable houses, but why such a medium magnitude flattened the city in seconds, leaving Northridge without any scars? The mistake that the Japanese in Kobe had was that they had built sturdy houses, but for a different kind of disaster, hurricanes. The tile roofs during an earth couldn't hold up for long, resulting in many traditional Japanese houses suffering many consequences.

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Kobe's epicenter was near Awaji Island, so the seismic waves could travel to Kobe leaving a destructive path. Much of the energy was also directed under the streets of Kobe, and Japan's coastline near Kobe was soft, and damp that can allow shock-waves to carry on for a long period of time. The city of Kobe was also sitting on top of a fault line as well, those are a few reasons why Kobe did what it did. Yet, people, even scientists are still wondering why a medium sized earthquake could cause so much damage. Both the cities of Osaka and Kobe were connected by the Hanshin Expressway, which collapsed because of poor construction on the pillars of the bridge. The pillars of the bridge were wrapped with wires and cement like material was plastered around it. This was a very good idea to the Japanese, 40 years ago... Later on, it became weaker as years went on by and the wire became weak. When the earthquake struck, the bridge had toppled over on its side. Japan can thank all the disaster due to its  location on the globe. Japan and its islands sit on top of 4 tectonic plates, which include: Philippines plate, Eurasian plate, Pacific plate, and the North American plate. These plates when moved have impacted greatly on Japan.



So here's how it went down:

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