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Its technology is going to be okay and ride this out safely? >> you can't plan for quake this is big. in japan itself in 1854 there were two earthquakes. >> the magnitude 8.3, 8.4 that were separated by two years, and it wouldn't surprise nebraska in the scientific community if we had another magnitude 8 plus earthquake in the relatively near future, and those buildings are not going to with stand that. there's just no way. >> let's talk about predictions. the accuracy of doing so. where do we stand on that. >> well, we are making progress. we are making progress on forecasting. not predicting...

San diego during the next year. we can actually make statements like that now. >> i have heard lucy jones who is there at cal tech in one of our nation's leading experts on earthquakes and what happens from a scientific standpoint. she said this earthquake is something that we can take great lessons from because there's so much data from which we can draw the information. do you see it that way? do you think this is going to be used as a learning tool as well? >>. >> lucy is correct about that. we have gps data. we have seismic date kra. we have lots of different kind of data on this earthquak...

Manpower. now, in the aftermath of tsunami, if that wasn't bad enough, there was a near constant reminder of the potential threat that the grouped in japan is still shaking. more than 150 aftershocks have rocked that country since friday's massive quake. kenneth is japan business and finance correspondent for the economist, and welcome back, kenneth. we were talking yesterday. how did you figure the last 24 hours? how were the things in terms of shake, ralgs, and roll sf. >> it's not pleasant. we do what we can. we're feeling jitters. i felt one earlier this morning. i haven't felt the other...

The literature, but on a website called open hazards.com. we are actually going to establish an advance, i think, in earthquake forecasting technology and time. the way we do that is by counting small earthquakes we expect a six for every 1 house. the technique is to couldn't the number of small earthquakes since the last large earthquake, and then you can develop probability laws that tell you what the chance is of a larger earthquake in any given time. >> do you think we'll be able to narrow that down to, what, hours, days, weeks, months? i mean -- >> probably not hours or days, but i think,...

Madrid fault line runs through several states. >> a map will show this. the new madrid fault line is something that's part of the daily vernacular, but who knew? >> it should be. there was a massive earthquake there a couple hundred years ago. there could be again. you see the red there across several states. so millions of people could be vulnerable to something like a potentially big earthquake we are seeing in japan. >> they are talking about memphis, st. louis. >> memphis is in the cross hairs of where this earthquake could happen. forecasting this sort of thing you're looking at probabili...