Featured Image Credit: WION/Getty Images/Per-Anders Petersson
Topics: Japan, Baba Vanga, World News, Travel
Emily Brown
Topics: Japan, Baba Vanga, World News, Travel
Japan's government has endorsed plans to help manage a huge natural disaster just days before a 'catastrophic event' prophesied by Ryo Tatsuki - aka the 'new Baba Vanga' - is predicted to take place.
Tatsuki, a manga artist, earned the nickname of the 'new Baba Vanga' after being credited with making eerie predictions about the future; one of the most prominent being the expectation of a major disaster in March 2011 - the same time that Japan was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in the northern Tohoku region.
She earned her nickname off the back of Bulgarian mystic Vanga, who is said to have accurately predicted major events such as the 9/11 attacks.
Tatsuki's prediction for the imminent disaster came in her book The Future I Saw, which shared details of visions she'd allegedly had.
Advert
In the book, she claimed that 'a crack will open up under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines, sending ashore waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake'.
The disaster will supposedly hit Japan this Saturday, 5 July.
As a result of her prediction, some tourists have been put off from visiting Japan by the notion of a 'catastrophic event', with CN Yuen, managing director of the travel agency WWPKG, telling CNN that bookings to the country dropped by 50 percent earlier this year.
While we can only hope that no such event will take place, Japan's government on Tuesday officially endorsed a plan to help manage a so-called 'megaquake' which, in the worst-case scenario, could claim the lives of almost 300,000 people, according to a damage estimate released earlier this year.
Such an earthquake is anticipated to hit in the Nankai Trough, a gully off the country's Pacific coast where one tectonic plate is slowly slipping under another - a process known as 'subducting'.
In January, a government panel increased the probability of a big quake taking place in the next 30 years from 75 percent to 82 percent.
At a meeting of the country's Central Disaster Management Council, the government endorsed plans to make all homes in areas that are at risk of strong tremors or high tsunami waves sufficiently quake-resistant, and to prepare better evacuation shelters.
According to the Straits Times, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said: “It is necessary for the nation, municipalities, companies and non-profits to come together and take measures in order to save as many lives as possible."
The developments are set to take place over the next decade, with the ultimate goal of reducing the potential death toll by 80 percent, and reducing structural damage by 50 percent.