Take the world's most earthquake-prepared country, jolt it with one of the biggest quakes in history and add a devastating tsunami minutes later. In the classic battle of Man vs Nature, Nature won again.

Hundreds if not thousands of people are dead in Japan.

One of the world's most technologically advanced and earthquake-prone nations is paralysed by a 8.9-magnitude "megathrust." It was the fifth-strongest quake in the world since 1900 and the most powerful on record ever to hit Japan, but not the deadliest.

And it could have been worse.

Because of warning systems, the tsunami wasn't as deadly worldwide as some in the past. Most buildings withstood the shaking. The quake was 700 times more powerful than the one that struck Haiti last year, but the death toll appears to be far lower than the 220,000-plus killed in the Caribbean.

Earthquake experts in the US say Japan has the strongest building standards in the world for withstanding earthquakes.

It trains and prepares more for them. And unlike the United States, Japan adopted an expensive earthquake early warning system that gave people a precious few seconds to duck and cover. And still the result was devastating.

"The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month's worth of energy consumption" in the United States, said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Brian Atwater.

Japan, which has what Mileti calls "an earthquake culture," has long steeled itself for 'the Next One', but this one happened hundreds of miles north of where experts expected. This area of Japan has not had an earthquake in this size range for more than 1,100 years.

The quake happened at the intersection of the North American and Pacific plates in the northwestern chunk of the "Ring of Fire," in an area that "has been incredibly quiet," said senior science adviser at the US Geological Survey David Applegate.

8 feet
Length by which Japan's main island moved

Praying for hope
Pope Benedict XVI is praying for the victims of Japan's earthquake and has praised the "dignity and courage" with which they are coping. Benedict also encouraged aid workers, saying God was with them.