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This is not one event 600 years ago, this is several events over 600+ years where people marked safe areas. 26,000 died in this one but even with a smaller population in 1896 one killed 22,000 people. These are 1:100 year events not 1:1,000 year events and people are really bad about things that happen less frequently than 1:50 years or so.

I didn't misunderstand anything about probability. Japan is among the most seismically active regions in the world and tsunamis and large earthquakes are(in historical terms) a regular occurrence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tsunamis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_earthquak...

They don't hem to this probability no matter how you try and frame it.

The term is misleading and leads to poor decision-making