In the 1990s Tokyo will start to experience earthquakes culminating in a catastrophe on the scale of the 1923 tremor that killed 140,000 people. This time however the effects of such an earthquake in Tokyo will be world-wide. The collapse of Japan's industrial production will lead to a major world recession together with a dramatic fall in currency values and world GNPs. Peter Hadfield, a Tokyo-based journalist and former geologist, has talked in detail to Japan's leading geologists, engineers and economists. He predicts what will happen during and after the earthquake, and at its effect on the world economy. He also looks at the psychology that leads millions of Japanese to ignore the danger signals - even now, a vast new city is being constructed in Tokyo Bay - and at the corruption that spurs such developments on.