Comment by jandrewrogers

Countries like Japan use the same construction techniques as the western US. Few countries have earthquakes as strong as the Pacific Rim, where M8-9+ are regular occurrences. Properly designed wood-framed houses will survive that.

I’ve never seen a house in Europe that was engineered to the M8.5 earthquake standard that is mandatory where I live in the US. They used to construct houses like in Europe but they kept getting destroyed in earthquakes and were made illegal for safety reasons.