[shiroiushi]

It's generally very bad, but it also depends on the shoreline. If your city is on the coast at sea level with no real barrier, it's devastating. If there's a big cliff and everything is at higher elevation, you can ignore it.

Unfortunately, people tend to build settlements at sea level.

[supportengineer]

We should set up some stone monuments to delineate the high water mark, for future generations.

[dylan604]

Same but different, there's an old town near a lake that suffered a devastating flood way back in its history. The downtown area has markers on the buildings that show the high water mark for the flood.

[speed_spread]

The Japanese have those. A lot of the monuments are hidden in the forest in the hills above the coastal villages...

[taneq]

That's what parent poster was referring to. They have high tide markers showing where tsunamis have reached, and then in the past 50-100 years people started saying "Waves Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist" and building closer to the shoreline.

[PaulHoule]

Consider for instance this place

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Diablo_Canyon_Po...

which is on top of a high bluff thus much more secure than the Fukushima NPP.

[shiroiushi]

Unfortunately, that power plant is very close to two fault lines, and they didn't even know when they built it, so it's questionable how well it'll withstand an earthquake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

[PaulHoule]

They increased the anticipated seismic loads and also reinforced the structure accordingly. I don’t think any NPP has been scrutinized to the extent that Diablo has been.