A building may be tough enough to endure many sorts of natural and man-made calamities, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be able to withstand an earthquake. Earthquakes generate the same sorts of forces as other disasters, but they do it differently — in ways that a building's structure may not be designed to endure.

Both a hurricane and an earthquake, for example, subject a building to lateral and vertical forces, but not in the same fashion. The storm will threaten to blow the building off the ground by pushing against it and lifting it upwards, creating a whiplash effect that may cause the structure to break. During a quake, it's the ground that moves, while the building resists the shaking. Although most of the ground movement usually is horizontal, a quake can also rock a building up and down, like a rodeo rider on an angry bull.

Nevertheless, architects and engineers say it is possible to design and erect buildings that can survive a major quake — and to retrofit older buildings so they can better cope with a quake's destructive forces.

Erecting a new quake-proof skyscraper may only add a few percentage points to the cost, but fixing older buildings can be far more expensive; the California Seismic Safety Commission's plan to quake-proof all California buildings by the year 2020, for example, could cost in the tens of billions of dollars. And as the Kobe earthquake demonstrated, where builders choose to build is one of the most crucial factors. Solid rock or coherent soil strata are the best locations from a safety standpoint. Even a relatively well-designed building on soft, damp soil or manmade fill may be in big trouble during a quake, as tremors cause the ground beneath it to turn temporarily from solid to liquid.