Sorry but I don't agree. We were lucky with Northridge. If the shaking had gone on for a few more seconds, a lot more buildings would have gone down and if it had been a couple of hours later in the day, thousands of lives would have been lost. Remember the Kaiser building that was badly damaged? Luckily nobody was there at that time. There were dozens of other office buildings that would have come down as well had the shaking lasted a few seconds longer (which we'll get with a larger magnitude earthquake).

But for the most part, the U.S. (at least California) would fair a lot better then other countries would. But, as Petra pointed out, other countries have other priorities then to spend time on hazard reduction. Hence, for these other countries, prediction would be the next best alternative.

Dennis