As an aftershock triggers an explosion, a rescue helicopter led by Reiko Abe saves him and a young girl named Misaki while a nearby volcano erupts.

He is ejected from the chamber, but not before he angrily explains to everyone how Japan will sink, with the destruction of the Fossa Magna and the eruption of Mount Fuji as the climax.

When the economy collapses, the government declares a state of emergency but acting Prime Minister Kyosuke Nozaki announces that the nation will take five years to sink.

Because of Nozaki's indifference to the situation, Takamori runs to Tadokoro's laboratory, where he proposes using experimental N2 explosives drilled into the crust to separate the land from the megalith pulling it down.

In the Chūbu region, they narrowly survive a massive landslide while heading through a mountain pass in the Japanese Alps towards a refugee center, but are left stranded after a crowded bridge collapses ahead of them.

The warheads explode, creating a chain of explosions along the seafloor which fractures the tectonic plate pulling Japan towards the subduction zone, saving the nation from total destruction.

[3] Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino appeared as one of the refugees boarding a transport plane and as a Buddhist monk in Kyoto praying over a shipment of national treasures being sent abroad.

[5] Mark Schilling, a film reviewer for the Japan Times, stated the movie was all business in terms of the Hollywood-style effects graphically showing the devastation.

He also took notice of Shibasaki's casting as Reiko Abe and the short conversation scenes as different from the 1973 movie, plus the "soft nationalism" of some characters opting to die in the chaos rather than leave the country.