Children waking early

It is not uncommon - obviously - for children to wake early. However, a Japanese study of over 1000 children who woke minutes before the Mag 7.2 Kobe quake at 5.46am in 1995 - in winter - found (in a chi-squared analysis) that it was unlikely they woke for simply psychological reasons. The children were most affected up to 100km distance from the epicentre but also further afield.

A scientific article - Unusual Childhood Waking as a Possible Precursor of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, by Motoji Ikeya, and Neil E. Whitehead, is linked here as a pdf - children-waking.pdf

A statistically significant abnormal rate of early wakening before the earthquake was found, having exponential decrease with distance, and a half value approaching 100 km.

Because an improbably high amount of variance was explained it seemed more likely that another mechanism was at work - perhaps Ultra-Low Frequency (ULF) electromagnetic waves creating anxiety. EM pulses also appear to be involved in other precursor phenomena.