New Madrid Seismic Zone

The ‘New Madrid Seismic Zone’ is a major earthquake zone that’s located in the Southern and Midwestern United States, stretching to the southwest from New Madrid, Missouri. This fault zone was responsible for a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in the early 1800s. The nature of the bedrock there means quakes can shake an area 20x bigger than quakes in California. There is a 1 in 10 probability of the area being hit by another earthquake in the next 50 years.