of earthquakes as arising from titanic disagreements at the edges of tectonic plates, this all sounds quite strange. Indeed, the USGS earthquake hazard map of the United States, might also come as something of a shock. The familiar culprits are there: the entire West Coast predictably lights up as a long, narrow hazard zone—from the cascades to southern California. But in the center of the country there’s also a bewildering, giant fuchsia bullseye—smack in the middle of what should be the stable interior of North America. In 1999, FEMA identified four hazards in the United States that, were they consummated in all their destructive wonder, would be worthy of the title “catastrophic.” They were: a major earthquake hitting Los Angeles, a major hurricane hitting Miami, a major hurricanehitting New Orleans (check), and a giant earthquake hitting the Central US.

* * * The source of all this anxiety is the fabled New Madrid Seismic Zone. In the winter of 1811 and 1812, three earthquakes of magnitude 7, and possibly as high as 7.7, and countless punishing aftershocks thereafter, rocked the sparsely inhabited frontier of the American Midwest. The earth had slipped somewhere deep under the frontier settlement of New Madrid, Missouri, and the resulting earthquakes opened up chasms, diverted the Mississippi, threw trees to the ground and landslides into the river. It created temporary waterfalls and lasting lakes. Meanwhile, existing lakes were turned inside out, as cracks in the ground spewed volcanoes of sand and water into the air. Boatmen caught in the maelstrom said the