Intraplate Earthquakes Happen All The Time

I couldn't stop thinking about the intraplate earthquake that hit the East Coast yesterday. Earth scientists, of course, know that "Intraplate Earthquakes Happen All The Time". (You can purchase any of the following educational, geographical gifts with this scientific truism below -- hint, hint.)

Take the case of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a major seismic zone and a prolific source of intraplate earthquakes (earthquakes within a tectonic plate) in the southern and midwestern United States, stretching to the southwest from New Madrid, Missouri. This seismic zone in the United States is comprised of reactivated faults that formed when what is now North America began to split or rift apart during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia in the Neoproterozoic Era. Technically, the New Madrid fault system was responsible for the 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes. Along the lines of earthquake-prone California, where various fault lines lie (most notably the San Andreas Fault which is the strike-slip tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate), the New Madrid region may also have the potential to produce large earthquakes in the future.