This is a scary thought

I was doing a little research today looking into a very interesting web site to peruse,that would be the site for the Unites States Geological Survey. It is free to go into the site and study all the stuff that you want, historical data from past earthquakes for instance and studies into present conditions among the major fault lines also called seismic zones coincedentally. One thing I discovered during my looking was the fact that there were 748 minor quakes in the United States in the last month, a crap load of them in Alaska and California of course in Cali they are a normal and accepted event. I got down to looking into what I went onto the site to look at and this gave me some cause for concern, the New Madrid Seismic Zone is a large system of faults that covers parts of 7 states in the midwest. The last big shaker in this area was 1968 I believe it was in Dale Illinoise, that being a magnitude 5.5 the effects of which were felt as far away as Boston Mass. I started studying the geological makeup of the region and discovered that quakes in California for instance do not have these far reaching effects because the soil is soft and squishy allowing it to absorb much of the shock, here in this area the soil base is hard firm rock which does not absorb the shock letting the quakes in this region have far more range of effect. In 1811 and 1812 or to be precise December of 1811 and January and February of 1812 three major quakes rocked this region, all within the upper 7's in magnitude the quakes were felt as far away as Philidelphia Pa and Charelston SC thats a huge statement. Back than one of the largest towns along the Mississippi River was New Madrid Missouri, well the original site is now underwater and the area was sparesly populated back than this was the epicenter of those quakes. Imagine now with all of the large U.S. Cities in that region Memphis, TN St Louis, Kansas City, Little Rock and more as well as the vast number of small rural communities. These were three of the largest quakes ever to occur in the U.S. and they were fortunate to happen in an area where not many people lived to begin with, today that is a densely populated area with all of the afore mentioned cities and others as well. Could you begin to imagine the catastrophic results of say a Magnitude7.7 or greater quake there now? How many of those Cities are built in such a way as to withstand quakes in general? Not to mention a quake of that proportion, the recent earthquake in Japan and several smaller ones around China and Thailand caused mass destuction and untold amounts of casualties. Are we as a people in the Midwest ready and prepared to deal with those same circumstances? How many Casualties would we have in this region in a quake or two of that Magnitude? Who would we rely on for help? How many would be willing to help? Just some troubled thoughts during troubled times.If you want to take a look for yourself log on here
USGS website