Hi Shan. In order to have an earthquake larger then M=9.5 you would have to have a pretty long fault. There are no known faults in your predicted area long enough to generate an M=9.5+ quake.

Geologists have been able to show that the Richter magnitude of an earthquake is related to the length of the fault break. To have a magnitude 10.0 earthquake, you would have to have an earthquake fault that nearly circled the entire earth break from one end to the other. I’m not sure if this could happen. I may be wrong, but this would mean that half of the World would have to stay still while the other half moved. It would be sort of like opening an avocado. You hold one half while twisting the other half.

Being as how the Richter scale is an open ended logarithmic scale no earthquake could ever be off such a scale. At least I don’t think so. The thing to remember is that a scale is man’s attempt to measure something. In the future we could see quakes as strong as M=15, which may only be an M=9.0 today. Take Care…Don in creepy town