I prefer to talk to this point:
2. Continue to sit there, do nothing, and watch while earthquakes needlessly claim tens and hundreds of thousands of lives.

If out intention is to save lives, then what needs to happen is to build better buildings - knowing an earthquake of magnitude 8 is about to hit my house tomorrow doesn't do me any good - there is no way to evacuate southern California - where would you put the 30 million people? (or whatever the population is - it's large)

If we build better buildings then thousands of lives are saved - Haiti wouldn't have had numerous buildings fail - China wouldn't have their brick buildings fall and crush people.

If our real intention is to save lives, then one should be looking at Cardiovascular diseases and respiratory infections. If you look at causes of Death Natural disasters are way down the list of they are shown at all Earthquake deaths are but a small portion of those.

Since 1970 there have been 212 fatalities in the United States from Earthquakes. We can thank Building Codes for such figures. Saving Lives isn't a good enough reason to spend money to predict earthquakes. Spending money to make better buildings to protect ourselves in an earthquake is. One needs rto remember that earthquakes don't kill people - buildings do.

Canie