You can bet the farm the Commies would dance in the streets if it was North Carolina..
That is very interesting what you say about North Carolina. It rang a bell for me. Several years ago I was reading some Explorer articles and there was one about the Gulf Plate Rift Zone. I was just trying to access an AAPG Explorer article, but it is no longer an active link unless one is a registered member.
FWIW, this is the (unworking) link I have:
www.aapg.org/explorer/2002/11nov/rift zone.cfm
If you were to go to a geology library you could look at the 2002 November 11 volume, and look for the article on the Rift Zone.
What I recall of that article is that the writer makes a case for the friction causality of the New Madrid fault to be movement along the Gulf Plate which is, as one might expect, located in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the fascinating things about this rift zone is that not only is Missouri at risk, but so also there is a strip radiating from the Gulf Plate into - you guessed it - North Carolina.
There were also some vulnerabilities as well along a portion of the Appalachians moving northeast.
We need to all pray that the Gulf Plate remains happy and harmonious.