Pas très optimistes en ce moment aux US :
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
Quelques phrases clé du texte :
Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.
Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year.
North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way, the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. Thats the big one.