USGS assessments establish that magnitude 10 or greater earthquakes cannot occur, as no fault long enough to release the required energy exists on Earth; a qualifying rupture would need to span much of the planet's circumference. The physical limit arises because moment magnitude scales with fault area and slip, capping realistic events near 9.5–9.7 in subduction zones like the Peru-Chile Trench. The historical maximum remains the 1960 Valdivia quake at 9.5, with no observations or monitoring data since then indicating any shift toward higher magnitudes. Trader consensus at 99% for “No” before 2027 aligns with this stable tectonic framework, though minor uncertainty persists around extreme model extrapolations of ancient events or measurement revisions.