human extinction

This rant was motivated by the rock and roll of a 4.8 Magnitude earthquake on 7 December 2013 . In the New Madrid Region they are using the ongoing earthquakes to image the mantle plume under New Madrid. Earthquakes, as seismic energy sources, can exceed the power of 1000's of pounds of TNT...

The hypothetical in the original version wasn't very precise, therefore I shall make another attempt. Basically, much of the confusion originated from me having tried to ponder at least two separate issues at once and not having succeeded at all. I shall therefore re-formulate these as...