USGS assessments establish that magnitude 10 or larger earthquakes cannot occur because no known fault is long enough to generate such an event; a rupture of that scale would need to span much of the planet. The historical maximum remains the 9.5 Valdivia quake of 1960 on Chile’s nearly 1,000-mile fault, while recent activity through mid-2026 has produced nothing larger than the 8.8 Kamchatka event of 2025 and several 7.7–7.8 shocks. With only months remaining before 2027 and no observed strain indicators or model runs suggesting an unprecedented rupture, trader consensus reflects the established physical limits of Earth’s crust. An unforeseen revision in magnitude scaling or discovery of an unknown global-scale fault remains theoretically possible but unsupported by current seismic monitoring data.