If you're thinking of the maximum potential for a single quake event to impact human lives, the Newark Basin is high on the list due to its location. It's close

If you're thinking of the maximum potential for a single quake event to impact human lives, the Newark Basin is high on the list due to its location. It's close to some of the highest concentrations of population in the nation, in an area of the continental plate that transmits seismic energy efficiently, and the vast majority of buildings nearby have zero earthquake resistance. Earthquakes seem rare and relatively randomly distributed, so, as with New Madrid, the likelihood is definitely lower than it is in California. But the deep subsurface geology in the Basin is older, more complex, and less well understood than the plate boundary along the west coast. It's hard to rule out the possibility of a quake that would be big enough to have significant impacts on New York, Boston, etc.