This weekend the American Natural History Museum will open an exhibit dedicated to disasters. The show, Nature's Fury: The Science of Natural Disasters, will delve into how tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes work, and also how they affect the people who live through them.
In an ideal world no one would live near the San Andreas fault, or a coast line or Tornado Alley, curator of the exhibit, Dr. Edmond Mathez, said. But since Los Angeles isn't going anywhere, education about potential and past disasters is crucial to humanity's survival through them. "As climate warms, we expect there to be more severe storms, more severe doughts, more wildfires and to some extent over the last decade we've see just that," Mathez added.
The show documents past disasters like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in 1883, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Interactive exhibits allow visitors to use GPS to monitor earthquakes happening worldwide, maneuver a model earthquake fault, and there's even a volcano making station. Below you can see another interactive element, which lets you stand in the eye of a tornado:
New Yorkers may be particularly interested in an interactive map of Hurricane Sandy, showing its effect on the city. The exhibit aims to answer questions about the storm surge, and "Why was it so destructive" when rain levels were so low and the storm wasn't a surprise?
Nature's Fury opens on November 15th and runs until August 9th, 2015.
