You don’t have to live in an earthquake zone to appreciate the benefits of knowing if and when things are going to get a little hot and sticky at any time. And by things, we mean natural disasters. Just ask the European continent when the Icelandic – can’t pronounce or spell the name – volcano flipped out a few years back.

This new Earth Alerts site, which is based on a downloadable freeware program of the same name, is an abundant treasure trove of information on volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis and just about anything that Mother Nature enjoys tweaking from time to time.

The cool thing about the site is not just that it tracks all these events, but the fact that it also lets you delve into the history, geophysics and other important data points of our planet’s ‘events’ (or disasters if you want to be dramatic) so you can track the likelihood of things happening again.

The addition of features like live volcano webcams, and a set of overlays for things like population density and event frequency is just icing on the cake. If you’re not careful it’s easy to spend a good few hours browsing the data, while trying not to grab the tin foil cap. Luckily Finland and North Dakota seem to be safe.