Preparation is critical to surviving natural disasters, says Thomas M. Kostigen, the author of a new book from National Geographic called the Extreme Weather Survival Guide.

Kostigen also cowrote the bestselling The Green Book and contributes to National Geographic's website. We asked him about his new book.

We're seeing storms like we've never seen before in terms of intensity and frequency. Storms that occurred maybe every hundred years are now occurring every three years. That's the new normal we're living in.