Prepare to be shaken and stirred . . . and possibly even blown away.

The new exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science doesn't just educate you about twisters, cyclones, quakes and volcanoes.

Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters puts you up close and personal with that horrific quartet and confronts you with jaw-dropping evidence of the devastation.

Before you even enter the exhibit space, you'll see a 14-inch-thick tree that was snapped in half and stripped of bark in 1989 by Hurricane Hugo's 138-mph winds.

You're welcomed by a high-definition video of volcanoes gushing magma and a creepy recording of gurgling and rumbling sounds from deep in the earth. You finish in a surround-screen theatre where you experience the sights and sounds from inside a real Iowa twister.

A live video feed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration details recent earthquake activity such as the rumblings from Alaska's Mount Redoubt and the quake swarm in Yellowstone Park.

We may focus on the horrendous impact of natural disasters, but for Valentine's Day, the exhibit's in-house curator would like us to spare a little love for the neighborhood volcano.

"Life as we know it on this planet would not exist without these disasters," said astrobiologist David Grinspoon, noting that carbon dioxide from volcanoes helped create Earth's greenhouse effect, which allowed life to flourish.

It's hard to be very affectionate as you are being reminded of the innumerable deaths resulting from history's greatest known natural disasters from Pompeii, Krakatoa and the Indian Ocean tsunami, to the Galveston hurricane, Mount St. Helens, Hurricane Katrina and the Greensburg, Kan., tornadoes.

The losses become personal when you see preserved artifacts - ash-crusted coins and tools found in Pompeii or a twisted streetlamp pierced by wood shards by the Greensburg tornadoes.

Visitors can hear New Orleans residents talk about Katrina and can write and post their personal experiences with natural disasters.

Don't feel all warm and safe because you live in Colorado. The state's disastrous history is surveyed in detail from the early volcanoes to the Big Thompson flood, the Hayman Fire and Windsor's recent tornado.

Did we mention droughts, foothill flooding, blizzards, avalanches and the climate change-induced plague of pine beetles?

The exhibit, which opens today, is subdivided into areas focused on the four major calamities: volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes.

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Courting disaster

We love our floods, fires, volcanoes, blizzards, earthquakes and tornadoes - at least on film. On April 16 at the Phipps IMAX Theater, exhibit curator and astrobiologist David Grinspoon will team with film critic Howie Movshovitz to discuss and show clips of the greatest - and the not-so-great - natural disaster films. The duo has not chosen the flicks yet, so we offered our favorites, listed along with their respective disasters.

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Volcanoes

* Coolest exhibit feature: A 28-foot-long interactive exhibit that lets visitors create four types of virtual volcanic eruptions by varying the relative amount of expanding gases and liquid magma.

* Colorado connection: There are no active volcanoes in the state, but there is ample evidence of past eruptions in the form of weathered cones such as Haystack Mountain near Boulder. Did you know that Earth's largest volcanic event ever - that scientists have clear evidence of - was the La Garita Caldera eruption 28 million years ago in the present-day San Juan Mountains?

GREAT VOLCANO MOVIES

* Krakatoa, East of Java (1969): Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith

* Dante's Peak (1997): Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton

* Volcano (1997): Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche and Don Cheadle

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Earthquakes

* Coolest exhibit feature: In an interactive exhibit, visitors trigger a virtual tsunami caused by an underwater earthquake to see how it spreads around the globe.

* Colorado connection: The state is considered seismically quiet, but quakes do happen. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a magnitude 4.1 earthquake occurred at 9:10 a.m., April 2, 1981, centered north of downtown Denver, near Thornton.

GREAT EARTHQUAKE MOVIE

* Earthquake (1974): Charlton Heston, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree and Marjoe Gortner

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Hurricanes

* Coolest exhibit feature: Everyday objects from Hurricane Katrina such as a New Orleans newspaper forecasting the storm, a flood-ruined clarinet and a muck-stained poster showing the high-water mark inside a home.

* Colorado connection: Hurricanes don't strike our state. Maybe that's why the nation's foremost hurricane prediction team led by William Gray calls Colorado State University home.

GREAT HURRICANE MOVIE

* The Perfect Storm (2000): George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly

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Tornadoes

* Coolest exhibit feature:The exhibit's most thrilling feature is a small theater allowing visitors to step inside a tornado with multiple video screens and actual audio. We'll let you be surprised by a special effect that makes it scarier.

* Colorado connection: The video and audio was collected by Colorado-based storm researcher Tim Samaras. He built a UFO-like unit with five cameras providing a 360-degree view that he placed in the path of oncoming tornadoes. Colorado ranks sixth among states for the highest average number of twisters per year.

GREAT TORNADO MOVIES

* The Wizard of Oz (1939): Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr and Margaret Hamilton

* Twister (1996): Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton

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Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters

* When and where: Today through May 3. Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd.

* Cost: $11 adults; $6 kids and seniors (exhibit included in general museum admission)

* Information: dmns.org; 303-322-7009

* Of note: Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk opens today in Phipps IMAX Theater at the museum.

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