If you’re reading this at home, chances are you can look up from the screen and see at least one smoke detector. These life-saving devices are able to alert you to smoke from a fire, letting you get out before it’s too late. Weather radios do the same thing for hazards like tornadoes and floods. Every home, school, and business in the United States needs to be equipped with these critical devices that let you act before hazardous weather strikes.

Anyone who’s listened to television or radio over the past five decades is intimately familiar with that horrible, chill-inducing noise of the Emergency Alert System. Aside from catching your attention, that nails-on-a-chalkboard screeching serves a useful purpose that calls back to the days of dial-up internet.

The yearly ritual of the whiny television viewer is in full swing as severe weather season roars with a vengeance. When tornadoes touch down, local news stations have to preempt programming to warn people so they don’t die, but that interferes with Very Important Programs like Days or football. Many viewers argue that their neighbors have no right to receive warnings if it means cutting-in during a crucial episode of The Big Bang Theory. They are wrong.

Kevin Martin, the angry weather hoaxer and serial threat-giver whose string of viral prognosticatory hoaxes of late worried millions with false prophecies of doom, has a new message for Facebook and President Obama: "STOP MESSING WITH ME!" And he's very srs, guys.

Nine years ago today, the National Weather Service in New Orleans issued a sternly-worded statement to people in the path of Hurricane Katrina known as "The Bulletin." Its sharp language left little doubt Katrina was going to be the storm to beat all storms, and that residents in its path were in mortal danger.

Imagine being the person who can save an entire city's population from injury and death with just a few clicks of your mouse. This simulator from the National Weather Service lets you test your abilities and see if you've got what it takes to do just that.