You can't avoid natural disasters. They choose where to hit, and you don't have any say in the matter.

Almost the entire country is vulnerable to some type of natural disaster -- tropical storms on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, wildfires and earthquakes on the West coast, hail and tornadoes in a wide swath of the nation's middle, flooding in the lowlands and landslides in the hills.

You can blunt the brunt of Mother Nature by securing your property against her wrath. Some disaster-proofing projects are cheap; others are expensive. Figuring out what's affordable and cost-effective requires sleuthing, some math, and a dose of soul searching.

The financial stakes are high because homeowners generally have to pay out of pocket, borrow from their home's equity, or turn to credit cards to pay for safety improvements. When you're deciding whether to spend the money to retrofit your home to weather a disaster, here are some questions to ask:

Will my insurance premiums be reduced?

Will the upgrade increase the value of my home?

How much am I willing to pay for peace of mind before a disaster, and for convenience afterward?

You can get a definite answer to the first question, and you have to rely on estimates for the second and your gut for the third.

Would hurricane shutters (or hail-resistant roof shingles, or an earthquake retrofit, or wildfire-resistant landscaping) reduce insurance bills?

Allstate Floridian offers discounts of 5 to 42 percent off windstorm coverage, depending on everything from what type of shutters are used to whether glass-block windows and skylights are protected, which design code the house was built under and even what type of roof is on the house.

In other words, it's complicated, and when you talk to the insurance agent and any contractors, you have to be thorough and specific about the materials to be used and work that you want done. It pays to shop around.

Kevin Simmons, an associate professor of economics at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, studies the costs and benefits of disaster mitigation. He lives in a town where damaging hailstorms are frequent unwanted visitors.

When he bought his house, the roof was hail-damaged. Instead of reroofing with regular shingles, he shelled out about $1,500 extra for flexible, hail-resistant shingles. He says his insurance company reduced the premium by $500 a year. "That's a no-brainer," Simmons says.

Some expensive projects take too long to pay for themselves in lower insurance premiums. It's worthwhile to ask whether such upgrades increase the value of the house and, if so, how much.

Simmons tackled one such question a few years ago on behalf of a town on a barrier island on Florida's Gulf coast. He and his associates researched sales records to determine whether having built-in metal storm shutters increased a home's value.

"We found that homes with storm shutters sold at a premium of about 5 or 6 percent," Simmons says. That was on the barrier island, though. A short distance away, on the mainland, homes with shutters didn't sell for a significant premium.

Don't expect to recoup the cost of a disaster-mitigation project when you sell the house. The most cost-effective home improvements -- in terms of raising a home's value -- are those that make the house look better.

A real estate agent with years of experience selling houses in your neighborhood can offer an opinion about the effects of disaster retrofitting on resale price.

Even if a project doesn't pay for itself in lower insurance bills and increased resale value, it might be worthwhile if the upgrade makes you feel more secure about your home's ability to get through a natural disaster intact.

On the other side of a calamity, there's no feeling of misery like being displaced from your place of comfort. No one can set a price on that but you and your family.