Is our country and government prepared for the next serious natural disaster?

I'll weigh in as ex Regional Contingency Engineer and FEMA qualified Emergency Manager. I was also the NRNW N-4 at the Ops Center. The answer is "depends". For tornadoes, localized earthquakes, etc. they system is about as good as it's going to get given the money, or lack of it, put into it. Larger events like a Katrina, the response was slower and much more wasteful of resources. Even so, it's about as good as it will get. The "Big Ones" we are not well prepared for because there just isn't a 50 million people safe haven anywhere. California's next big one likely won't be the earthquake but rather an ARkStorm. That's an "Atmospheric River" that happens regularly every 100-200 years, the last one in 1861. So we're due. Essentially it's a pipeline formed in the atmosphere that picks everything up form the western Pacific and dumps it on California. So if we get another 1861, most of the Central Valley is flooded along with a hunk of San Diego, Santa Monica, Long Beach; the coastal lowlands. Continual heavy rain for 40-50 days would be the norm. FEMA estimated about $725 Billion damage a few years ago, but that price is likely very low.

The "BIG BIG One" will be the Yellowstone Caldera letting go. USGS is measuring the thickness of the crust and it's getting thinner all the time. For reference, I've attached a graphic that compares the amount of earth tossed around from past events. Since the size of the caldera has been determined to be much larger than previously thought, the amount being blown out of that one would likely be much larger than the graphic combined.

The East Coast "BIB BIG" will the the tsunami associated with the collapse of La Palma, a small island in the Canary Island chain. That would be 300 feet of water taking about 8 hours to cross the Atlantic. Monitoring there says it's just a matter of time and it absolutely will happen. Sleep well.

Yes, No, Maybe. As CAPT Kevin B. said, it depends.

Think about it like military planning. We have books full of "contingencies." So do organizations like the Red Cross. Some of the Contingencies are VERY well known, because they happened before, so we have a really good plan, which is fleshed out, and we know exactly what we will do, and how to respond to it. Some of them we have been waiting a really long time for them to happen, because well... it was just a matter of time.

Other Contingencies we may know they are going to happen, but not "where" so we've got a great plan, but with a lot of fill in the blanks. Or we may know "where" but not "how bad," which creates a different kind of issue.

The population is not for sure. The government is only marginally prepared