The world has been witnessing an increasing number of climate-related events, such as wild fires, landsliding, droughts, and floods. Global databases suggest an exponential increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather episodes in the last decades, but climate change has made the timing and location of such events difficult to predict. Some studies suggest that the uncertainty brought about with climate change is the major explanation for the low levels of preparedness worldwide. As a consequence, societies have been experiencing non-negligible human and material damages after major disasters. Because of the economic and social importance of preparedness against natural and technological hazards, much effort has been made in the last years to understand the main drivers of preparedness behavior. In particular, risk experience and cognitive skills has been seen as key to understand why, when and how individuals prepare against hazards. Recent empirical studies have found that disaster experience and education are powerful resilience forces against potential loss among Asian countries. This study explores the ways in which education and previous experience with floods may work as complementary or substitutes for individual protective behavior against natural hazards in general, and against specific hazards in particular, such as floods, droughts and landsliding. We apply a set of four survey datasets, covering different types of disasters (droughts, tsunami, floods, pests, storms, and other types) in 3 countries (Brazil, Thailand and the Philippines). Data for preparedness against floods cover the surveys in Brazil (1,226 interviews), Thailand (1,310 interviews) and Philippines (889 interviews). Data on other disasters are only available for Thailand. Preliminary findings show that for overall preparedness, education has a positive effect on preparedness for Thailand and the Philippines, but the opposite for Brazil. Despite the contrasting results, the mechanism behind it is quite similar: in Brazil individuals with high levels of education are already adapted, being less likely to adopt additional measures, while in the Asian countries there is still room for further adaptation as their level of education is lower on average and their disaster intensity is higher. Past experience seems to act as an incentive to induce preparedness, regardless of the country. In the Asian countries, in particular, the effect of education seems to operate among those with no experience, but has no effect among those who have already experienced a past event.