“How to Survive a Nuclear Blast”
, in the Wired How-To Wiki, is an excellent primer. For historical background, we strongly recommend Eugene P. Wigner’s Who Speaks for Civil Defense?, published in 1968, which provides an excellent start in explaining why the United States, notwithstanding its public commitments to the contrary, never bult adsequate blast or fallout shelters.
Archive for the 'Shelter' Category
We endorse Lawrence Furman for Manalapan Englishtown School Board.
First, a disclaimer. There are hundreds of political blogs on the Internet. Popular Logistics is not one of them. However, Larry is one of our writers and editors. We have made an exception and endorsed his candidacy.
Larry wants to put Solar Power on the schools in the Manalapan Englishtown district, and every district in the country. For his campaign web-site, click here. He is one of five candidates vying for three positions. We have not spoken with the others, yet. The election is Tuesday, April 15, 2008.
Manalapan English Budget - Click Here. Voting information - Click Here.
If every elementary school in the country had a Photovoltaic Solar system installed onthe roof, then in a ‘Katirina like event’ each school would be an emergency shelter with power. If terrorists took one out, there’d be another one a short distance away.
Solar Panels work when the sun shines. Period!
The money we are spending on the war in Iraq - currently estimated at $2.4 Trillion - would pay for for 300 gigawatts of PV Solar generating capacity - at full retail, and about 800 gigawatts of offshore wind electric capacity. (Solar is about $8.00 per watt, offshore wind is about $3.00 per watt.)
Which would make this country more secure?
Jenna Wortham has a piece on Wired.com - “Slideshow: Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster.” 
Above is an image of “FutureShack,” designed by Sean Godsell. There are eleven others, some familiar to us, others not. We’ll try to get more of these up - but if you have time, look at Jenna Wortham’s piece on Wired. (Wortham hs been doing excellent pieces like this, on other appropriate technology, great pieces on RFID issues - and she’s also, apparenly, Wired’s editor in charge of evaluating haggis and other things that at least some people have trouble thinking about eating. Are we missing a connection here?
This table - in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, design by Thom Faulders of BeigeDesign and Anna Rainer, has, as far as well can tell, never been put into production. This one seems like it should have had at least a couple of production runs large enough to see how they work out and hold up:
Huntsville is setting up a shelter system - although there are no plans to provide food or bedding. What about light and heat? Medical care?
From Jay Reeves’ Associated Press article:
In an age of al-Qaida, sleeper cells and the threat of nuclear terrorism, Huntsville is dusting off its Cold War manual to create the nation’s most ambitious fallout-shelter plan, featuring an abandoned mine big enough for 20,000 people to take cover underground.
From Commissioner Joseph Bruno’s announcement:
What if New York City were hit by a Category 3 Hurricane?
In New York City, over eight million people live on land that has 578 miles of waterfront. By 2030, the population is expected to reach nine million. At the same time, global climate change has put New York City at an increased risk for a severe coastal storm. In recent years, storms have become more intense, occur more frequently, and continue farther north than they have historically. The city would face many challenges during and after such a storm; one of the most difficult is the possibility that hundreds of thousands of people could lose their homes.
With financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and in consultation with Architecture for Humanity-New York, the New York City Office of Emergency Management is sponsoring an open competition to generate solutions for post-disaster provisional housing. “What if New York City…” is a call for innovation and an opportunity for designers and policy-makers to collaborate on one of the biggest challenges facing densely settled urban areas after a disaster: how do we keep people safely and comfortably housed while reconstruction proceeds?
A jury of experts in the fields of architecture, design, urbanism, and government will choose ten entrants who will be awarded $10,000 each and technical support to develop their proposals into workable solutions. These solutions will provide support for New York’s most vulnerable communities and be a precedent for dense urban areas all over the world.
This design competition will rely on a fictional but realistic New York City neighborhood devastated by a hypothetical Category 3 hurricane.
The Concrete Canvas Shelter is a rapidly deployable hardened shelter that requires only water and air for erection. It can be deployed by two people without any training in approximately thirty minutes and is ready to use in twelve hours. The shelter consists of a cement-impregnated fabric (Concrete Cloth) bonded to the outer surface of an inflatable plastic inner structure.
Prior to construction, the shelter is delivered folded in a sealed plastic sack. Once the sack is positioned and filled with water, the fiber matrix wicks water into the cement, naturally controlling the water-to-cement ratio. The sack is cut open after hydration, and a battery-driven fan inflates the inner plastic lining, causing the structure to lift. After a duration of twelve hours, the concrete will have set sufficiently for use.The fibers of the Concrete Canvas fabric form a coherent matrix within the concrete, providing tensile reinforcement and helping prevent crack propagation. If desired, the shelter can be buried with over 0.5 meters of sand on the roof in order to provide increased insulation and protection.
This system comes from Peter Brown at Concrete Canvas in Northampton, UK.
Thanks to Ryan Lanham at Identity Unknown for this.
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STANDARRD Blog here. This is, I gather, the product of Vinay Gupta, who invented the Hexayurt (Appropropedia entry here)
The Hexayurt, I understand, did good service in Hancock, Mississippi during Katrina. (Citation to be supplied).
Just beginning to learn about this - so here are a few interesting links
RockPlan - Finnish construction firm which, because they require it, builds shelters underneath buildings. Some images of some of their work; they’d make James Bond’s film nemeses jealous.
And here ’s the Finnish government’s civil defense website. Calm, organized. Very clean lots-of-white-space design. It’s not likely to be mistaken for a U.S. government website.
Probably ideal for serving food in large shelters or shelter-in-place situations, or evacuations not on foot. Because of weight and size we’re not certain of their utility in a go-bag.
Available from Cheaper Than Dirt - 3 for $18USD.
Subtopia reports on effective Red Cross/Red Crescent efforts to provide shelter to earthquake victims in Indonesia. Subtopia’s account is based on this report from Reliefweb:
“As part of the International Federation’s early recovery programme, more than 4,000 bamboo shelters have already been completed in the areas of Gantiwarno and Dlingo, and the programme is expanding into other districts, where up to 6,000 of the homes are expected to soon be built.”
After consulting survivors and enabling them to take direct responsibility for the distribution of funds and reconstruction materials, the program has resulted in a coordinated community activism to help survivors build shelters themselves out of local materials. [emphasis supplied]
And the shelters cost about $150 USD each.
