Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is in town, but don’t expect any pictures. Oh, you’re allowed to take cameras, but it’s a long way to get there. You see, the site is actually within walking distance of my house. But, you’re not allowed to walk there.* Instead, you have to drive to the nearby park (which is farther away) and then wait (about an hour, I’ve heard) to get on the shuttle bus which will take you to the site. And, who knows how long it will be before you can get back.

I’ve done my fair share of waiting in line for things, so I think I’ll take a pass. I’ll wait to see it on TV like everyone else. It is reportedly to be aired in September. To read more about the family getting a new house, you can check out this link and this other link.

Here’s some behind-the-scenes information I was able to obtain. This is all “unofficial” but pretty reliable. You wonder how they get things done so quickly? Well, as an example, there are about 40 plumbers working on the house. On TV, it all gets done in a week, and they do actually finish it in a week. But, there is a lot of advance planning to get that done. They contacted the local government about two months ago and they had people in town for over a month in order to line everything up, such as getting plans approved and getting contractors. The building plans go through all the required code steps, but the local government authorities do help to push things through faster than they otherwise would. And, the existing house was torn down in about two and a half hours.

Here is a link where you can watch more local coverage of the process.

I heard this evening that they are running ahead of schedule too. They’re already painting inside the new house.

Anyway, the one thing I don’t like about most of these Makeover homes is that most of them don’t have basements. I don’t think this one does either (and their previous home did), though I could be wrong.

Of course, that’s largely due to time constraints, but I just wouldn’t want to live in a house without a basement.

So, what would be the perfect house that could withstand the widest range of potential disasters?

You could build an underground shelter. That would be perfect to guard against tornadoes. Mind you, earthquakes may be a problem, but it’s probably possible to construct an underground home that’s reasonably earthquake proof as well. I mean, a bomb shelter, for example, has to survive a nuclear blast (not a direct hit, obviously, at least not for the average person, as such a shelter would no doubt be beyond the reach of most incomes) without the foundation and walls cracking and exposing its occupants to deadly radiation (or chemicals or bacteria in biological or chemical attacks).

Take a look at these bomb shelters, for example. With some of those, you could probably modify them for use during normal living and just close them up when the bomb hits (but preferably before the bomb hits).

In that case, you might like something like a missile base. You could really make a great home out of one of those (as some people have) and have the ultimate in security. If a bomb hits, you just seal the thing up and wait it out. Tornado, ditto.

Of course, since missile bases are of limited availability, you might want to look at a Condo Shelter. Sure, it could house 200 adults, but it could also be your family’s post-apocalypse mansion!

Then again, what about flooding? You’re advised to build your bomb shelter above the flood plain. So, what if that’s not an option where you live? Well, you might want to be able to just leave the area.

In that case, a mobile home might be in order. The problem there is that, if the engine goes, you’re stuck. I think a trailer would be a better option. If the vehicle you use to pull it doesn’t work, you just hook it up to a different vehicle! It’s more likely that you have a second vehicle available for towing than it is that you have a second motor home.

Since I like the vintage stuff, I like these: Birchwood Beauties, Spartan Aircraft Trailercoaches and Vintage Campers.

And, in the event of an NBC attack (no, that’s not when Tom Brokaw goes berserk; it’s a Nuclear, Biological or Chemical attack), what do you do? Well, I can’t find it now, but I’m pretty sure there’s a company that makes (or used to make) a tunnel type bomb shelter. You could back your trailer and vehicle in, shut the door and wait out the fallout.

Still, there’s the flooding issue. I suppose it would be nice to have a submarine on wheels plus the aforementioned earth shelter. Flood, covered. Tornado, covered. Earthquake, unless you just happen to be right on top of a crack, covered. NBC attack, covered.

But, that’s quite a small home. I think you want at least a couple thousand square foot of livable space, plus you need to be able to store food, water, fuel. And, you need to be fortified against people that will want to break in.

I think what you need is that big thing that NASA uses to move the shuttle launch pad. That’s huge. Build your house on top of that. Add inflatable floats to the sides. Put a huge drill on the front so you can drill yourself an earth shelter if need be. If necessary, you can move your house elsewhere. Of course, then we’re back to the engine failure part.

And, we’ve still forgotten about meteors. And then what happens when the sun turns into a Red Giant?

I think it’s going to be a number of years before we’re able to construct a nearly fully secure home.

Until then, what’s your idea of a reasonably secure home?

*The reason, or at least one of the reasons, for that is so that people don’t drive in and park in nearby streets and clog up the streets, which is a good idea because some of these streets are frequently difficult to drive through anyway, because of the “normal” amount of street parking that goes on.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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