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A burrow that has flooded is going to be just as useless as an aboveground house shredded to smithereens by a tornado. You'll have to rebuild it from scratch, as it will be soaked through and through with polluted water like all those unsalvageable houses in lower NOLA. Only, since it's a burrow, you'll have the added expense of pumping it out and tearing it apart first. Never mind that in most parts of the country, keeping even shallow basements reliably dry seems to be an unsolved problem.
You're right, the real problem is living in Florida, or anyplace else within easy reach of storm surges, in the first place. An issue, though, is that we live in the age of the Safety Nazi, appointed to rule over us because we all know that Baby Boomers would live forever if only all perfidiousness could be suppressed. This means that older folks are often told to become hermits whenever there is the tiniest threat of the tiniest bit of ice or snow. ("I must advise you this way, if I don't, I could be hauled before the medical board for failing to use best practice, or you could sue me for malpractice.") So, not wanting to spend whatever time they have left in prison, they naturally move to where it never snows. And there's almost noplace in North America with temperate weather year-round, so they must pick their poison. C'est la vie.
I agree with PaulS regarding the "Safety Nazi."
I can think of no better way to cull all the really stupid people who clutter the blogosphere and byways of the US and the world.
Imagine, some complete dolt decides "I don't need no damned gubbamint man atellin' me what I cain't do. If I wanna build a house out of used beer cans and oriented strandboard, then by God I will do it!!!"
Along comes a tornado/hurricane/flood/heavy gust of wind and the gene pool is a tiny bit better. Let the retards do what they will. In fact, let's encourage them. The more they knock themselves out of the game through retarded building methods, the better all of our lives will be.
Maybe we should give them all lots of C4 to play with while we're at it.
Can we somehow attach the type of lawyer that usually
exploitsdefends them to the fate of their clients?I would agree with your comments if you would simply substitute "self-righteous pseudo-intellectuals" for "retards."
Speaking of the word "retards," it seems this term has had a resurgence recently. I think I've heard or seen this word used more often in the past six months than since, oh I'd say, ninth grade shop class (and believe me, that's many moons ago). I'm fairly certain that this says more about the people who use this word, though, than about any members of some subject pool to which these people attempt to refer.
*ahem*
All of you have no idea what you are talking about... "Retard" is so passé. These days everyone knows the word is "fucktard". Get with the times! And I hope you aren't "calling for any human decency that [I] may have in [my] pseudo-intellectually mind of [mine]"? Are you? Because, then I'll just reference to the point made by the comment above this one. =]
I am a big fan of numtard.
At the ris^h^h^h certainty of dragging this thread even further into the slime ...
Link to the alt.tasteless records on the subject.
I believe the '96 origin predates its wider use as a term of abuse.
Thanks for the unwanted, but educational, history lesson =]
/me looks around at the world...
You can say that again!
Cherenkov,
There's a great house in Houston on Malone St. called the beercan house. A folk artist put away a couple of six packs a day and then flattened the cans and used them as aluminum siding and great decorations. I'm sure you can find it if you google "folk art, Houston" Its a great piece. Its survived several hurricanes, and is owned by The Orange Show foundation.
Bob Ebersole
A folk artist put away a couple of six packs a day
Sorry for the recycling idea but I couldn't be up to that :-D
Paul, not all earth-encased passive solar houses are burrows. A friend of mine in Montana has a lovely passive solar home built into the South face of a small hill.
The panhandle of Florida has lots of rolling hills...
Errol in Miami
PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
'The panhandle of Florida has lots of rolling hills...'
Yes, it certainly does. It also has lots of christian fundamentalists, shrub/vader supporters, and little tolerance for anyone that thinks or acts slightly different from those living in the hills and hollers of the panhandle. I would not move there if the real estate were free.
"You're right, the real problem is living in Florida, or anyplace else within easy reach of storm surges, in the first place."
It's interesting that suddenly Florida has become so fragile as to be unlivable...and yet, the oldest continiously settled community in North America is in Florida. St. Augustine.
Who knows, maybe you just have to design correctly.
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Selecting a building site at least a couple hundred feet above sea level is the first step to designing correctly. Selecting building sites that are not in flood plains, near active fault lines, not near volcanos, etc. are also good ideas.
There is clear evidence that homo sapiens were building structures even as hunter gatherers during the last ice age. The structures were simple but built, nonetheless. Many of these structures were built near the ocean, Roger. Do you know why they cannot be found today? Because the ocean today is several hundred feet higher than during the last ice age and the continental shelf, which was once beachfront property, is now buried in silt from the rest of the continent.
You might wish to acquaint yourself with how radical the changes in climate have been over the last 20,000 years. Once you do, you will then realize that what Dr. James Hansen recently said about the IPCC rings true - he doesn't agree with their 59 cm sea level rise while temperatures rise 2 degrees celsius because the last time this happened on earth (temperatures this warm then another 2 degree celsius rise) sea levels actually rose another 25 meters. Note further that Dr. Hansen said that sea level doesn't all rise at the end of this temperature increase but during. And note even further that even the IPCC puts the temperature rise over the next 93 years (to 2100) as at least 2 degrees celsius. This means, if Dr. Hansen is correct, that we will see a cumulative 25 meter rise between now and 2100. Even if we backload the last 20 meters of that from 2050 out, that still means 5 meters (15 feet) in the next 44 years.
The US corporate media have ignored a new report by Nasa's top climate expert saying that the international scientific community got it wrong, and we may be facing an 80-foot rise in the ocean by 2100.
And here is the original paper by Hansen (WARNING! PDF!) first published in the British science journal, Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society.
So, you see Roger, there is a bit more to proper construction than the luck of having built during a stable climatic period. If Hansen is correct, no construction technique will save St. Augustine, nor New York, nor London, nor most of the major coastal cities of the entire world.
Ghawar Is Dying as we slide Into the Grey Zone
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.