This is a kind of oddball edition to my blog as it is partially a discussion of fact and partially a pure musing, a fantasy. I actually was conflicted about whether to include the second half of this entry as it is somewhat out of character with the informational, educational spirit of this blog. Plus it is somewhat revealing about my psyche also. Nevertheless, I think that it is a thoughtful fantasy, not entirely without practical merit, so I think I am going to publish it for now.
I assess the "threat" priority in my location (SF Bay Area) in the following order: 1) Earthquake 2) Civil Disturbance 3) Critical Resource Disruption (possibly related to Climate Change) 4) Flood 5) Random Predatory Violence (drive-by, home invasion, burglary). Most of these are self-explanatory.
The Critical Resource Disruption above refers to things like the rolling blackouts that we've been experiencing this past decade supposedly due to peak power usage (but after they mysteriously and suddenly ceased after 9/11/10 were actually discovered to be intentional leveraging by greedy power company execs), the emergency water conservation measures we've been asked to take due to low reservoirs and hot drought condition weather, garbage landfills and toxic waste storage that have reached capacity (and looking for other places to export it to), and the high cost of heating gas in cold winter months, and even the record high (as much as $5 in California, also I suspect due to artificial price leveraging by greedy oil company execs) cost of gasoline to run our vehicles and transport goods to our stores, and most alarmingly, to me, reports of actual "food shortages" in the media, which have consequentally driven up prices and created runs on certain commodities. These might seem like paranoid imaginings.... but they are actually happening, here and now, and I take them to be the earliest signs of a population that is reaching it's peak manageable level for the available resources.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit this because of how eccentric and paranoid it sounds, but I actually live, most of the time, in a sort of bunker, or a panic room as they are popularly called. Let me explain. Basically, I have converted one half of my bedroom into a survival redoubt where I store much of my food, water, supplies, ammo, and gear. I needed a place to store all my gear (from multiple sports and activities) anyway, and much of it was too expensive to just leave out in the garage. So I went to one of those "surplus" outlets, the kind that sell old office furniture and retail/wholesale shelving, and bought a bunch of solid steel shelving units (for $10 each!) and lined the walls of my bedroom with them, bolted them down, and bolted them together to form a solid frame and earthquake resistant "box". And I simply changed the flimsy (interior) door with a solid one with a deadbolt (obtained from a friend's remodeling) and reinforced the frame around the deadbolt and hinges. There is only one door, but... there are actually 3 ways out of the room.
My gear and supplies occupy the shelving, and taking an idea from my Army days when we would make our own personal "hooches" (out in FOBs) made of ammo crates and other stacked supplies, I sub-divided the room with a wall made of supplies and equipment, packed into those Rubbermaid container bins and stacked neatly. So this room is divided into two main spaces.... one is a living space (a mini-apartment) where I usually sleep. It has a mini-fridge, microwave, toaster oven, plush carpeting, and is very cozy and comfortable actually. The other section of the room (which has a single slit window) is my "office" and laboratory.... with my secondary computer (WiFi connected of course), 3 televisions, Xbox 360, a comfortable rolling chair, a workbench, scientific instruments, wall charts, favourite artworks, back-up electronics, emergency power supplies (including a solar panel), my safe, my hand tools, my favourite specimens from my personal collections, oh, and a portable chem toilet. This is actually my "man cave" and I can very comfortably and happily spend my days and nights there with every comfort and necessity readily at hand.
After some hit and miss testing, I decided on the Rubbermaid storage bin because of it's ruggedness (thick plastic), the various available sizes (and colours), and because it has a nice snap on lid. It is water resistant (rain proof), but not waterproof. Also, it was cost effective, since I would pay under $5 for a large 18 gal unit and less for smaller units. Another handy feature is that they stack and bear weight well. Other containers I tried were simply too expensive, more fragile, too small or didn't lend themselves to stacking well.
Although it is no longer my main library, I do have quite a lot of books on bookselves also in this room. I only mention this because, interestingly, books are actually effective cover against bullets! And furthermore, I read back in the Cold War days that books and thick stacks of paper are actually effective against radiation... lol.
As much as I love the convenience of power tools, most of my tools are manual human-powered hand tools. I have rescue/extrication tools, full MOPP gear, military protective masks, a firefighter's SCBA and turnout gear, SCUBA gear with 2 aluminum 80s, geiger counter, decon kit, thick multi-use Vis-Cleen bags, and test kit. It's all stuff that I hope I never have to use (again) but that I've accumulated through the years from my various careers (I happen to be a Haz Mat Technician also).
With my stored water, plus water filters, plus water purifiers, plus access to a creek and pool, I feel I have ample survival water. And with my refrigerated food, my pantry food, my stored dried/canned goods, my MREs, and Mainstays, I probably have food for myself for at least 6 months, probably more if I ration it.
With my generator, deep-cell battery, solar panels, stored batteries, hand-crank dynamo devices, car alternator/transformer, I have alternate power for several weeks at peak (with fuel), and then indefinitely at low power usage (running only small electronics). I wish I had the means to install a roof solar system, including filtered ventilation to blow out hot air that rises to the attic area, keeping positive pressure inside. Contaminants, pollutants, pollen, fallout would tend to stay out because incoming air would be filtered and constant pressure would keep air blowing out of the house.
Unfortunately, I DON'T have a fireplace or wood burning stove with external exhaust port. I wish I did. But I'd be able to cook with propane range, butane cartridge stove, and finally a multi-fuel camp stove for maybe over a month. Then, it's woodfires in a fire brazier and a portable hibachi.
I no longer have a landline. I have embraced mobile communications technology, however, if price were no object, I think I would retain a landline as a back up in my "panic room". I do have both wired and wireless internet connections, as well as digital cable television.
Now ideally (perhaps when I retire to Alaska), I wish my home were built on a steel frame and self-supporting (i.e. not dependant on gravity, perhaps like a ship/submarine on land or a buried motor home/bus), and perhaps even on shock absorbers like Cheyenne Mountain. I have enjoyed the benefits of bouncy floor rooms before, like at an aerobics studio for lower impacts and thought why not make all rooms like that. I think my dream home would be partly or mostly underground, or at least bored into a hillside or cliff, like a series of tubes and domes. I'd like to use the Roman formula for long-lasting concrete, or one of the new high-tech mould-injected concrete mixes, like Moon-crete, plus lots of natural rock. Underground homes tend to stay naturally insulated without lots of extra energy expenditure for heating or cooling. Windows would be double-paned and all exterior doors would be two-staged, like an airlock. There should be at least one roof hatch and perhaps a tube or passway to an outlying building. The roof should be an active, living, integral part of the home, with living plants and mosses, solar panels, ventilation exhaust, and louvered windows to allow in natural light. Perhaps I've been reading too much Sunset magazine, but I also like houses that have a "natural" blending with the environment, where the line between inside and outside the house become somewhat blurred. Plants might grow indoor (like in integral planters or living walls), and maybe a small waterway or even a waterfall, may trickle right through the living area. In fact, climate permitting, I'd love to have an outdoor kitchen, outdoor dining room, outdoor shower, and firepit lounging area. The outlying building might be a small guest house, perhaps built around a more conventional A-frame chalet design, or better yet, a treehouse! (my other fantasy design). Somewhere on the property there must be a dedicated observatory, possibly even a radio observatory. I picture a sort of VLA made up of dozens of sat dishes positioned above tree top level across the property.
To supplement the roof solar collectors, I plan to have a wind generator on site also. I suppose the astronomy dome, satellite dishes, aerial booms, exhaust ducts and power generating fan would look pretty odd and incongruous in the forest, but I hope to disguise them in a sort of tree-like tower or towers and definitely try to paint them to blend in better, and have ample fake or real foliage around them.
Whatever the design, the grounds (the landscape design) are another important consideration. I would prefer the maximum amount of privacy and defensibility that finances and zoning would permit. Direct long sightlines to the house should be obstructed (by many natural trees, boulders, hillocks, and shrubberies). Most likely the house will occupy the higher ground and will have the superior sightlines, going all the way down to the river or lake that borders the property. A natural water source would be ideal. I'd probably still want a cistern and/or a water tank of some kind gravity fed above the house. Access to the house, the front of the house, would be on the water side, either to a private t-shaped dock where boats or floatplanes could tie up, or a canti-levered vehicle bridge. A small stone gatehouse structure would face the bridge driveway. The driveway would have at least two turns before it led to a level, paved vehicle turnaround/parking lot area off to the side of the house. It might be the only smooth level paving on the property (except for wheelchair compliant ramps), large enough for 6 car spaces and an adjacent hangar-like structure that is a 3 car garage. The parking area, besides being marked for car parking, would also be big enough for, marked for, and lit for, helicopter access. The long axis would run toward the lake, and a lane would be left open through the trees for aircraft, possibly even ultra-light planes. This multi-purpose paved area would probably also be marked for volleyball, basketball, and roller hockey with accompanying poles, nets, and goals. The garage would have ample built-in storage along the walls, and really I don't plan to have more than 1 car and 1 motorcycle occupying it, normally.
Besides the garage, gatehouse, and guesthouse, as outlying structures, I think I would ideally like one more building possibly at the rear end of the property (away from the lake, away from guesthouse, away from the mainhouse). It would be like a barn/henhouse/kennel and storage shed. Possibly using the most conventional design of all the buildings, I would like it to be somewhat high-tech and comfortable, to the extent that even a human could stay comfortably in this building. Insulated double walls, air-conditioning, heating, lights, running water, etc. I think I would like to have a variety of birds, chickens, geese, ostrich, a turkey, and most definitely a pack of dogs (huskies, malamuts, a german shepherd, and a golden retriever). I've considered other useful animals too (like a milking cow), but the care and feeding might get to be excessive. At least I understand birds and dogs. Adjacent to the "barn" would be a vegetable garden, a natural composting-mulching center, and way at the furthest end of the property near the rear fence, a private archery range with a variety of targets (3-d, moving, pop-ups, decoys), and multiple shooting positions (ground, cover, trees).
I imagine natural looking terraced covering landscaping (my own terrain theme park) all the way from the double perimeter fence up to the house, like conveniently placed boulders, fallen logs (even if they are cast concrete), rises and depressions of earth, maybe concrete culvert-tunnels with a track system, inpenetrable vegetation in strategic rows, all designed to funnel personnel into certain avenues of approach or confound them with obstacles and dead ends. Within this double perimeter fencing (visible soft fence/hazardous electronic hard fence) the dogs and geese would have free run. and would act as an early warning system and deterrent. CCTV and ground sensor alarms would be the next layer of security. And finally activatable defensive measures (traps, reactionary measures, remote firing stations) would be the final line, up to the front doors. I imagine this to be a more natural-looking, more whimsical version of a Japanese castle, taking the best elements of training courses I've seen.
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