Well Michigan, my decision wouldn't be for a fallout shelter as of right now. I'd have to look a bit more on it to decide how easy it would be to keep my current design but also make it fallout safe. The place I said with the submarine looking hideout, it already is designed for fallout along with tornadoes. It isn't cheap though if you go the full fallout shelter route with them, $1.5 million. It has 4 different submarine's with something different in each as a basis, you can add more sub's if you want. Here's the link:Survival Center - Underground Shelters, Bomb Shelters

For food, MRE's are the simple way to go and certain canned foods can last forever plus they aren't THAT expensive to replace if they do go bad before using them.

As for my basement, not gonna happen. It's a block wall basement and is only about 4 feet below the ground on 3 of the 4 sides. Block wall basements are nowhere close to as safe as a regular concrete wall of the same depth. Some places have the thing of little pods you can have put into a basement and anchored down. They are rated to withstand a 2x4 at 100 mph though.............F2 tornadoes(which VA has been getting a lot of lately) can send a 2x4 flying at 110 mph+, methinks they're not so safe suddenly. Plus they are metal, what if the house gets crumbled but a fire breaks out from an electric surge due to the tornado? Your now locked into the oven so to speak and have no clue a fire has broken out.

You're obviously thinking it through and making sound judgements but those numbers you're throwing around, whew. Is the "80/20 rule" a universal expression or something home brewed in Michigan? In case it's local it means "80% of the benefit for 20% of the effort" and I'm a believer (selectively).

Interesting discussion. :thumbsup:

I've known about those shelters for a couple of years now. If you get the deluxe, you can have all the conveniences. I thought about having it set up back in WI, and hibernate for the winters up there. On twenty acres, I would have had the room to put in quite a complex. My biggest problem was finding a woman that was willing to live like a groundhog. But, with an underground installation, the heating and cooling expense is just about gone. Very cheap. Now, how many years of cheap utilities would it take to recoup the cost of the installation??????

Don't think I have that many years left.

Looks like the "official" death toll has been set at 342 from the tornadoes last week. It is suspected that the true number may never be known because apparently a large number of immigrants have not come forward for aid. Apparently someone, FEMA maybe, is using that info to say that it's possible even more people died but that the relatives are afraid to come forward and tell authorities for fear of being deported.

Wind, look at the solar panels for an example. I looked into those last year, a whole house type MIGHT save me around $25 a month on my bill. Problem is, the whole thing costs $30K. Do the math and it works out to something around 100 years before I start seeing a profit, I ain't gonna live till I'm 130 years old. You on the other hand, say you drop off the electric grid and save yourself roughly $150 a month then. You put in a complex that runs you $200K, it would take 111 years to start seeing a profit off it. Even if it's half that much of a complex your still looking at 55 years, way too long.

Michigan, when it comes to protecting family and one's self I'm willing to flip the 80/20 rule you have.

Have you looked into an "earth sheltered home"? There are a couple up in WI, and when a couple of tornadoes went through, the people in them said they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and watched the funnel go right over them. No damage done except for a few trees ripped out of the ground. One family had to replace the barn because they could only find a few pieces of it, and some of the machinery took a hike as well. But the house didn't suffer at all.

Your talking of the homes that are basically built into the side of a hill? Guy I worked with lived in one, an EF2 went half across it, he lost his front windows on it. They went to the back and were fine. Unfortunately I don't have a hill that could work for that on my property.

I happened to drive down US 78 today from Memphis to Birmingham. 2 1/2 or 3 miles west of the Birmingham Pilot truck stop I looked to the north and holy crap-pile Batman. I'm not going to guess at the number of houses destroyed but it's quite a few. I parked the truck and took a few quite lousy pics with my cell phone. As I drove away I noticed that for a few blocks houses that were mostly spared had tarps on the roofs and big piles of tree trunks and branches out front.

Never saw the damage left from a tornado before - makes ya glad to have a home to go back to.

Sorta looks like a log grinder got away from someone and went wild.

Looks like some pics looking across the border into Mexico with the debris everywhere still. See that Alabama was again getting hard hit this afternoon by storms.

Map shows number of homes destroyed by April 27 tornadoes | Home & Garden | Birmingham News

I took those pics in Jefferson county and Tuscaloosa had it even worse. This morning I drove west on I-20 by Tuscaloosa and didn't see any damage - it was probably north of the highway.

The pics aren't very good but they do show that it looked like everything in sight got a haircut. Trees, houses, it didn't matter what, it was all suddenly shorter.