Maru Ganesh Sthan Rd, Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Nepal

21 ZKUMZV 2009-09-28T03:35:22Z 3 2009-08-15T08:54:42Z My wife and I live on the 5th floor in Kathmandu.&nbsp; It's relatively safe but regardless of how strong a building is, what people need to understand is the concept of performance based design.&nbsp; A building is never "earthquake resistant" as much as we like to make things black and white.&nbsp; Buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes of certain <em>intensities</em>.&nbsp; For example, hospitals and schools are designed to be safe against much more severe earthquakes than say a warehouse.&nbsp; But no building is safe against <em>all</em> earthquakes - they're just safe against earthquakes they're designed for.&nbsp; There's always a possibility that there will be an earthquake stronger than what it's designed for.&nbsp; It then becomes a probability question = performance based design.<br><br>Now that we've got the discussion of whether buildings in Kathmandu are earthquake safe out of the way, lets move on to the scenario that an earthquake hits that is <em>stronger</em> than what your building can withstand.&nbsp; What do you do?&nbsp; If you live in a shed then you laugh and sip some tea.&nbsp; If you live on the 5th floor like us?&nbsp; You're toast since you don't have enough time to run all the way down before your building collapses.<br><br>The only other thing you <em>can</em> do is to get shelter.&nbsp; You know, the usual.&nbsp; Hide under a desk and hope no debris fall on you and crush your family to death.&nbsp; So if I'm going to hide under something I want that something to be strong as hell.&nbsp; Hence my idea of an earthquake wedge shelter.&nbsp; Think of it as a shark cage but with padding inside so you don't crack your head open on the way down when your building crumbles (and a lot of buildings in Kathmandu will crumble).&nbsp; If people can go over the <a href="http://www.niagarafallslive.com/daredevils_of_niagara_falls.htm">Niagara falls in a barrel</a> and survive then so can I.&nbsp; I'll post drawings and pictures soon but my general idea is to have a wedge inside another steel wedge.&nbsp; The inside wedge will attached to the outside wedge with dampers and springs (think motorcycle shocks) and be padded and full of medical supplies and water.&nbsp; I want to be one of those people that people talk about on TV where rescuers give up for dead but find alive a month later in our shelter. 23 27.7040476165 85.3042888641 103 an-earthquake-shelter-for-everyone 0 0.0 0 0 active 1 2009-09-28T03:35:22Z 1