Home Front: Modscape house

I came across this interesting house design, by Modscape.com.au which piqued my interest, as I always look out for good fall-back positions, or even first-front positions. I've covered walled security for homes in the past, and walled storage facilities I've also covered my own home and why it's not all that well suited to sticking out a disaster, so it's interesting to see a purpose built place, and not all that far from myself.

The design brief of this home was to "create an airy pavilion that takes advantage of the views while providing a private haven from the busy road below". Rendered brick walls frame the home to create a protective compound which not only the provides the homeowner privacy, but ensures the home is secure. The home’s long, linear form takes advantage of the northern sun and visually connects to the bush and mountain landscape beyond.

Here is the link to the house design brief.

This modular home, in Berry, NSW,  creates a private home behind security walls for the clients who were based in my own home town of Melbourne.

All of the services are concealed from view behind the high walls, with visitors entering via a large pivoting door that penetrates the wall. They then move through a timber battened walkway where dappled light from the surrounding bushland filters through before entering into the double height entrance space. The main living zone opens out to the north-facing courtyard.

Meeting all the functional requirements of modern, sustainable design, the home has a total floor area of 465 sqm and consists of 11 modular sections with a large, open plan kitchen/living/dining area at its heart. A timber joinery core conceals services such as butler’s pantry, laundry and bathroom and houses a staircase leading to an upstairs area. It should be noted that that upstairs area is exposed and visible from the outside of the walls.

The finished palette is minimal and modest with timber, concrete and zinc used in an uncomplicated manner create a design that is humble and nondescript. All landscaping, including the pool, was also coordinated by Modscape.

FEATURES
Open plan kitchen/living/dining
2 bedrooms with joint ensuite
Guest bedroom
Upstairs "music" room
Butler’s pantry + laundry
2 car garage + workshop
Ribbon strip timber cladding
Landscaping including pool
Hydronic heating
Grid connect solar
Built to Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) 29

Looking at the plans, and the layout, including both the property selected, but also the way it sets in to the surrounding areas, offering security through obscurity, I can see the real value in having a property such as this. Putting in extra rain collection reservoirs, solar and/or wind power generation and a fuel reservoir, vegetable beds and perhaps chicken runs to set up a more self-sustainable setup, you have quite a secure (from mundane risks) and off-grid home to fall back on.

Events: Nagasaki 70 years on

What if the 1945 "Fat Man" bomb was dropped on Melbourne today?

Following on from my "Trinity Day" post a few short weeks ago, a chilling reminder. It is now 70 years ago since, on August 9th, 1945, at 11:01:47am the Fat Man bomb exploded some 500m above Nagasaki, Japan, outright killing between approximately 39,000 and 80,000 people. The blast was estimated at around 20kt, and it set fires through the mostly wood and paper construction of the city that left it devastated, even before the radiation effects began to manifest.

What if a 10kt "dirty bomb" was detonated in downtown Melbourne?

Some very clever people at Stevens Institute of Technology, namely nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein developed  “NukeMap” which allows you to overlap various atomic and nuclear events over a regular GoogleMaps view. You've seen this kind of effect with the Sea-Levels which I discussed in my Rising Sea-Levels post. The NukeMap application demonstrates the estimated (and extrapolated from actual tests) effects of these weapons on built-up areas, including "Fireball radius", "20psi Air Blast radius", "5psi Air Blast radius", Radiation Radius" and "Thermal Radiation Radius", each with a descriptor of the kinds of damages you could expect to see, and survivability of those effects.

What if the currently deployed 800kt Russian "Topol SS-25" ICBM munition was dropped on Melbourne?

It also then overlays that with estimated population density in the areas covered by the various zones, and estimates immediate fatalities, and injuries. For explosions of either sufficient size, or proximity to the ground to kick up fallout (high air-busts hit harder, and wider, but don't kick up as much fallout, it's inefficient to do so, apparently), NukeMaps will also plot prevailing winds and density of fallout.

What if the currently deployed 800kt Russian "Topol SS-25" ICBM munition was detonated in downtown Melbourne?

You can pick your location, and from a variety of historically documented devices, from the North Korean tests, Pakistani and Indianweapons, the Trinity and WW2 bombs, all the way up through the Cold War era tests and production weapons, from estimated improvised terrorist weapons to the state-irradiating Tsar Bomba weapon.

Its a very sobering tool to visualize both the destructive capacity we have been capable of for the past 80 years, but also as a reminder of how fortunate we are to have only ever had these forces brought to bare in anger only twice.

Events: Trinity Day

"Trinity Test Fireball 16ms" by Berlyn Brixner

From Wikipedia

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The White Sands Proving Ground, where the test was conducted, was in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.


This test, which was found to have a yield of 20 kilotons

"Trinity-ground-zero-men-in-crater". 

ushered the world into the era of atomic weapons. Just 4 weeks later on August 6 1945 the first atomic weapon, Little Boy was used on Hiroshima .

 The people who developed the bomb, and tested it, people like Oppenheimer , Fermi and Feynmen took bets on what the outcome of the test would be, in terms of the expected yield, with bets ranging from 0 to 45kt.

Fermi took it a step further and offered to take bets among the scientists and military present as to if the atmosphere would ignite, and if so whether it would destroy just the state, or incinerate the entire planet.

Oppenheimer was reminded of the Bhagavad Gita; quote 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'. George Kistiakowsky is reported to have said "Oppie, you owe me ten dollars" .

For the first time, humanity was wielding the power of the stars, and producing weapons that were capable of effecting mass destruction on a strategic, geological and generational scale.

The Trinity tests marked the beginning of the era of nuclear warfare, which thankfully we've only ever ventured into in fiction and strategic documentation. And Preppers ....