As part of the current “MOTION” exhibit at the Chubu Centrair International Airport, Shigeta was commissioned to showcase the movement of Japan’s honored samurai warriors. He chose to reimagine the famous folding screen painting of the Battle of Sekigahara, transforming its tiny static soldiers into running, jumping piles of kinetic pixels.

The original screen from the 1620s portrays the battle fought on October 21st, 1600 in the present-day Gifu prefecture, one of the most important in Japanese feudal history. The samurai warriors of Tokugawa Ieyasu squared off against those loyal to the ruling Toyotomi clan. With roughly 140,000 troops between them, Ieyasu’s forces won, paving the way for the Tokugawa shogunate which stayed in power for another 250 years. The Chubu Airport is situated in the homeland of many of those famous samurai, making this piece a natural fit for their exhibit.

For his modern reinvention of the 17th-century multi-panel screen, which he titled “Sekigahara-Sansui-zu-Byobu,” Yusuke decided against focusing on commander Tokugawa Ieyasu, instead opting to “eliminate the individual and depict an ensemble story without a lead character.” Using 3D computer graphics, he pixelated the soldiers but gave them some individual variation in dress and weapons, creating over 500 combinations.

Yusuke also utilized 3D modeling and crowd simulation to perfect the movement of the rushing hordes. Although the artist has previously created digital artwork to generate “a vast perspective of the world,” this is his largest such endeavor, and he told the exhibit curators he was “looking forward to seeing what kind of experience the image elicits.”

Before undertaking this moving artwork, Yusuke visited the actual Sekigahara battlefield to get some real-life inspiration.

“During the visit I went to the historic Sekigahara battlefield, and as I looked at the landscape from both camps, I gained a sense of the distance to the enemy encampment and the tense mood of the warriors at that time,” he said in an interview with the curators. “I visited on November 6th and was captivated by the beauty of the natural environment, including the golden-colored Japanese pampas grass and the mountains’ autumn foliage.”

He used those views of the natural surroundings to add details like leaves and the existing mountain range, in hopes of recasting the screen from “a depiction of battle to a landscape illustration.” The finished product gives observers an animated glance back in history, with miniature samurais charging on both horseback and foot, battling for their lives and country with their tiny swords. The clouds and rivers also got a digital treatment, floating and flowing as they might have during the epic fight.

For those passing through Chubu Centrair International, the Sekigahara exhibit is located in the Terminal 1 lobby with an indefinite run date. A YouTube video of the moving scene is also available for all to enjoy.

As an artist, Japanese native Yusuke Shigeta has worked in media art in a wide range of animation, including old-school forms like phenakistoscopes and zoetropes. He got a degree from the Tokyo Graduate School of Film and New Media and is also a part-time lecturer at both Nihon University and Japan’s Women’s Art University.

The post Artist Brings Ancient Japanese Battle Scene to Life With Digital Animation first appeared on Dornob.

The British Royal Navy just completed a test of the Jet Suit by UK-based Gravity Industries, demonstrating how it could be used to gain control of a ship occupied by pirates, terrorists, or smugglers. In a video of the practice run, an employee zooms from a nearby inflatable boat to a Royal Navy Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol ship called the HMS Tamar. The process is carried out almost exactly in the usual manner of a “visit, board, search, and seizure” operation, or VBSS, as it’s known in the Navy, except for the whole “rocket man” part.

Once aboard, the pilot dropped a rope ladder so the soldiers on the speedboat could board the ship. The idea is “to provide extremely rapid access to any part of the target vessel, instantly freeing up hands to bear a weapon, and even retaining the capability to relocate on target or self-exfiltrate,” as Gravity Industries explained in a press release. “This is increasingly seen as a revolution in tactical capability for many special forces and has a much broader application beyond Maritime boarding.”

Gravity Industries CEO Richard Browning developed the Jet Suit for fun initially, setting and then breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest speed flown in a body-controlled jet engine powered suit (at 85.6 miles per hour). In 2017, Browning himself demonstrated the suit at San Diego Comic Con for a panel called “The State of Iron Man Tech,” and in 2019, he piloted the suit through the Royal Navy’s Commando Training Center in Lympstone, Devon to show off what it could do.

The Jet Suit is still in an experimental stage, and though it’s not quite ready to be adopted by the Navy just yet, it shows a lot of promise. Gravity Industries has already developed several versions of the suit, continually reducing noise and improving the pilot’s control. It has also tested the use of the suit in a training exercise with the Netherlands Maritime Special Operations Forces, flying it around the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth with civilians onboard.

The $440,000 “Mk3” suit itself looks just as you’d imagine, with two arm rockets and a sleek jet pack. It carries 5.25 gallons of jet fuel, too, allowing it to propel a person weighing less than 200 pounds for about four minutes. New iterations will include a wing system that will help extend that range.

“It’s like that dream of flying you have sometimes,” Browning told Robb Report. “You are free to go wherever your mind takes you, there are no ties of gravity, and yet you aren’t a passenger sitting on or in a flight machine. You’re flying as a human.”

Naturally, potential uses of the jet suit reach far beyond military operations. It was tested as a novel way to rescue people from mountains in emergency situations by The Great North Air Ambulance in the UK, and of course, people want to use it recreationally, too. If you dream of having your very own Iron Man experience, Gravity Industries will train you to use the suit at their flight facility outside London for $2,800 USD.

The post Jet Suit Pilot Soars Over the Sea to Test Pirate-Fighting Tech first appeared on Dornob.

The technology itself is jaw-dropping. Videos demonstrating its use by the US Army’s Lancer Brigade of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state look like nothing we’ve ever seen before outside of sci-fi movies. Whereas traditional night vision provides fuzzy green shapes in a sea of black, the ENVG-B goggles developed alongside L3Harris Technologies offer ultra-bright contrast. When weapons are fired, they shoot out a vivid blue glow like a Ghostbusters proton pack.

The effects come from a combination of different technologies that improve upon the older version. First developed in the 1930s, conventional night vision technology picks up any ambient light that’s available (like the reflection of the moon) and passes it through a device that transforms photons into electrons. When the electrons hit a tube covered in fluorescent substance phosphor, they create brighter images in a light green shade the human eye is easily able to perceive. The new ENVG-B uses white phosphor tubes for better contrast, but that’s not the only way they propel this tech into the 21st century.

A thermal imager also enables the goggles to see through visual obstructions like dust and smoke, even in subterranean spaces with absolutely zero illumination. Augmented reality enhancements create real-time edge detection, revealing the location and movement of human figures, weaponry, and vehicles. The goggles also feature a dual-tubed binocular system, so soldiers can choose to either pair what they see through the goggles with what they see with their own eyes, or take advantage of the full depth perception stereo vision offers.

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The ENVG-B goggles can communicate wirelessly with electronic scopes on weapons, allowing soldiers to aim at targets without exposing themselves physically. In practice, that will mean they can raise their weapons above a trench or around a corner and fire with deadly accuracy.

“This system signifies an evolution in technology that stems from innovative and collaborative efforts between Program Executive Office Soldier (PEO Soldier), Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team (SL-CFT), and Army Futures Command (AFC). Additionally, it successfully demonstrates the rapid prototyping process to meet the Army’s modernization priorities and is the first program to deliver an Army Futures Command capability set,” says the US Army. “Ultimately, the ENVG-B increases the warfighters’ lethality, mobility, and situational awareness through innovative and state-of-the-art capabilities. Soldier feedback was incorporated into forming the design and functions of the ENVG-B through events called Soldier Touchpoints. The ENVG-B is made for soldiers and designed by soldiers.”

There’s no hiding from these things, and that’s what makes them kind of scary. It all sounds great taken in the context of safety and security, especially since it could reduce soldier fatalities in battle. But considered alongside other new military tech, which could soon include micro-drones and robotic super soldiers, there’s a worrying sense that war could feel more like a video game overall to the people in charge of the weaponry, further detaching soldiers from the reality of human casualties. Let’s not even go into what all of this could mean if our future ends up looking anything like Minority Report.

The post The Army’s New Night Vision Goggles Make Pitch Blackness Look Like a Video Game first appeared on Dornob.

Vienna-based architectural studio Smartvoll peered into an empty industrial building that once housed soldiers and a tank station and saw something wholly unexpected. Within this simple oblong building, with its weathered bricks and hard concrete floors recalling decades long past, the architects envisioned a futuristic open-plan loft. They submitted their proposal to an international contest that called for an adaptation of the space into a luxurious residence within the larger Panzerhalle complex and won, and it’s not hard to see why.

At the epicenter of the new space is a minimalist kitchen contained within a 23-foot-long block, which itself is flanked by a pair of sweeping concrete staircases. Made of black lava stone, this monumental cabinet features a planting area for herbs and individual spaces for food preparation, cooking, and dining. A table pulls out of one end on demand. Above it soar the wing-like platforms of the gallery level, which follow the contours of the building and offer access to more private spaces.

The dramatic staircases split off in three directions. Smartvoll explains that they shouldn’t be seen as merely functional ways of accessing various levels of the home, but rather “as an electric spatial experience.”

“The stairs are an architecture within the architecture,” they continue. “Concreted in-house, the engineering is being exhausted in all respects. Tender objects with minimal dimensions but tremendous spatial impact. Something that does not allow for competition: besides the concrete, only subtle, semi-transparent materials are being used, such as Profilit to separate the guest area and curtains for the bedroom…Every other piece of furniture seems to be integrated into the construction. An unalterable picture [that] celebrates only free space.”

Everything about the loft seems to float. The staircase hovers above the kitchen, creating a lightweight roof that belies its own solidity. The curtains that delineate the bedrooms waft in the breeze. A bookcase comes out of the brick wall near the back of the home and hangs down into the ground floor below. Even the shower feels weightless, having been projected into the main space as an open glass box. Nothing about the Loft Panzerhalle is meant for the shy and reserved. Its boldness is what sets it apart from top to bottom.

“At the lower level, the room is connected to two balconies. However, even this façade aligns itself with the carriers of the concrete sculpture in the slant; the balconies look like additional alcoves of the overall concept. They feature a contemplative zen garden, including a grassy knoll, a jasmine tree, and a classic [relaxation] terrace.”

These outdoor spaces offer views of the rest of the Panzerhalle complex, including a market space that was also renovated by Smartvoll and several restaurants, salons, event spaces, and a co-working facility, all of which are unified by their buildings’ original brick facades.

The post Former Army Barracks Transformed Into an Extraordinary Modern Loft Apartment first appeared on Dornob.

At a recent World Economic Forum conference at the 117-year-old US Army War College, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the national defense system was at the center of attention. More specifically, the organization used the event to both celebrate military personnel who excelled in critical problem solving and provide a think tank for civilian leaders and military commanders to come together and   discuss national security objectives.

The consensus was that “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its sister technologies will be the engine behind the fourth industrial revolution,” which the forum predicts will be “unlike anything humankind has experienced before.”

Indeed, the role AI will play in future warfare is much more than in-depth than ever imagined. In the national security and armed conflicts sector, it will be responsible for things like optimizing competence through computerization, manipulating human behavior, and revolutionizing the methods by which conventional data is distributed.

Robotic Soldiers

It’s easy to think this all means robotic soldiers actually aren’t that far from becoming a reality. And while machines may be adept at killing adversaries, they’re almost always less gifted in the way of walking and running, both of which are crucial skills for today’s military personnel. For that reason alone, replacing human soldiers with them doesn’t seem viable in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, micro-drones are constantly being upgraded and fine-tuned. Experts predict that these machines will soon be the pinnacle of airborne surveillance — not to mention ultra-accurate at launching micro-missiles.

Increased Efficiency

Military spending is a thorn in the side of many Americans, with accounts of phenomenal waste in the sector proliferating for decades now. The best distribution of their resources may not be clear-cut, but if Google can lower the use of cooling energy for its data center by 40 percent with“deep mind” computer architecture like it did in 2016, the military should be able to similarly reduce spending. With AI entering the mix, they might even be able to allocate their resources more efficiently and reverse the chronic expenditure increases that have plagued them for so long. 

Information Manipulation

Knowledge is power, and that’s never truer than it is in military operations. No longer a simple matter of hand-to-hand combat and strategies developed over paper maps and charts, AI is arguably most powerful in this area of modern warfare.

Unlike past military frontiers, today’s battlefields are crowded with civilians mixed in with forces from all sides of conflicts. These characteristics pose a great challenge to advanced militaries, many of whom’s attacks usually come via air, which typically produce massive civilian casualties, or the deployment of troops on the ground, which increases the risk of serious injury or death to military personnel.

Integrating artificial intelligence into these scenarios will be a major game-changer. Combining prognostic analytics and advanced data processing with the help of AI would aid the military in discovering critical incongruities, connections, and strategic designs for all sorts of situations.

The post How Will AI Affect Modern Warfare? first appeared on Dornob.

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The massive complex, located at 300 West Broad Street, is a public tribute meant to unite, motivate, and inform people about the 22 million-plus veterans who have served and sacrificed for their country. It is the only public museum that has ever been built solely in honor of the veteran experience across all eras and branches of the US military.

The Design

In 2013, Allied Works was chosen to design and oversee the construction of a grand memorial where people could come together and remember the vets from all US military conflicts. Ohio’s own one million veterans were strong supporters of the project, which was initially inspired by the local Senator John Glenn.

Occupying seven acres of land on the banks of the Scioto River, the museum has been designed in a way that skillfully shapes the landscape into a ceremonial space, creating a formal walkway entrance that ends in a rooftop sanctuary and grand amphitheater.

Three interconnecting rings of structural concrete form the crux of the museum’s architecture, simultaneously defining its shape and connecting it to the related attractions just outside its walls.

The Visitor Experience

NVMM gently leads visitors on a narrative journey, revealing personal stories to them from veterans throughout American history. To honor the sacrifices of servicemen and women and their families, the museum has been set up to allow people to personally experience that history through letters, photographs, and personal effects, as well as engage with multimedia presentations and interactive displays. The goal of these exhibits is to connect US history to the bigger picture of world affairs and highlight how the acts of individuals are so significant in shaping a nation.

Ceremony Leaders

Congressman Steve Stivers (R-OH) and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-OH) led the opening ceremony, along with former Congressman Pat Tiberi.

Stivers said, “It has been an honor to be part of the incredible effort to make this vision a reality. This is also an exciting day for me personally. As a veteran and Brigadier General in the Ohio Army National Guard, I know firsthand the sacrifices our veterans make for our freedoms. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum will be an exemplary way to honor veterans of the past, present, and future.”

Beatty commented, “Over the course of the past three years, I have seen firsthand the National Veterans Memorial and Museum go from dream to reality. This museum is the brainchild of former Ohio Senator John Glenn, and I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to him and the many brave men and women who answered the call to serve than this beautiful facility.”

General Colin Powell, the keynote speaker for the event, added: “I think it is extraordinary that this community has seen fit to develop this impressive tribute to all of the men and women in our armed forces who have honorably served and especially those who gave their lives. It’s important that we never forget their sacrifice.”

The post National Veterans Memorial and Museum Honors All Those Who Served the USA first appeared on Dornob.

Flip-flop season is officially here. This is when we traditionally realize we’ve lost one foot of last year’s pair…. No worries: we’ve found great sandals to treat your feet this summer, and the best part is that they give back to others, use recycled materials, and look damn stylish at the same time as feeling comfy.

Combat Flip Flops was founded in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2012 by former Army Rangers Matthew Griffin and Donald Lee. Over the course of several tours in the country, they grew to love the local people and recognized their creativity and desire to work to support their families.

Griffin wanted to help, but how? The idea for Combat Flip Flops hit him one day when he saw a factory in Kabul making combat boots for the military. He developed a company to deploy special ops vets to countries affected by conflict.

“We were going to take military capacity that was established to make tools for war, and we were going to manufacture commercial products for peace,” Griffin explained in his TED Talk. “Flip flops were just the start. We’ve taken a product that people in nearly every country on the planet wear and made it a weapon for change. Right now, all our flip flops are made in Bogota, Colombia, providing jobs and investing in people who desperately need it.”

The Afghan factory makes several styles of the shemagh, a multipurpose traditional scarf. Local cotton is used, and it’s loomed and embroidered in Kabul.

Griffin says it’s very versatile: “Use it to shade yourself from the sun, hide from an ex, or cool yourself off in the shade. The uses and configurations are only left to your imagination.”

The Combat Flip Flops sarongs are also made in Kabul, and for each sarong or shemagh sold, CFF and the manufacturer donate so a young Afghan woman can attend secondary school for a day.

The men’s AK-47 flip-flop “is bad for combat, perfect for peacemaking,” the company says. “This high-speed design is the benchmark of CFF construction and features cast bullet casings, heat-stamped poppies, and that Afghan style we all know and love.” And for good measure the soles are made from combat boot rubber.

“The Peacemaker Bangle and Coinwrap are sent to us straight from artisans in Laos,” Griffin explains, “and they’re made from bombs.”

Each bracelet sold clears three square meters of mines. CFF says 270 million bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War, and almost a third of them are still live. These products made from local craftsmen have a double benefit: they help save lives and also give local people in Laos economic opportunities.

The company makes its Claymore Bag (above) in the U.S., turning a classic military-style bag into a carry-all for business tools such as laptops and tablets. The humorous CFF site offers another use for the Claymore: “Also used as the field expedient diaper bag by BADs (Bad Ass Dads) Keep your manhood while still taking care of those messy ops….”

Oh, and when you’re relaxing in your sarong, shemagh, and flip-flops, take a minute to check out the cool charities Combat Flip Flops works with. Refreshing to find a company that puts its money where its mouth is.

The post Combat Flip Flops: “Cool Stuff in Dangerous Places” first appeared on Dornob.

An inflatable concrete building sounds a bit ludicrous – until you see the seemingly-magical construction of a Concrete Canvas shelter. Concrete Canvas, a UK based company, has created unique shelters that combine a less durable material – canvas – with one of the most durable materials of all – concrete.

The canvas is impregnated with concrete, but remains flexible as the shelter is deployed to its location. Once there, the shelter is unfolded and inflated with a fan. The fully-inflated building is sprayed with water to activate and harden the concrete hiding within the fibers of the canvas.

Within 12 to 24 hours, the structure is cured and ready to use. After the concrete hardens, it is resistant to fire, water and the elements. In a dangerous location, such as a war zone, the structure can be surrounded and covered with dirt to further protect it and its inhabitants from harm. With or without extra fortification, the buildings can be expected to last for around ten years.

Although the obvious application for a rapidly-deployable, super-tough structure like this would be for military operations, there are hundreds of other cases in which a Concrete Canvas building could be incredibly useful. Disaster relief operations could quickly create temporary homes for displaced families after a disaster with little more than delivery equipment, a fan and a water hose.

According to the manufacturer, Concrete Canvas shelters can be thought of as “inflatable concrete buildings.” A typical building of theirs can be built by two people in under an hour without any specialized training – something that most other emergency shelters couldn’t even begin to compare with. The shelters aren’t yet available for consumer use, but just imagine the possibilities of buying your own piece of land, throwing up a concrete structure and living in one of these surprisingly roomy, civilized-looking buildings.

The post Concrete Buildings Made with Air & Water first appeared on Dornob.

From ammunition boxes to steel I-beams, recycled scrap and industrial materials are just one side of these unique furnishings – extruded aluminum, wood and wool are also employed to make points about a world of uncertainty (particularly in regions of military danger and political instability).

Israeli born-and-raised creator Ezri Tarazi is a professor as well as a designer, and his work shows this split focus on both theory and practice. There is a deeper point, for instance, underlying the idea for an extruded map of Baghdad back in 2003 … or, more recently, building sofas out of abstracted sandbags.

The focus should not be surprising – even before the recent changes in Libya and Egypt, army, terrorist and other threats abound in the this oft-dangerous portion of our planet. A little like our own media-filtered understanding of global events (from rebellions and revolutions to tsunamis and nuclear disasters), the objects are often displayed in crisp, clean, white contexts.

Or, to look at it another way: they bring catastrophes right into your living room, forcing you to confront the fallout at least on a conceptual level through actual (literally) war-torn materials.

But to look too much at the meaning or intention on either side would be misleading, regardless of the interpretation. As stand-alone pieces or as part of a series, the works themselves are compelling composites, whether collaged from photographs, hand-stitched from cotton and wool or cut and assembled from scraps of wood.

The post War-Torn Furniture: 7 Pieces Based on Combat & Disasters first appeared on Dornob.

Prefabrication and portability keep cropping up as themes in contemporary architecture, from emergency post-disaster housing to modular shed homes and cargo container offices. BldgBlog (and Dornob and others) now raise the question: are portable camps (military, corporate and otherwise) a precursor to a world consisting of ever-more-completely mobile cities, disposable settlements that are strategically erected overnight but might disappear the very next day?

Weatherhaven, for example, is a curious company co-founded by an odd couple: an expedition organizing team and a construction company that, together, provide ” temporary shelter in remote places … a complete service including design, manufacture, packaging, transportation, and erection of buildings, all of which [are] created specifically to respond to the logistical problems of remote deployment in harsh environments.”

“Weatherhaven’s world class engineering team has been recognized by media and global Computer-Aided Design (CAD) experts for their innovation and capability. They are the backbone behind our 51 patents and our next-generation shelter solutions as well as immensely valuable in helping our customers design the ideal shelter solution to meet their needs.”

What we are talking here goes beyond a simple camp-out, festival or ordinary tent city – forethought, planning organization on the scale of the fully-gridded Burning Man (a there-then-gone temporary annual city that rises for a week in the Nevada desert, starting again very shortly), but more even than that, which is tied to just one place each year. This is a fly-in-and-drop-off operation in which residents can move in immediately and have a fully-functioning town (water, houses, hospitals) up and running in days.

And then, in the end, these modular portable cities can be packed up, moved or removed from the face of the planet entirely, leaving no real trace behind – no physical signs of their history or even existence. This is the ultimate commodification of the the cosmopolitan experience – whole urban centers that are easily created and as disposable as any other manufactured product of modern times.

The post The Future of Portable Flat-Pack Tent Towns first appeared on Dornob.

Covered everywhere from HGTV to the Discovery Channel, this decommissioned military base complex turned silo home-in-a-hole is anything but Top Secret today. Its owners boast the set of converted structures to be the “world’s most unique luxury home – An incredible balance of natural beauty and technological innovation. Pristine mountain property and panoramic views in combination with the ultimate level of security and privacy.” Indeed, would could be safer than living in a missile silo, right?

The subterranean launch control center is a cylinder surrounded by an epoxy-resin, steel-reinforced, three-foot-thick structural wall that (particularly given its depth in the ground) is essentially as apocalypse-proof as a home gets. The entire structure is suspended on springs to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast. Forget blueprints and standard floor plans: this historic house comes with its own top-secret, government-certified schematics.

2.3 million dollars might sound like a lot – even for a high-end mansion – but if you consider that the original cost of construction was around ten times that much (in 1950s dollars, without accounting for inflation) the current converted property seems a steal by comparison. Oh, and in case you were concerned: their FAQ page points out that the Russians are well aware that the silo has been decommissioned, so presumably they would no longer consider it a primary target should an all-out world war come along.

If the underground base-and-silo complex is not quite enough to sell you on it, how about adding the above-ground suite and a private landing strip into the mix? It is a simple 125-foot walk down the lower areas – well, at least it is a good way to keep in shape. And you can bet that with the military involved and the nuclear weapons-oriented intent behind the construction, there is little chance that the below-Earth components are of shoddy craftsmanship.

On-site amenities handy for end-of-the-world scenarios include four wells, off-the-grid power, septic system, phone and satellite hookups and naturally breezy soil-based temperatures that hover in the 50s and 60s essentially year-round. Not bad for a missile silo home!

The post Home Base, for Sale! Huge Underground Missile Silo House first appeared on Dornob.

So you have built your backyard bomb shelter, but what to hang on the walls? From areas with dangerous natural disasters to full-on war zones, everyone building in the heat of battle (or just identifying as preppers) could likely use a layer of X-Flex.

As the video below demonstrates, a single sheet is sufficient to keep a wrecking ball from knocking down a concrete block wall. And for the paranoid homeowner: yes, they are even developing a standard commercial version for ordinary citizens.

However, this was initially developed in conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for military and other lifesaving purposes abroad. The idea is simple: take rolls of this wallpaper into occupied areas or contested zones, unroll it and stick it on the existing wall. In the event of an explosion, debris is caught within the strong kevlar-sandwiched elastic surface and the tightly-bonded material can even help hold the sides and structure of a building together.

From Geek.com:

“X-FLEX is made up of a Kevlar-like composite material sandwiched between polymer sheets. Peeling it off its back and sticking it to the wall, it reinforces the surface, making it explosion proof. When an appropriately volatile blast rockets concussive force into the surface of your brickwork, the wallpaper holds it in place, keeping it intact and preventing it from spraying shrapnel off the other side.”

“The video above is a demonstration that Popular Science did of the X-FLEX’s capability. They swung a huge wrecking ball against a brick wall. What’s astonishing isn’t that the X-FLEX works, but that it seems to be stronger than a brick wall itself.”

“This really isn’t a product aimed at home users, obviously: it’s for plastering the walls of the White House or military bunker, less to keep the walls up than to prevent them from turning into shrapnel that can do serious harm. But who wouldn’t want their home to be covered in this stuff? I’ve always wanted a nigh-indestructible apartment.”

The post Bomb-Proof Wallpaper for Serious Home Security first appeared on Dornob.

Like something straight from a science fiction or horror movie scene, this subterranean nuclear missile silo was once a dank, dark and deserted structure of interest to no one – until one man saw past the pooled water and cracked concrete and began to build (by hand!) the ultimate underground home for himself and his family.

Occupying only a third of the nearly 20,000 available square feet of total military base, Ed Peden and his family live in a world of weird wonder purchased for a relative pittance at $48,000 and derelict for decades when he went to buy it. On the surface, former escape hatches now look like castle turrets and a shack-like structure is about all there is to mark the entrance to this domain.

Fortunately for the family, the gigantic missile bay was an early model set horizontally in the ground – a parked rocket-loaded truck was designed to drive out, angle the rocket and fire if needed. This space has, with only minor additions and conversions, made for a vast parking and storage area.

What many people fail to realize when they see something like a run-down nuclear missile base is that (beneath the grime, water and other signs of age) the underlying materials are often of the best quality and likely to last at least a few lifetimes after being outwardly restored – from top-notch concrete to high-grade steel. Peden became so enamored with his own unique living space that he switched from a life of teaching to a profession of selling missile silos around the United States. [Edit: Video from VMS added, thanks to Matt]

While many of the interior spaces have been left as industrial tributes to the history of this silo complex, a few choice above-ground areas were turned into more family-friendly and colorful living quarters. Still, these places seem almost like a facade – the overt surface area that masks the incredible depths of the underground home spiraling outward below. (Images by Jim Merithew).

The post Ultimate Underground Home: Converted Nuclear Missile Silo first appeared on Dornob.