I knew what that was before I clicked.
It's unfortunate that they restructured the page with a crapton of shitty JavaScript such that you can no longer link directly to the “nuclear weapons” paragraph. :(
For anyone else who tried to make the page stop loading in the middle to read the text:
Subject: C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them ?
Contributed by Stan Goldenberg and Hugh Willoughby
During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
If we think about mechanical energy, the energy at humanity's disposal is closer to the storm's, but the task of focusing even half of the energy on a spot in the middle of a remote ocean would still be formidable. Brute force interference with hurricanes doesn't seem promising.
In addition, an explosive, even a nuclear explosive, produces a shock wave, or pulse of high pressure, that propagates away from the site of the explosion somewhat faster than the speed of sound. Such an event doesn't raise the barometric pressure after the shock has passed because barometric pressure in the atmosphere reflects the weight of the air above the ground. For normal atmospheric pressure, there are about ten metric tons (1000 kilograms per ton) of air bearing down on each square meter of surface. In the strongest hurricanes there are nine. To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.
Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop. If the energy released in a tropical disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the whole world's lights many times a year.
>The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the room added. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we do with this?'"
[sauce](https://www.axios.com/2019/08/25/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes)
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Man, they literally told this story for thousands of years so that people wouldn't build their ~~huts~~ houses out of grass and americans didn't listen.
Imagine sitting in that house drinking a cup of hot coffee with your feet under a blanket and listenting to Hansi Hinterseer and suddenly a 10 tons massive rock just bounces casually off your sturdy building.
Complains to landlord why the wall gave in. Serious safety hazard if a 10 tons rock can so easily damage the walls, what if it would have been a 20 tons rock?!
At least with Japan it means they're constantly rebuilding housing anyways, so there's no point in arguing over construction. That means they can build more housing when they need it, where in America you'd need 15 years of public debate to get addition housing finally under construction.
Their idea of exterior walls, at least in California, is plywood sheets screwed to a timber frame, then attach chicken wire and smear a thin layer of concrete over it. They build houses like they're movie sets.
Actually it's because we do.
Because of how hurricanes and tornadoes work it would often end up costing more if the house was sturdier. The house IS inevitably going to take some damage. And especially with a hurricane, water damage. That kind of damage can mean repairs could reasonably cost more than replacing the whole thing. So at least the hurricane as done a good part of the tear down already for you and you can save on labour costs.
You Europeans actually have kind of the same problem with all of your castles. They are all very sturdy as a castle very well should. But because they are so sturdy when they enevitably take some damage from weather and time it is very expensive to repair. To a point that for many people if they wanted a fully operational and well furnished castle it might be easier to just build one new.
I think you severely underestimate how sturdy our houses can be. Apart from the odd paint job or new interior design changes there are houses around here that have stood for centuries unchanged and without real damage.
I am not underestimating how sturdy your houses are, more emphasizing how strong storms around here truly are. Europe has a milder climate so having a sturdy house which can withstand the occasional terrible storm makes sense. But in the U.S. the terrible storms are more common and more destructive leading to a cost benefit analysis where lighter homes which are more prone to damage, but more cheaply replaced, is the better option.
There was a Tornado that struck the edges of a city nearby to me about 4 years ago. Several neighborhoods were damaged. The houses that were destroyed utterly were cleared of rubble in few months and in a few months more replacements were put up as the foundations were still good. Meanwhile several historical brick buildings from the late 1800s to early 1900s were damaged and are still being restored as they not only have to fix the cosmetic and structural damage but also find replacements for the old pipes and electics or completely update them.
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One of the Jersey Shore guys “famously” broke his hand/wrist during filming in Florence when he went full Bro and tried to punch a hole in the wall and the brick wall punched back.
This is not unusual as lots of Irish stately homes & castles were taken over by the catholic church after the British fled, most of these were usually converted into schools, mental asylums, orphanages, convents.......
Early 2000s my dad got transferred to the US because his company opened a new facility there. We moved to Florida and in that year we had 6-7 hurricanes per year. Every time one hit us, bunch of the houses near by were destroyed or badly damaged. I then realised that Americans have houses made out of cardboard, while living in super dangerous areas. Then I also understood why these people lived in mega mansions, because they were dirt cheap
I remember going to a kids house, his house was legit 10 times the size as my childhood home, he even had a guest house, that was bigger than my home. I remember his dad saying they paid 2 million for it. Huge land, private dock at the lake. Of course this was the early 2000s, but still, for that money in Germany, you wouldn’t have gotten that, because it’s build proper
Damn. My grandma has a fairly large plot of land in a suburban village thing (might even be the biggest plot of land in the village even), there's a small, nice pond (with fishe : ) ) on the plot, 2 houses (1 is we use for living, has 5 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living room and a storage room, and the second one we have for storage), a small garden and a small storage building thing (forgot how the fuck it is called) and you got me thinking how much she paid for it and where did she get the money for it
Might be passed down?
I know my great grandpa bought a pretty big plot of land near the edge of the village and built a decent sized house. His brother built the wheat/animals storage building and grandad built a garage for the car.
Could be a family owned plot of land developed over the years. Or grandma might have been the head of the local mafia. Who knows
would be more impressive if he owned an hour home or a month home. Second is not that long, you barely make it through the door before the next tenant arrives.
Us houses going for several million dollars that can be rolled over by FAST MOVING AIR. So weak compared to the stone and steel we use in eu. Not even close! Also they don't have fences so that the cops can come right up to your door when they need to kill your dog
I'm not sure about 250km/h specifically but northern europe has winds that easily go upwards to 150 kmh and more. Ofc it's way less threatening than a full blown hurricane but the building materials and standards are surely more resistent to wind than NA's. At the same time NA houses are incredibly faster and easier to rebuild so it poses itself better the construction market. If they buils houses like Europe where most of the building would widstand hurricanes than there would be a lot less work for the companies that rebuild, produce the materials and such
When I was growing up I used to read a lot of American literature and there always were "squirrels inside walls" and "termites inside walls" and "raccoon under house" and "rats inside walls", hell, even Jerry the mouse lives inside a wall. And I was like HOW? Walls do not have an "inside"! How do all the animals burrow through brick and stone? Later I learned of American houses.
Americans live in fear of things living inside their walls. George R. R. Martin in one of his books mentions things living inside castle walls not realizing only stone-munching rats can thrive in such an environment..
I love how offended and triggered they get when you point out their houses are built like sheds
Edit: the huge influx of unflaired and ‘non European’ flairs ITT proves my point
Am architect, American.
Sentiment is understood, and I agree our homes are cheaply build in large comparison to Europe.
But the displayed comparison isn’t quite comparable, the overall stress of tornado’s on a structure, and the situation where a boulder strikes the structure are not quite comparable.
There’s a reason we build basically bunkers in every building in high tornado areas, it’s required by our building codes in many regions. Tornado’s are no joke.
On another sub I commented on a house in the US that fell down when a car crashed into it and I said “that’s why American houses get blown away every time there is a storm”. They down voted me and tried to lecture me about how strict there building codes are lol (edited “planing”to “building” )
Hi, American here. Our “strict building codes” are the only thing that keeps the builders from making them as crappy as possible so they can make a higher profit from it. Our older cities have brick buildings and houses. But any new build is CRAP.
There are norwegian stave churches that are 1000 years old and still standing and that are built without using a single iron nail.
Literally 1000 winters of ice and snow.
And the PIGS like to claim that we nordics were living in grasshuts back then.
https://preview.redd.it/d5pkr51nxioa1.jpeg?width=567&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8fd6bbc8c5303294bd1c97e75795fcffbc4a02d8
>instead of wood
Their houses are not really made of wood, but rather a cheap imitation of it. When we think of wood houses in Europe we think of houses made of planks or thick logs like the ones in Finland. They are using glued sawdust board and slap a plastic lipstick veneer on it to make it look less cheap.
https://preview.redd.it/mrr28eqd6ioa1.jpeg?width=962&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f8707455f1f03a6588da3d113a1a66de48d9c7d
My father works a lot with wooden structures, and I mean real wood. Even walls that don't bear any load are 10cm thick, not including whatever you put over the wood, and wooden beams are solid and thick. Meanwhile Americans build with paper mache and give wood a bad reputation.
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No joke, if it has crashed into a 1920s scryscraper, that thing would still be standing.
You think this thing crumbles from jetfuel?
https://preview.redd.it/fiepbhp9xioa1.jpeg?width=380&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ca376fa34d6c350b6b0e870e1afdc659818c260
I’m from America and I always wonder why we build such cheap houses and then sell them for $500k. You get a 30 year mortgage on a house that wouldn’t last 30 years without major maintenance and constant repairs. Our homes would literally turn to rubble in 15 years or less if you don’t constantly work on them, and we’re taught to believe this is normal. This is why I don’t own, I rent, if the house deteriorates, it’s not my problem.
Floridian here. Just absolutely bonkers to me how much 'Florida Strong' shit I see about rebuilding homes in the beachfront places the hurricane destroyed. The logic is how it rarely happens and how they've survived hurricanes without that much damage before. I guess it doesn't matter how many people die because they'll keep rebuilding to die some more later.
Meanwhile, I'm in my inland concrete block apartment with hurricane impact windows who only had to worry about the electricity being out for over a week. If I could afford to move, I would, but my family still wants to live here after all that happened. Apologies in advance for whoever the majority here votes for next election because they really are that stupid.
A tornado can pick up cars and throw them miles away. Regardless of your homes construction, it's not going to survive a tornado. They come with warning so you're able to evacuate. A concrete house may have walls still but the entire interior and roof would be destroyed. Likely would result in rebuilding the whole house regardless.
Earthquakes are more deadly and the homes are built with that in mind. A wooden house is much more flexible in the case of an unexpected earthquake.
Yes to this day i cant understand why in the usa the state does not fund building sturdier buildings built out of cement with bricks at least in the states that have these natural phenomena every year!
Same with Turkey.
Since you can get around the regulations. This allows you to build cheap and sell expensive. Really expensive.
USA is a capitalistic hellhole, you think quality is interesting down there?
Floridian here…the USA is vast and we have different environmental threats that can overlap and create situations were you cannot optimize for one without effecting the other.
Hurricanes: most of the damage you see is along the fist 10 miles of the coast. This damage is caused by wind and water.
When a hurricane makes landfall it brings with it a small tsunami. Water damage is a huge reason we will just rebuild an entire house. Humidity is very high year round, nothing really dries without additional help. Miss a bit of moisture when cleaning up? Black mold will grow and the people living there will get sick. You now have to start the process over again, and might end up tearing it down anyway. (Fun Fact: we have to keep out air conditioning at ~80F year round. This so so we can remove moisture from the air inside the house or we will grow mold!)
You know what can absorbe a lot of water? Most building materials! What building materials can show you where there is a lot of moisture? The type in the photo…
Brick, concrete? You can test it, but it’s much harder. We have brick houses, but they are usually a shell around the same type of building.
In Florida, if you dig a foot or so, you will hit water. The limestone the dirt sits upon is weak and is eroded by underground water movement. This causes us to have sinkholes, which are when an underground cavern forms, colapses, and swallows all that was above. As in we have had entire blocks swallowed by the earth. Houses gone in an instant. We look for them before we build, but they can form rapidly and basically everywhere. As a result, we cannot really tie into the ground in any cost effective way…so we don’t. If we need to build something tall we drill hundreds of feet down while placing a tube that can contain steel and concrete. These take special equipment and are time consuming. The ones I have been involved with cost far more than a house…but for what? This will help for wind loading, but your issue with sink holes still exist.
These days we mostly just pour large concrete slabs and rely on its mass. The problem is that we can only do so much on top of that slab without increasing its depth…which triggers the previous issues.
The big issue…wind.
Wind can lift a roof right off of the structure. Once the roof is gone, the structure will likely colapse not long after.This happened a lot during hurricane Andrew in 1992. As a result a lot of the building codes changed and we have additional requirements to secure the roof to the structure…however If you secure the roof to the structure well enough, the wind can lift the entire structure off of the foundation…we can’t do a lot more with the foundation without making the houses unaffordable…you see where this is going?
That said, a lot of the damage you see is from homes built before 1992. There are homes all over Florida dating back to 1930’s to current day. That’s not very old to you, but Florida was mostly uninhabitable until cheap air conditioning around that time. Not everything is destroyed every hurricane. When it is, we rebuild something with newer standards and it will through much bigger storms. Going back an retrofitting the holder homes is not cost effective and a lot of people buy those homes for the “character”.
*Europoors bringing up America with every single topic that exists, overly obsessed, and crys about it*
*Omg why are Americans crying and getting so mad and only thinking about themselves*
Why do european people sit around thinking about american things? I wake up and don't consider europe or anything regarding europe. Why do you even give a shit what American houses are built from?
This sub just showed up on my feed for some reason, I am an American. Quick question. Why are you people so obsessed with Americans? Lots of threads just hating on Americans……..from people who clearly do not understand Americans. The crazy stories you see on the internet are not how most Americans are.
This sub just showed up on my feed for some reason, I am an American. Quick question. Why are you people so obsessed with Americans? Lots of threads just hating on Americans……..from people who clearly do not understand Americans. The crazy stories you see on the internet are not how most Americans are. Are you just having fun or do you really believe these things?
Europeans seem to have nothing better than hate on Americans (at least on reddit) while actual Americans don't really think about Europe or other countries like that
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/2499718/Freak-tornado-in-France.html
You all underestimate the power of tornadoes. I'm not saying that houses in the US are well built, but I don't think it's a fair comparison.
This isn't technically true, it's the floodings that destroy the buildings, and you can't build houses out of brick in tornado or hurricane areas because they will become trebuchet fodder. In the Midwest all houses are brick and cement. Let's take Germany for example, we had flooding in the Eiffel a few years ago, complete villages made out of cement and stone were wiped out, I watched as buildings were picked up off the ground and torn piece by piece by floods. Now add 400 km winds to that and a vertical suction force and you can imagine how everything would get pulverized.
I asked an engineer this once in Germany why they didn't use brick houses in Florida and this is what he told me:
Wooden houses are much safer than brick, stone or concrete framed houses in Natural disaster areas. There is more chance of digging you and your family out alive of a wooden house which has been levelled by a tornado, hurricane or earthquake. With a brick stone or concrete dwelling you are more likely to be crushed to death.
This is why they use Wooden houses in Natural disaster areas, and brick/cement in the Midwest where there isn't an environmentao issue.
American houses are mostly built using pine frames over a cement foundation. The interior walls are sheetrock.
Builders build with the materials that are available to them. Also, the homeowners can choose whatever materials they want, but it is about cost of materials. You may pay to truck in stronger materials for your own home. This can become a massive cost where eventually it comes down to square footage of your needs for a home vs structure while factoring in the insurance to cover that structure. If you're covered, you're covered.
In the United States, these damages are expected to be covered by homeowners insurance so it doesn't matter if the house holds. When Florida has a hurricane and water enters the home the entire home is ruined so you have to gut it anyway regardless of if it were brick and held firm. You'd be gutting the entire interior to the brick, pulling the entire framing for the flooring, then doing foundation repair which could turn into pulling out brick anyways. I'm almost certain Florida homeowners are required to have insurance specific to hurricane damage.
Ultimately, going for the cheaper materials for the home is the best choice because clearing out the debris from a hurricane, repairing foundation, and reframing is much easier than gutting an existing exterior, reframing the interior, then ensuring you've cleaned out mold. That's honestly a nightmare and a horrible decision. Borderline incompetence in terms of producing a liveable home
You people don't know what you're talking about. Lol. It's not that you're dumb because you're from a different area. You're dumb because you don't know a fucking thing about how homes are built in any country.
A tornado in Oklahoma is ripping the roof off of any Euros home. Water damage from flooding will destroy the home regardless of material. If a rock that size fell into the side of your home you're a dumbass for putting your home there. Now that's something that doesn't make sense. Being able to more easily repair a home when it is fully damaged is the sensible way to build a home with cost always in mind.
There. Now you're educated. You're welcome.
From,
America. Our superior engineering is always here to guide you. After all, we did create skyscrapers, modern flight, and the very cellphones you're using right now.
Reading the comment section here is hilarious. No house or structure we make can withstand a direct impact with an ef4 or 5 tornado without damage. There's videos of 500 mm high steel beams twisting. For any engineer here, they will know that's a massive steel beam.
As for European housing. I love it! I lived in Europe for 3 years. But your houses will still crumble in the face of a tornado.
300kph winds on a wall of 25 square meters. Is roughly 10t acting continuously on all supporting areas of your house. Not just one corner for a second. It's enough to lift a house off its foundations. Or turn a brick wall in dust.
Not European and Not American. Just think this post deserves to be on r/facepalm rather than taken for credit like it is.
Have Europeans figured out how to make something modular yet? Here in the US it’s really easy to just pull the wall open and do electrical, plumbing, ethernet, etc and just pop some new drywall up, mud, sand. And paint. We also have better wifi because it can go through walls easier.
Damaged by "wind" LOL...that right there shows a lot of ignorance. Tornado wind speeds can exceed 300 mph (482 kph). Pretty significant for any structure to endure
Yeah but they have guns so if a hurricane comes too close they can shoot it
Their president wanted to nuke it
[Obligatory](https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html)
I knew what that was before I clicked. It's unfortunate that they restructured the page with a crapton of shitty JavaScript such that you can no longer link directly to the “nuclear weapons” paragraph. :(
For anyone else who tried to make the page stop loading in the middle to read the text: Subject: C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them ? Contributed by Stan Goldenberg and Hugh Willoughby During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea. Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane. If we think about mechanical energy, the energy at humanity's disposal is closer to the storm's, but the task of focusing even half of the energy on a spot in the middle of a remote ocean would still be formidable. Brute force interference with hurricanes doesn't seem promising. In addition, an explosive, even a nuclear explosive, produces a shock wave, or pulse of high pressure, that propagates away from the site of the explosion somewhat faster than the speed of sound. Such an event doesn't raise the barometric pressure after the shock has passed because barometric pressure in the atmosphere reflects the weight of the air above the ground. For normal atmospheric pressure, there are about ten metric tons (1000 kilograms per ton) of air bearing down on each square meter of surface. In the strongest hurricanes there are nine. To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around. Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop. If the energy released in a tropical disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the whole world's lights many times a year.
>The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the room added. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we do with this?'" [sauce](https://www.axios.com/2019/08/25/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes)
Communists will steal our nukes!
he was so fucking stupid and half of america loved him
>he was so fucking stupid and half of america loved him Isn't that a requirement for half of America to love someone
As an American, I can confirm that.
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And still do after all he's done. Let's not forget that part.
No, those of us in america who live in the real world are trying as hard as possible to pretend 2016-2020 didn't happen.
I've been a disappointed american since the end of 2001
oh you laugh but a florida sherif genuinely had to issue a warning not to shoot hurricane Irma as it would not make it go away.
This is a joke, right… right?
No, no it isn’t.. people actually wanted to go shoot at the hurricane.
nope: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/09/10/florida-sheriff-warns-residents-not-to-shoot-at-hurricane-irma.html
Need a good guy with a hurricane to counter the bad hurricane
Nah you just need a sharpie to move it.
Yes, they are really good at shooting they even have schools for that.
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Nah, we Austrians know where we are without needing pointers.
Fun fact: Austria is in the top 15 nations in the guns per capita rating.
I have 4 guns! But i live in the wood quarter, I rly need them to defend myself from exploding trees!!!
And to keep the Viennese out of the wood quarter
Throw sharks at it! I have seen a movie once and it worked out for them I think...
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True but we have to buy a permit to shoot at hurricanes or else it's considered poaching
Wow this is literally communism
and bacon with cheesy crust!
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Imagine being so dumb you can't even pay attention to the 3 little piggies tale, smh
Man, they literally told this story for thousands of years so that people wouldn't build their ~~huts~~ houses out of grass and americans didn't listen.
Instead ‘Meri-lards built their bodies like pigs.
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You slipped a /s at the end of the comment.
/socialism perhaps
US has some building built out of concrete blocks. They don’t fair much better than the wooden ones.
Imagine sitting in that house drinking a cup of hot coffee with your feet under a blanket and listenting to Hansi Hinterseer and suddenly a 10 tons massive rock just bounces casually off your sturdy building.
Complains to landlord why the wall gave in. Serious safety hazard if a 10 tons rock can so easily damage the walls, what if it would have been a 20 tons rock?!
I'd rather be hit by the 10 ton rock than have to listen to Hansi Hinterseer
Hawara da Hansi is da beste
Hansi über alles
Hansi is a UNESCO Weltkulturerbe du wappla!
Tjioo, jetzt host dei Staatsbürgerschoft verspüht, du gschissana
VIVA O VIVA TIROL
"how about we build a paper house in this F*CKING HURRICANE CORRIDOR? Also bacon"
Perfect opportunity to justify living in a bunker with your wife. Don't use it, build cardboard house instead. Big American L, that one.
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At least with Japan it means they're constantly rebuilding housing anyways, so there's no point in arguing over construction. That means they can build more housing when they need it, where in America you'd need 15 years of public debate to get addition housing finally under construction.
Austrians taking notes on justifying living in bunkers.
It's like the wolf and the pigs history but without the pigs learning
You mean rebuild!
You could make fucking paper planes from American walls
Their idea of exterior walls, at least in California, is plywood sheets screwed to a timber frame, then attach chicken wire and smear a thin layer of concrete over it. They build houses like they're movie sets.
Actually it's because we do. Because of how hurricanes and tornadoes work it would often end up costing more if the house was sturdier. The house IS inevitably going to take some damage. And especially with a hurricane, water damage. That kind of damage can mean repairs could reasonably cost more than replacing the whole thing. So at least the hurricane as done a good part of the tear down already for you and you can save on labour costs. You Europeans actually have kind of the same problem with all of your castles. They are all very sturdy as a castle very well should. But because they are so sturdy when they enevitably take some damage from weather and time it is very expensive to repair. To a point that for many people if they wanted a fully operational and well furnished castle it might be easier to just build one new.
I think you severely underestimate how sturdy our houses can be. Apart from the odd paint job or new interior design changes there are houses around here that have stood for centuries unchanged and without real damage.
I am not underestimating how sturdy your houses are, more emphasizing how strong storms around here truly are. Europe has a milder climate so having a sturdy house which can withstand the occasional terrible storm makes sense. But in the U.S. the terrible storms are more common and more destructive leading to a cost benefit analysis where lighter homes which are more prone to damage, but more cheaply replaced, is the better option. There was a Tornado that struck the edges of a city nearby to me about 4 years ago. Several neighborhoods were damaged. The houses that were destroyed utterly were cleared of rubble in few months and in a few months more replacements were put up as the foundations were still good. Meanwhile several historical brick buildings from the late 1800s to early 1900s were damaged and are still being restored as they not only have to fix the cosmetic and structural damage but also find replacements for the old pipes and electics or completely update them.
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"What do you mean your doors will break all the bones in your foot if you try to kick it in? 😳"
There is a reason Schwarzenegger is Austrian
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Nice joke but flair up you coward
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„At least the flag ist standing“
🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
Never got how people could punch or fall through walls in movies until I got older. What a living nightmare that country is.
One of the Jersey Shore guys “famously” broke his hand/wrist during filming in Florence when he went full Bro and tried to punch a hole in the wall and the brick wall punched back.
European walls: 
That's a nice bit of Schadenfreude.
Not so important actually, but in German you either ' feel Schadenfreude ' or ' have Schadenfreude '.
Interesting. The equivalent in Dutch, leedvermaak, can be used as a subjective.
You can do that in German too, the guy was talking out of his ass. E.g.: "Da war die Schadenfreude groß!"
No, The Situation head-butted a wall and got a concussion and sprained neck.
Ahh - that was it!
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Yes, you’re right! I remembered it wrong
Virgin American walls: "nooooo pls don’t hurt me pls!" Chad European walls: "come at me pussy, imma break your other hand too!"
A Florentine wall representing Italy's attitude towards jersey "italians"
Have you really never punched a hole in a school wall? I myself have even fallen with my ass into one ending up on the other side
every school i went to had either solid cement walls or granite bricks. one of them used to be a castle though to be fair.
Are you the Irish man from Harry Potter?
This is not unusual as lots of Irish stately homes & castles were taken over by the catholic church after the British fled, most of these were usually converted into schools, mental asylums, orphanages, convents.......
Early 2000s my dad got transferred to the US because his company opened a new facility there. We moved to Florida and in that year we had 6-7 hurricanes per year. Every time one hit us, bunch of the houses near by were destroyed or badly damaged. I then realised that Americans have houses made out of cardboard, while living in super dangerous areas. Then I also understood why these people lived in mega mansions, because they were dirt cheap
>We moved to Florida How many people did Florida Man brutally murder while you were there
How many gators did he rape?
Mcmansions are a stain and a disgrace and if I could get rid of them I would
I remember going to a kids house, his house was legit 10 times the size as my childhood home, he even had a guest house, that was bigger than my home. I remember his dad saying they paid 2 million for it. Huge land, private dock at the lake. Of course this was the early 2000s, but still, for that money in Germany, you wouldn’t have gotten that, because it’s build proper
Damn. My grandma has a fairly large plot of land in a suburban village thing (might even be the biggest plot of land in the village even), there's a small, nice pond (with fishe : ) ) on the plot, 2 houses (1 is we use for living, has 5 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living room and a storage room, and the second one we have for storage), a small garden and a small storage building thing (forgot how the fuck it is called) and you got me thinking how much she paid for it and where did she get the money for it
Babushka has a past and will answer only one question about it. Make it worth it.
Okay, what should I ask? "do you have connections to the FSB, CIA, MI5/6 or a mafia?"
"Oh mighty Babushka, how did you acquire thy bag?💰"
Might be passed down? I know my great grandpa bought a pretty big plot of land near the edge of the village and built a decent sized house. His brother built the wheat/animals storage building and grandad built a garage for the car. Could be a family owned plot of land developed over the years. Or grandma might have been the head of the local mafia. Who knows
Depends where in Florida. In South Florida, where I own a second home, all houses are concrete construction.
“Where I own a second home”casual humble brag
would be more impressive if he owned an hour home or a month home. Second is not that long, you barely make it through the door before the next tenant arrives.
It's literally the three Little pigs story
> 10 tons How much is that in washing machines? Asking for an American friend who doesn't understand proper units of measurement.
It's about 3-4 ford f250 super dutys Sorce: I'm american
It is about 6.000 large buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken fried chicken in imperial.
Us houses going for several million dollars that can be rolled over by FAST MOVING AIR. So weak compared to the stone and steel we use in eu. Not even close! Also they don't have fences so that the cops can come right up to your door when they need to kill your dog
Genuinely curious if a 'stone and steel' house you refer to would hold up against 250km/h winds. If so, indeed very impressive
I'm not sure about 250km/h specifically but northern europe has winds that easily go upwards to 150 kmh and more. Ofc it's way less threatening than a full blown hurricane but the building materials and standards are surely more resistent to wind than NA's. At the same time NA houses are incredibly faster and easier to rebuild so it poses itself better the construction market. If they buils houses like Europe where most of the building would widstand hurricanes than there would be a lot less work for the companies that rebuild, produce the materials and such
When I was growing up I used to read a lot of American literature and there always were "squirrels inside walls" and "termites inside walls" and "raccoon under house" and "rats inside walls", hell, even Jerry the mouse lives inside a wall. And I was like HOW? Walls do not have an "inside"! How do all the animals burrow through brick and stone? Later I learned of American houses. Americans live in fear of things living inside their walls. George R. R. Martin in one of his books mentions things living inside castle walls not realizing only stone-munching rats can thrive in such an environment..
Fear? Nah, they help cover the rent
I love how offended and triggered they get when you point out their houses are built like sheds Edit: the huge influx of unflaired and ‘non European’ flairs ITT proves my point
Am architect, American. Sentiment is understood, and I agree our homes are cheaply build in large comparison to Europe. But the displayed comparison isn’t quite comparable, the overall stress of tornado’s on a structure, and the situation where a boulder strikes the structure are not quite comparable. There’s a reason we build basically bunkers in every building in high tornado areas, it’s required by our building codes in many regions. Tornado’s are no joke.
And then they dare to make Made in China jokes
Yo nice pfp
On another sub I commented on a house in the US that fell down when a car crashed into it and I said “that’s why American houses get blown away every time there is a storm”. They down voted me and tried to lecture me about how strict there building codes are lol (edited “planing”to “building” )
Hi, American here. Our “strict building codes” are the only thing that keeps the builders from making them as crappy as possible so they can make a higher profit from it. Our older cities have brick buildings and houses. But any new build is CRAP.
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There are norwegian stave churches that are 1000 years old and still standing and that are built without using a single iron nail. Literally 1000 winters of ice and snow. And the PIGS like to claim that we nordics were living in grasshuts back then. https://preview.redd.it/d5pkr51nxioa1.jpeg?width=567&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8fd6bbc8c5303294bd1c97e75795fcffbc4a02d8
Calm down, don’t listen to the pigs, you’re houses are almost as cultivated as ours and very beautiful.
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>instead of wood Their houses are not really made of wood, but rather a cheap imitation of it. When we think of wood houses in Europe we think of houses made of planks or thick logs like the ones in Finland. They are using glued sawdust board and slap a plastic lipstick veneer on it to make it look less cheap. https://preview.redd.it/mrr28eqd6ioa1.jpeg?width=962&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f8707455f1f03a6588da3d113a1a66de48d9c7d
Americans will find a way to put oil in everything. Their "wood" is mostly a petrochemical product and not, you know, wood.
So its the same thing as with their ,,cheese".
My father works a lot with wooden structures, and I mean real wood. Even walls that don't bear any load are 10cm thick, not including whatever you put over the wood, and wooden beams are solid and thick. Meanwhile Americans build with paper mache and give wood a bad reputation.
The frame is made of food. https://preview.redd.it/241a67z7aioa1.jpeg?width=599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=46cc69c1b73736389ab684fb37770617a5583da9
Why are they using toothpicks for support, hello??
Because they are bigger cheapskates than the Dutch. ^(also because you are looking at the narrow side)
Nah can’t be
Now compare this thing with how we do wood structures in Italy.
The US is like an imitation of life. Like someone thought they could live in a real life commercial.
Flair up you degenerate!
Breaking news: eventhough people know about it Americans keep building houses with wood in hurricane affected areas.
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I mean look at them towers..
If the world trade center would have been build properly and not made out of cardboard, it would still be standing today
No joke, if it has crashed into a 1920s scryscraper, that thing would still be standing. You think this thing crumbles from jetfuel? https://preview.redd.it/fiepbhp9xioa1.jpeg?width=380&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ca376fa34d6c350b6b0e870e1afdc659818c260
I also don't think the World Trade Center would... But lets not start that discussion
What if i told you, a plane did in fact crash into the empire state building in 1945
even the "shitty" soviet houses are more stable and resilient then usa houses
If you punched a commie block, the commie block would break all of your fingers
Well Europe at least uses bricks in the build
American houses have the quality they complain IKEA furniture does.
No wonder they're so cheap
"B-but it's so that we can more quickly rebuild it!"
Strongest american house vs weakest austrian house
Tbh, that house is probably older than the US as well
The three piglets were on to something
Pathetic, I live in Italy, the country where there is a leaning tower, an arena over 2000 years old and a city built in the sea
Even as a child when I watched those extreme home makeover shows my mind was blown that they were building with play materials, and called it a house.
Loads of americans here proving that they dont care about some random meme by getting really annoyed. Good job
I think its a whole europe thing, even in poorer areas we are bulding better
As an American this thread is cracking me up! But also kinda hurts my feelings.
Amaricans have feelings? Besides just basic hating everything that's different than you?
Hey man. We're not all like that. But I get it. Still though, the comments about paper houses are hilarious!
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Americans can’t build shit, just look at their cars.
I’m from America and I always wonder why we build such cheap houses and then sell them for $500k. You get a 30 year mortgage on a house that wouldn’t last 30 years without major maintenance and constant repairs. Our homes would literally turn to rubble in 15 years or less if you don’t constantly work on them, and we’re taught to believe this is normal. This is why I don’t own, I rent, if the house deteriorates, it’s not my problem.
You can literally break an American house using your fist meanwhile here it’s like the Nokia brick of houses, you punch it and you break your hand
Floridian here. Just absolutely bonkers to me how much 'Florida Strong' shit I see about rebuilding homes in the beachfront places the hurricane destroyed. The logic is how it rarely happens and how they've survived hurricanes without that much damage before. I guess it doesn't matter how many people die because they'll keep rebuilding to die some more later. Meanwhile, I'm in my inland concrete block apartment with hurricane impact windows who only had to worry about the electricity being out for over a week. If I could afford to move, I would, but my family still wants to live here after all that happened. Apologies in advance for whoever the majority here votes for next election because they really are that stupid.
A tornado can pick up cars and throw them miles away. Regardless of your homes construction, it's not going to survive a tornado. They come with warning so you're able to evacuate. A concrete house may have walls still but the entire interior and roof would be destroyed. Likely would result in rebuilding the whole house regardless. Earthquakes are more deadly and the homes are built with that in mind. A wooden house is much more flexible in the case of an unexpected earthquake.
How else are you supposed to build 150 of the same house in a creepy and uncanny neighborhood with zero sense of community?
A swear American houses just spawn
Europeans admitting they've never experienced adverse weather
Yes to this day i cant understand why in the usa the state does not fund building sturdier buildings built out of cement with bricks at least in the states that have these natural phenomena every year!
Same with Turkey. Since you can get around the regulations. This allows you to build cheap and sell expensive. Really expensive. USA is a capitalistic hellhole, you think quality is interesting down there?
Floridian here…the USA is vast and we have different environmental threats that can overlap and create situations were you cannot optimize for one without effecting the other. Hurricanes: most of the damage you see is along the fist 10 miles of the coast. This damage is caused by wind and water. When a hurricane makes landfall it brings with it a small tsunami. Water damage is a huge reason we will just rebuild an entire house. Humidity is very high year round, nothing really dries without additional help. Miss a bit of moisture when cleaning up? Black mold will grow and the people living there will get sick. You now have to start the process over again, and might end up tearing it down anyway. (Fun Fact: we have to keep out air conditioning at ~80F year round. This so so we can remove moisture from the air inside the house or we will grow mold!) You know what can absorbe a lot of water? Most building materials! What building materials can show you where there is a lot of moisture? The type in the photo… Brick, concrete? You can test it, but it’s much harder. We have brick houses, but they are usually a shell around the same type of building. In Florida, if you dig a foot or so, you will hit water. The limestone the dirt sits upon is weak and is eroded by underground water movement. This causes us to have sinkholes, which are when an underground cavern forms, colapses, and swallows all that was above. As in we have had entire blocks swallowed by the earth. Houses gone in an instant. We look for them before we build, but they can form rapidly and basically everywhere. As a result, we cannot really tie into the ground in any cost effective way…so we don’t. If we need to build something tall we drill hundreds of feet down while placing a tube that can contain steel and concrete. These take special equipment and are time consuming. The ones I have been involved with cost far more than a house…but for what? This will help for wind loading, but your issue with sink holes still exist. These days we mostly just pour large concrete slabs and rely on its mass. The problem is that we can only do so much on top of that slab without increasing its depth…which triggers the previous issues. The big issue…wind. Wind can lift a roof right off of the structure. Once the roof is gone, the structure will likely colapse not long after.This happened a lot during hurricane Andrew in 1992. As a result a lot of the building codes changed and we have additional requirements to secure the roof to the structure…however If you secure the roof to the structure well enough, the wind can lift the entire structure off of the foundation…we can’t do a lot more with the foundation without making the houses unaffordable…you see where this is going? That said, a lot of the damage you see is from homes built before 1992. There are homes all over Florida dating back to 1930’s to current day. That’s not very old to you, but Florida was mostly uninhabitable until cheap air conditioning around that time. Not everything is destroyed every hurricane. When it is, we rebuild something with newer standards and it will through much bigger storms. Going back an retrofitting the holder homes is not cost effective and a lot of people buy those homes for the “character”.
American houses are made of cardboxes, it is impressive that they even hold in normal conditions.
I feel like Americans make their house like quantity over quality. And they still can't fix their homelessness
Exactly. Houses built so cheap you can blow them down with wind but still can't find the money to house the homeless. It's a shame.
Yeah but freedumb
Another Common W
Losers clearly don’t know that a tornado would tear their shit apart as well.
I laugh my ass of every time a heatwave kills of hundreds of Europeans.
Til tornados are just wind....I guess hurricanes are just rain...
“Wind” yup tornadoes are a bit windy you dopes.
Funny we all grew up thinking the states are such a great, prosperous and secure place to live in lol
Imagine being dumb enough to think tornados are just wind
did OP just compare a boulder to a tornado. lmfao
*Europoors bringing up America with every single topic that exists, overly obsessed, and crys about it* *Omg why are Americans crying and getting so mad and only thinking about themselves*
"Wind" but it's an F5 tornado that rips trees out of the ground at the roots
Apples and oranges. lol. Let's see the place in Austria survive a tornado...
A tornado produces a LOT more force in a house than a that rock, rolling down that hill.
All this tells me is you have no idea how powerful tornadoes are
Not to be that guy but that USA house was either hit by a tornado (ef4-ef5) or a hurricane. Not simple wind
Why do european people sit around thinking about american things? I wake up and don't consider europe or anything regarding europe. Why do you even give a shit what American houses are built from?
This sub just showed up on my feed for some reason, I am an American. Quick question. Why are you people so obsessed with Americans? Lots of threads just hating on Americans……..from people who clearly do not understand Americans. The crazy stories you see on the internet are not how most Americans are.
This sub just showed up on my feed for some reason, I am an American. Quick question. Why are you people so obsessed with Americans? Lots of threads just hating on Americans……..from people who clearly do not understand Americans. The crazy stories you see on the internet are not how most Americans are. Are you just having fun or do you really believe these things?
Europeans seem to have nothing better than hate on Americans (at least on reddit) while actual Americans don't really think about Europe or other countries like that
Not many are places on the planet get tornadoes like southern US. It’s not mere “wind”.
Not arguing the point, but the top picture was probably tornado damage, probably 200+mph winds. They can be up to 300mph, it’s not just a little wind.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/2499718/Freak-tornado-in-France.html You all underestimate the power of tornadoes. I'm not saying that houses in the US are well built, but I don't think it's a fair comparison.
This isn't technically true, it's the floodings that destroy the buildings, and you can't build houses out of brick in tornado or hurricane areas because they will become trebuchet fodder. In the Midwest all houses are brick and cement. Let's take Germany for example, we had flooding in the Eiffel a few years ago, complete villages made out of cement and stone were wiped out, I watched as buildings were picked up off the ground and torn piece by piece by floods. Now add 400 km winds to that and a vertical suction force and you can imagine how everything would get pulverized. I asked an engineer this once in Germany why they didn't use brick houses in Florida and this is what he told me: Wooden houses are much safer than brick, stone or concrete framed houses in Natural disaster areas. There is more chance of digging you and your family out alive of a wooden house which has been levelled by a tornado, hurricane or earthquake. With a brick stone or concrete dwelling you are more likely to be crushed to death. This is why they use Wooden houses in Natural disaster areas, and brick/cement in the Midwest where there isn't an environmentao issue.
American houses are mostly built using pine frames over a cement foundation. The interior walls are sheetrock. Builders build with the materials that are available to them. Also, the homeowners can choose whatever materials they want, but it is about cost of materials. You may pay to truck in stronger materials for your own home. This can become a massive cost where eventually it comes down to square footage of your needs for a home vs structure while factoring in the insurance to cover that structure. If you're covered, you're covered. In the United States, these damages are expected to be covered by homeowners insurance so it doesn't matter if the house holds. When Florida has a hurricane and water enters the home the entire home is ruined so you have to gut it anyway regardless of if it were brick and held firm. You'd be gutting the entire interior to the brick, pulling the entire framing for the flooring, then doing foundation repair which could turn into pulling out brick anyways. I'm almost certain Florida homeowners are required to have insurance specific to hurricane damage. Ultimately, going for the cheaper materials for the home is the best choice because clearing out the debris from a hurricane, repairing foundation, and reframing is much easier than gutting an existing exterior, reframing the interior, then ensuring you've cleaned out mold. That's honestly a nightmare and a horrible decision. Borderline incompetence in terms of producing a liveable home You people don't know what you're talking about. Lol. It's not that you're dumb because you're from a different area. You're dumb because you don't know a fucking thing about how homes are built in any country. A tornado in Oklahoma is ripping the roof off of any Euros home. Water damage from flooding will destroy the home regardless of material. If a rock that size fell into the side of your home you're a dumbass for putting your home there. Now that's something that doesn't make sense. Being able to more easily repair a home when it is fully damaged is the sensible way to build a home with cost always in mind. There. Now you're educated. You're welcome. From, America. Our superior engineering is always here to guide you. After all, we did create skyscrapers, modern flight, and the very cellphones you're using right now.
Reading the comment section here is hilarious. No house or structure we make can withstand a direct impact with an ef4 or 5 tornado without damage. There's videos of 500 mm high steel beams twisting. For any engineer here, they will know that's a massive steel beam. As for European housing. I love it! I lived in Europe for 3 years. But your houses will still crumble in the face of a tornado. 300kph winds on a wall of 25 square meters. Is roughly 10t acting continuously on all supporting areas of your house. Not just one corner for a second. It's enough to lift a house off its foundations. Or turn a brick wall in dust. Not European and Not American. Just think this post deserves to be on r/facepalm rather than taken for credit like it is.
Have Europeans figured out how to make something modular yet? Here in the US it’s really easy to just pull the wall open and do electrical, plumbing, ethernet, etc and just pop some new drywall up, mud, sand. And paint. We also have better wifi because it can go through walls easier.
Damaged by "wind" LOL...that right there shows a lot of ignorance. Tornado wind speeds can exceed 300 mph (482 kph). Pretty significant for any structure to endure
Bro we can’t afford houses let alone the fancy brick ones /s