It’s important to understand that even the best built house is no match to a really big earthquake, especially if large ground faults develop directly under the house. Having said that, one can expect to withstand a 8.5/9 magnitude quake without serious damage. If you look around all codes related to earthquake safety and building are wrong and inadequate. Those guys still don't understand the forces involved in a large earthquake and that's why when the next big one hits the bridges will fall again, even those built a few years ago, after been destroyed by a medium earthquake and many buildings and lives will be lost again. It's a shame to see the establishment playing stupid games, wasting precious money and resources and contributing to so much pain and suffering. It takes us 5 minutes to look at any bridge built out there and explain to anyone with a brain that it's poorly designed and will fail in a large earthquake. WHAT'S THEIR EXCUSE? Why do we buy into such incompetence and mediocrity? WE ARE NOT IN THE BRIDGE BUILDING BUSINESS BUT HERE IS SOME FREE ADVICE TO THE " EXPERTS".

BASICS OF BRIDGE BUILDING:

Overlapping should be 3 feet minimum on intermediate overlaps and be limited; all end overlaps must be even bigger. Intermediate supports should be wider than bridge and built as an "A". All intermediate supports must allow floating, as bridge should float on 2 axis and the ends must have shock absorbing material as bumper/ limiter. Yes this simple, this is the only way that regardless of the quake size the bridge will stay up or sustain minimum damage. Shame on all of you that allow or participate in such a rip-off.

It’s important to build the house as compact as possible, so that a force applied to any point of the foundation would lift the whole house, otherwise one would have to build joints in a way that they will automatically return to the original position after the quake. Our pyramid been built with a center shaft and using the triangle has the structural base, is so strong that no quake can destroy it. Even if it's thrown in the air, moved around or dropped into a ground fault it will stay in one piece to protect the occupants. Our dome, castle, sphere are built to the same standards and with center shafts and one piece construction any of them will withstand up to a 8.5/9 earthquake. In our sphere/dome the design has an interior skeleton based on the # shape, what will prevent the dome or sphere from squashing like it happens to a ball when hit

Steel would make a safer house, [because steel will yield and flex without failing] especially if one builds it with bearing walls, not post and beam, so a connection failure wouldn’t compromise the structure LIKE IN THE TWIN TOWERS. Even if it wasn't an earthquake, the structure failed because the ridiculous post and beam construction, that was not only undersized, it was also inadequate. When several columns failed, the floors below were not designed to carry the extra weight. A bearing wall construction with central shaft wouldn't have collapsed and the loss of life would have been a fraction of what it was; unfortunately, the same people keep on designing the same junk, putting the building's appearance and other stupid reasons ahead of safety.

All exterior covers should be ¼ inch steel plate minimum.

The foundation could be steel, also making the house function similar to a strong mobile home; in this case serious anchoring footings have to be used.

If concrete is used the bulding must be designed has a one piece structure, with high PSI concrete and dual rebar layer. The new "flexible" concrete ads a new safety factor to concrete and one must base the design on what would happen in a worst case scenario and design it 2x stronger. One interesting quake protection idea is the floating system where the building or house sits on blocks; this system has some merit as long it's designed in a way that it can't "walk". The best thing about this system, is that even if the ground surface is altered in any way or a open fault opens under it, one can bring the building to level or even move it, by either manipulating the blocks or the lock in place system. The system will require some form of anchoring, especially if the building is tall and narrow. Again, here the advantage of the pyramid shape where no wind or shaking will be able to topple it.

One could use other materials and methods, however, at this time we feel that the above combination will not only offer good protection in the case of a earthquake but also satisfy the other safe-house requirements. At the same time this is easy to build, easily available, and cost competitive with the other "CUTE" disposable materials.