Well friend you have brought up a subject that I am very aware of. I live in central Oklahoma. I was here when we got the big May 3rd 1999 series of tornados.

Two things saved people's lives.

1) Weather news awearness. IF the local weather people are good, and you have a radio or TV and are watching the situation go down, you may be able to side step it coming in. Then again you may have to go to #2. The weather may just be too bad to move away from its path. Heavy winds, heavy rain, debris all over the roads. Not a good situation to be driving around in a Honda Civic with two little girls in car seats.

2) Get your family below ground with good overhead cover. You may die if you do not do this.

I am a looser as I have no below ground cover at my house.

My plan right now is to litteraly climb under the house with the kids and shelter against the west side cement footing. I plan on covering us in a sleeping bad to keep the dirt out of the kids faces. Tornado's generally move west to east here.

When I do get underground cover, my family miles away from me will know about it. The neighbors next to you may be gone or in the shelter with you IF you were trapped in it from debris.

Links to what it could be like:

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/news/may3rd/outbreak.html

http://www.rogerbondy.com/56781-tornado-path-moore-oklahoma.htm

Good point, might have to reconsider, but then I also have tools to dig out in the shelter as well.

OK, you're weird. How much fun would it be to survive a tornado, only to be trapped in your little shelter by what used to be your house, and slowly starve to death because no one knew you were there???

Do you have a porta potty, or other means of "going"???

Slow thinker that I am, I can not imagine why in the world the goverment would give a damn who has a little storm shelter and who doesn't...

OBG

Sure do, I have a chemical toilet,you use a certain paper in it also as well as a plain old port a potty I bought at Wally World.

No way I would ever tell the government, an earlier post brought to my attention the need to tell someone besides a trusted neighbor so I told a friend that lives a couple towns away. As far as the digging part I have ax's, shovels, picks, as far as any backhoes or something similar I think I will take my chances.

For a no-kidding tornado shelter I would recommend you check out www.monolithic.com. Yes, the concrete domes are butt-ugly. However, FEMA has rated them as "near absolute" protection. That is the highest rating they have. I'm serious, check it out. I am actually considering building a house using this construction technique.

If I didn't already have one in my basement, I might consider them.
I think for someone without a basement they would be ideal. Before I built the one in my basement I considered building one outside in the yard then building a shed over it to hide it from curious neighbors, I had also considered building one in my (huge) garage, but the basement seemed like a logical choice for a lot of reasons.

Put one in the yard and call it a shed. If you put things in lockers ("storage cabinets"), they would be none the wiser.
Check out the MarketPlace on their site. The Eco-Shells are the non-insulated versions.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Monolithic, INC or any of its subsidiaries. I'm just a "dome nut".