one of the better ideas i've seen.i have a couple old hard hats,the ones with the brim,stuck away someplace.i'll dig them out and hang them on the inside of the somewhat reinforced storage space under the basement steps.
last summer a rare twister went thru North Minneapolis so here in the South end of the city i guess we could take a hit.
the plan is to pull the trash cans of dog food out of this tiny room and pull the sleeping bags,i have many in stuff sacks,around us and hang on.
basements seem sort of "iffy" to me,gas and water pipes and a lot overhead to fall in but that the best i can think of for shelter.
by the way i was so "what could happen" when the sirens sounded for that storm i stood in the back yard taking videos of the nasty looking sky------

I thought the issue of helmets and tornadoes seemed like a random topic that popped up of nowhere, but I guess not.

Here's a short May 3, 2012 statement by the CDC on helmets and tornadoes.

Basically, they say that there isn't any research that shows that helmets help, but it can't hurt--but only if you don't waste time finding the helmet instead of seeking more appropriate shelter.

Helmet

I've had a lot of concussions. So I have a personal multi sport helmet by Pro Tec. One of their skate helmets with lots of air vents due to my climate. I've worn it quite a bit in all sorts of adventuring from bouldering, to atv's, to horseback riding. B/c of my amount of concussions and the thought that the more you have the easier they are to receive (a theory I subscribe to), I even wear it when climbing a ladder.

Recently Pro Tech started selling a line of military helmets that provide rails for lighting and NVG. As a GOPRO user I may pick up one of these for a more stable camera platform.

I'm curious--for someone with your history, did someone like a neurologist ever recommend that you wear a helmet for more than the usual helmet-wearing activities?

Helmet technology is getting better and better all the time. Unfortunately, until we develop a "brain helmet," we all still face the problem of a soft brain slamming into the inside of our hard skulls. Actually, I guess a lot of effort nowadays is also going into developing sensors which help people gauge if they've hit their heads hard enough to be worried and take additional steps, like whether deciding to take a high school player out of a football game, for example, even though they may not show obvious signs of a concussion. The sensor is the easy part. The hard part is correlating that data with what's going on with your brain since we still have a lot to learn about what is happening in there.

I can't see spending a lot of money on a "tornado helmet". Sure, a helment would be better than no helmet, but how much would it really add to your protection? Similar to wearing a Nomex suit every time you get in to drive your car (worn in preparation for an accident and fire). It's true that Nomex is better than no-Nomex, but other than race car drivers, this is not a safety preperation you normally see being done.

If you can find an inexpensive helmet - a used construction hard hat maybe - I'd say go for it. Spending a lot of money on a helmet seems like a waste though. Tornados uproot trees and throw them through houses. They pick up cars and throw them across the field. I don't think a helmet is going to do much for you if you find yourself flying with the trees and cars. Inside, maybe it would help against falling debris. But I think taking that expensive helmet money and building a cinder block cubby in your basement would be better protection for your dollar.

I think it would be more reasonable course would be to use the helmet you already have acquired for your favorite activity - motorcycling, football, climbing, whitewater canoeing, etc. and press it into service during a tornado. It shouldn't hurt you and it should increase your margin of safety. That is not to say that you won't be impacted in such a way that no kind of helmet would allow you to survive. That is always the case in activities in which helmet use is already fairly common.

Over the years I have become a habitual helmet wearer in two of my favorite pstimes in which I originally did not wear any protective headgear - climbing and cycling. i wouldn't ride my bike five feet today without putting on a helmet - same policy for climbing/caving situations. For me the shift is a result of treating and witnessing a lot of head trauma and realizing how many lives would have been saved by proper headgear.

I don't spend much time in tornado country, so the tornado-headgear issue is basically moot for me. I imagine a helmet would be useful in an earthquake, but I would never have any advance notification.

It will be interesting to see what results future research might produce for a tornado helmet - versatile, effective, and reasonably priced......

My daughter is big time into climbing. As a birthday gift a few years back we bought her a good quality climbing helmet. We now find out that if her belayer does not have a helmet, she gives hers to them. Good logic. If you lose your belayer, you're in a world of hurt. But that leaves her exposed if she loans her helmet. So now we're off to buy a second helmet for her to give to her lesser-equipped climbing buddies should the need arise. Most of her climbing partners DO have their own helmets, but not 100% of them (the old "poor college student excuse"!) We just bought her a new rope for her birthday this year. Wow, now THOSE are expensive! I had no idea. But even that rope cost pales in comparison to this newfangled "trad rack" that she wants. Ouch! And I don't even think that "trad" ("traditional") is quite what I would have called traditional back in my day. We had chocks and nuts. Now they have these expensive cable-springy-geary-cam things that look like something off of Star Wars. It used to be so much cheaper to climb back when I was young and doing it...

You post gives me some warm memories. My first climbing rope cost all of $20 - even then that was fairly cheap. Pitons were a dollar or less, carabiners were two bucks, and I considered climbing and backpacking fairly inexpensive pursuits.

One consolation for the higher gear of today is that it is considerably more effective. Those Star War thingies provide much more solid protection than the pitons of yesterday. They can be installed and removed more rapidly, with less damage to the rock. I will bet your daughter climbs at a level of difficulty that didn't even exist back when - that would be anything over 5.9, maybe 5.10, on today's scale - which is essentially just where things are beginning to get challenging for today's young lions.

hikermor -

Ever seen one of these (see picture link below)? This is what I'd call "trad gear". My old rapelling and belaying device (I still have it!) Made by MSR, called the "Longhorn Ring". Clip into the loop, pull a bight of rope through the loop and then throw the bight around the horns. Worked like a Figure 8, but you didn't have to unclip from it to remove the rope like you would have to with a Figure 8 (just pull that bight back over the horns). And you could quickly tie off by throwing a wrap or two of the unweighted rope end horizontally around the horns and then just let the rope go.

http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/1034/imag0075dr.jpg

I thought it was a really neat and clever device. Never saw many of them around though...