Quite awhile ago I bought a 'book' from one of those publishers that aren't afraid to sell things that aren't PC. IIRC it was way before 9-11 and nowhere near as many people thought they'd need to 'really' prepare for a disaster. The book's title is The Ultimate Do It Yourself Survival Shelters Construction Manual. The ISBN is 1-886774-02-1 You can find it (as of now) on amazon. Just type in the ISBN # in the search box. I think there were 4 from private buyers. Price about $20. Barns and Noble didn't havi it when I checked. I haven't seen it in many places.

It is written from a time when we were scared of a full scale nuclear war and people were building bomb shelters. It goes into incredible detail about everything you need to do to build (or have built) a survival shelter. Now I've seen newscasts about shelters to survive F5 tornados and Cat 5 hurricanes. I'm not an engineer but these things are designed the way the newscasts said the F5/Cat 5 shelters should be built. Steel reinforced concrete with rebar going to the ceiling slab with concrete poured into the cinderblocks! The book also shows 'underground shelters (not for NO obviously) but for those who could do it.

The book goes into how to get your permits and how to word them so people wouldn't know it was a shelter. For example they said to label it as a pool equipment shed (or something like that) so that if anyone looked in the public records of the building permits, it wouldn't tip them off as to how well it was built.

I'm thinking of going this route for us here in SW Florida. Not that we'd stay in it during a Cat 3,4 or 5, but as a piece of mind if we get caught off guard or if there was some reason that we couldn't EVAC.

Seems like a good idea, though in FLA, you'll have to account for flooding.

TRO