conuly

What made castles useful was ten-foot thick stone walls. What we tend to think of as "cool" are mock-castles made long after the real ones fell into disuse. They're more like Fantasyland than castles.

Underground houses are cool, and hard to attack, and can be made resistant to light artillery, which is fairly easy to make in a decent machine shop. So yes, it'll be with us after any "end of the world" scenario I can think of; it seems likely that any given weapons technology is what we'll lose *last*, regrettably.

Subs are cool, but also expensive, difficult to make, and dangerous. I'm working with a Tall Ships program right now, and a big sailing vessel looks pretty good to me. No worries about fuel, for one thing. But it's not for nothing that boats have a centuries-long reputation as "wood-lined holes in the water into which you throw money." In order to be economically feasible long-term, we'd have to develop the skills-base to repair it ourselves, and this goes way past what I learned in wood shop those many years ago.

Storms *are* likely to get worse, but at this level of discussion I'd have to know more about what kind of doomsday you're anticipating in order to be able to talk about it sensibly.

best,

Joel