A brainstorm for survival

That ‘ball’ is the creation of a startup called Survival Capsule, based near Seattle. Company president Julian Sharpe is an aerospace engineer. He got the idea for the product lying awake one night while spending the weekend at a beach town in Oregon.

“I thought, ‘Well, what happens now if a tsunami comes?'” he recalled. “I just thought it’s going to be a disaster because I’ve got four sleeping kids. If it comes at night, the lights are going to be out. You don’t necessarily know where you’re going. You can’t see the wave, how far it is. So I thought it would be great if I could design something to throw the family in and ride it out. That’s where it all started.”

While the inspiration for the product was tsunami survival, Sharpe said his company’s capsules are now drawing additional interest from people worried about hurricanes or typhoons.

“Rather than evacuate from hurricanes and be 200 miles away while the hurricane decides it wants to go in a different direction, leaving their home vulnerable — or business vulnerable — to looting, they want to stay at home and have a tsunami capsule as a last line of defense.”[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]The cost of peace of mind

The two-person survival capsule starts at $13,500. A four-person model lists for $17,500. The company’s initial sales have been to Japanese customers – eight capsule kits so far. Sharpe anticipates local governments in Japan could become a major customer base, although the company has two competitors in that market who are offering similar-looking survival pods. Survival Capsule has also held initial talks to license its design for fabrication in Indonesia, which might produce a lower cost for customers in developing nations.

Source: VOA

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  capsule, escape pd, invention, julian sharpe, Science, survival, tsunami