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Comment by tdaltonc | Hacker News Reader

Lots world wide could be fitted with a standard socket so that your container house could be (1) taken from the ship, (2) put on a truck, (3) fitted on to a lot.

Sockets could be stacked to create medium density housing. You could relocate your house to any city on earth with the right socket.

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Considering how many containers are lost per year (thousands), I wouldn't risk my house on that chance.

EDIT: More like ~546 containers per year from an industry survey, out of 120 million moved in a year. Not quite as good as commercial air flight, but not as bad I was thinking.

Thousands out of how many containers? Hurricane Sandy destroyed thousands (about 2000) of homes in Long Island but people are still eager to live there.

Thousands out of more than 120 million container trips per year, and the loss of containers was primarily from two large accidents. http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=17474

Your container may be safer than your house, and the financial solutions is the same: insure it.

Thanks, I stand corrected. The odds aren't too bad in that case. Hell, now I am intrigued by the prospect too.

Always a good time to plug cargolaw.com. They have an incredible collection of container ship disasters. You just have to be able to withstand the awful website design.

Here are some good examples:

http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_fort.html

http://www.cargolaw.com/2000nightmare_1_oocl_ameri.html

http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html

That reminds me of one of the short fiction works that was posted to Kuro5hin.org back before the site fell apart -- the story was called T.E.U. (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/3/19455/41933), and was based on a wealthy guy who traveled by having his container-house moved from place to place.

See also Clifford Simak's _The Werewolf Principle_, where mobile (and semi-sentient) houses are the norm and people think that old-fashioned static houses are a crazy idea. What happens if you fall out with your neighbours? What if you get bored with the view? What happens if the fishing goes bad?

You would also need standard connectors to local utilities like power/water/plumbing. And you'd need to secure all your stuff to the floor or walls whenever you move. And of course you'd travel separately from your container, because being stuck inside a stack of containers for two weeks is not fun. But it might work for some people.

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