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Comment by avereveard | Hacker News Reader

> If I had an unlimited budget

at some point on the price scale you can just build a titanium cast for a house and pour molten rocks in, probably a basalt. what's the yield strength of igneous rocks? maybe the roof need to be arched.

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So, a cave in a basalt mountain then.

I like your thinking. ;)

What are the load-baring capabilities of a Basalt Cave during the Apocalypse?

/MontyPython style...

Is that a European basalt cave, or African?

Titanium is quite expensive though; a house made from titanium likely would be broken up and stolen for the scrap value.

Titanium would be the mould of the cast, you remove it once the basalt set

An artist friend of mine back in the `90's made a series of sculptures, which they intentionally created to last for hundreds of years, out of plywood and bondo since it has no scrap resale value :) Each sculpture was also fitted to it's own storage crate, so that it could just be packed up and forgotten.

I was thinking about this when the lava firehose was going in Hawaii. I imagined a big metal shell that you could rotate under it to make a bunch of giant house sized domes really fast.

Is that something that we've actually done at any kind of scale?

On a global scale, probably, yes... but I'm either 1 or 0 correct.

Many cold war bunkers are kind of like this, but using rock that's already in-situ: start with solid rock (either in a mountain or in bedrock), remove some of it, in the cavity add linings of concrete, copper and steel to enhance properties as desired (copper for better EM shielding).

Not the same, but the Pyramids of Giza are essentially huge rock houses. I don't think they provide very modern amenities though :)

Well, we've done it with concrete tents [1].

It seems plausable you could begin with that kind of shelter and use that as a basis for further reinforcement.

[1] https://www.concretecanvas.com/cc-shelters/

Maybe tungsten molds instead?

yes, sorry, got the terms switched around apparently

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