PODS-Portable On Demand Storage- has a new product that could be of great help to people after their homes are destroyed and they need a place to stay. The Emergency Shelters look just like one of the company’s regular PODS, expect that it can house five people for months.
After the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 people were moving into their regular PODS, so the company decide to look into making one that people could really live in. The result is an air-conditioned 8×16 foot storage container that feels like a motor home on the inside. They come complete with a generator, refrigerator, a bathroom and all the comforts of home. They can be trucked in and dropped just about anywhere, like a normal POD.
In the dark ages of the fifties, there was an oddball genius named Buckminster Fuller who designed weird things and was obsessed with the weight of buildings. He was a genius, but he kind of lived in his own little world. He is most famous for inventing the Geodesic Dome, which did not quite take over the world, but is in use all over it. One of his goals was to create portable habitats, so that people could have a home within hours of a disaster. His plan involved air-dropping his geodesic domes into areas where they could be used as hard tents until something better could be built. Expect for some old footage, I don’t think these little houses of his ever showed up anywhere.
So I had the think of old Bucky Fuller when I read this story. There is a kind of sci fi element to the idea of the PODS emergency shelters. Regular PODS are filled with stuff and trucked back to a warehouse, where they are neatly stacked and seem to go on forever. What if the portable houses were neatly stacked? Isn’t that what some of the really cheapo motels in Japan are like? Motels could add rooms for a busy weekend and take rooms away when it is slow. Maybe there could there be PODS Prison units? Or the components of a homeless shelter? And if you have a Kato Katelin in your life, just drop a POD and let him crash for a couple of nights or years.
The PODS People are talking to the government about having a supply on hand for the next disaster, so that people will at least have somewhere to sleep. After all, that was really Bucky’s vision, everyone having a roof over their heads. And I’m guessing Bucky would have loved a building light enough to put on a truck.
