Survival Boot Camp Class of 2006

RISE UP AND BE RECOGNIZED!
Have you incorporated some level of preparedness or sustainability into your world that might be of interest or inspiration to others? If so, send us a picture of yourself or your group and a paragraph or two about it. If we post your story in the gallery (and we probably will), we'll send you a copy of PREPAREDNESS NOW!  Join the PROCESS announcement list to keep up with PROCESS and PREPAREDNESS NOW! news and events.

July 6, 2006

Even a Six-Year-Old Can Build a Geodesic Dome
NY, NY

I have been a Buckminster Fuller acolyte since I was a teenager. I even had a chance to meet him at one of his lectures at Columbia University in NYC. To me, he was my oasis of logic in a desert of human stupidity. I pored through practically everything he ever wrote, astounded by not only his insight into the hidden operational dynamics of our universe, but our own personal similarities. So, it was only natural that after my son Amen was born in 1998, I couldn’t wait until he was old enough for me to pass some of that information on to him. When he was nearly four, I took him to a city park with a geodesic dome monkey bar. I noticed that he was fascinated by it. When I brought him home, he asked if I could buy him one. I told him no, but he continued to insist that I purchase a dome at our local Toys R’ Us. I saw this as my opportunity to introduce him to Dr. Fuller’s wonderful world of tensegrity and I ran with it – and so did Amen. He has always had a tremendous gift for mechanics and math, so he easily sopped up everything I told him like a sponge. He soon learned how to build small tabletop geodomes and hasn’t stopped building them since from wood and newspaper (as seen in the pictures displayed).

Amen believes that Geodomes are the perfect structure and that all other home designs are obsolete and wasteful. He tells me all the time “why would people want to live in a building that can be destroyed by earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes when they can build a geodesic dome that can’t?” I tell him I don’t know. He then says “that’s so stupid” I tell him “welcome to planet Earth,” and he always laughs. His goal is to grow up and live in an underground dome of his own creation that is earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, and atomic bomb proof. At the rate he is going, I’m certain that he will. Bucky Fuller’s legacy lives on!

By Aton Edwards
Director, International Preparedness Network
www.readyforanything.org

Aton Edwards is author of the newly released Process book, Preparedness Now! An Emergency Survival Guide for Civilians and Their Families, and is the father of Amen Edwards.

SEE ALL ENTRIES IN: Survival Boot Camp Class of 2006