X-Flex Bomb-proof Wallpaper Could Save Your Life

X-flex bomb-proof wallpaper is one of the most incredible inventions I’ve seen. Imagine a kevlar-type wallpaper that makes rooms and buildings, nearly indestructible.

X-Flex is a new kind of wallpaper: one that’s quite possibly stronger than the wall it’s on. Invented by Berry Plastics in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this lifesaving adhesive is designed for use anyplace that’s prone to blasts and other lethal forces, like in war or natural-disaster zones, chemical plants or airports. To keep a shelter’s walls from collapsing in an explosion and to contain all the flying debris, you simply peel off the wallpaper’s sticky backing, apply the rollable sheets to the inside of brick or cinder-block walls, and reinforce it with fasteners at the edges. Covering an entire room can take less than an hour.

X-Flex bonds so tightly, it helps walls keep their shape after blast waves. Two layers are strong enough to stop a blunt object, like a flying 2×4, from knocking down drywall. During our tests, just a single layer kept a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall. The wallpaper’s strength and ductility is derived from a layer of Kevlar-like material sandwiched by sheets of elastic polymer wrap. The combination works so well that the Army is now considering wallpapering bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilians could soon start remodeling too—Berry Plastics plans to develop a commercial version next year.

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Emergency This Book Will Save Your Life

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, a new book by author Neil Strauss was released today. The book follows the “lessons learned” by Strauss as he spent several years researching individual emergency preparedness and what to do in a worst-case scenario.

Terrorist attacks. Natural disasters. Domestic crackdowns. Economic collapse. Riots. Wars. Disease. Starvation.

What can you do when when there is no one to turn to, no one to help…. You’re on your own in a major crisis or emergency?

You can learn to be self-sufficient and survive without the system.

**I’ve started to look at the world through apocalypse eyes.** So begins Neil Strauss’s harrowing new book: his first full-length worksince the international bestseller The Game, and one of the most original-and provocative-narratives of the year.

After the last few years of violence and terror, of ethnic and religious hatred, of tsunamis and hurricanes–and now of world financial meltdown–Strauss, like most of his generation, came to the sobering realization that, even in America, anything can happen. But rather than watch helplessly, he decided to do something about it. And so he spent three years traveling through a country that’s lost its sense of safety, equipping himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future.

It’s one man’s story of a dangerous world–and how to stay alive in it.

I’ll review the book within the next couple of weeks and possibly give away a few copies in an upcoming promotion on the Homeland Security Response Network site.

We’ve also added a discussion in the forum.

Available at Amazon.com