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Where to live:

No matter what, you have to check the criteria for "best" and "worst" places to live. Most folks are neither self-reliant, nor survivalists. They tend to fixate on things that not only have little or no importance to us, but sometimes on things that we want nothing at all to do with.

City-Data.com We've collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities as we could. We have tens of thousands of city photos not found anywhere else, hundreds of thousands of maps, satellite photos, stats about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment...), geographical data, state profiles, crime data, housing, businesses, birthplaces of famous people, political contributions, city government employment, weather, hospitals, schools, libraries, houses, airports, radio and TV stations, zip codes, area codes, user-submitted facts, similar cities list, comparisons to averages... If you ever need to research any city for any reason, from considering a move there to just checking where somebody you know is staying, this is the site for you.

America's Safest Places-Rank Order

US Hazard Data

FloodSmart.gov- Flood Zones Flood zones are land areas identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Each flood zone describes that land area in terms of its risk of flooding. Everyone lives in a flood zones - it's just a question of whether you live in a low, moderate or high risk area. Visit "What's Your Flood Risk?" and enter your address into the risk assessment tool to find out your flood risk.

Seismic Building Zone Map of the United States

SurvivalRing > Civil Defense Now > Potential US Nuclear Targets Don't be fooled - if you scroll down past the sales pitch, (hey, ya gotta make a living... ) there's great info below. See also: Nuclear Targets in North America

A Safe Place Is Usually A Cheaper Place. Ill Show You Some Choice ... [Caution! Watch out for pay schemes!] There are safe places to live that offer a better lifestyle than you have today. Most of them have a lower cost of living than the less safe places where most Americans live. I'll help you identify them. This site also shows you how to make a living in them.

MONEY Magazine: Best Places to Live 2006 

The Most Conservative and Liberal Cities in the United States

Siting a House on a Lot:

Siting a House for Rooms With a View - New York Times To create the most view-friendly topography for siting the houses, inventive owners, architects and builders may sculpt the land to fashion a flat plane or raise up a portion of the lot with fill. Others devise unusual house designs that aim for a beautiful panorama from every room. They may put the bedrooms downstairs and the living area up, and they may build in towers, turrets or expansive glass elements.

Matching Your Home Plan to Your Location There are seemingly endless decisions to make when looking for a house plan: the style, number of stories, and how many bedrooms and baths, just to begin. But because available, affordable land today often means a less-than-perfect building site, it is also important to find the right plan to fit your lot. Choosing the right plan and siting it properly can mitigate problems and save on energy costs.

Selecting a Site for Your Passive Solar Home [PDF] A good passive solar house requires more than just a good design and quality construction. It also requires that the plan and the site be considered together during the design phase to assure that they work together to optimize solar performance. The best-designed solar house plan will not work unless it is placed properly on a building site which allows solar access. Similarly, a lot with clear solar access provides little advantage to the building placed upon it unless the building is designed and oriented to take advantage of the site's solar potential. See also: SITING AND SOLAR ACCESS

Siting a Natural Building Selecting a building site is one of he most critical design decisions you will ever make. The wrong choice can have long-lasting negative effects that are difficult (or impossible) to mitigate. Many of the characteristics that most strongly determine what it will be like to live in a place are not immediately obvious during a quick visit. To find the best building site, you need to spend a lot of time on the land through different seasons and in extreme weather conditions.

Solar in the City By siting the house along the north side of the 45-by-100-foot lot, all the living space is oriented to the south, for maximum daylight and solar heat in the winter. To keep the scale of the home modest, they designed the line of the gabled roof to cascade back from a front porch, to a slightly higher first-floor roof, then to the taller second-floor roof.

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