By Anupum Pant
Katrina, the 5th hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. It destroyed everything in its way, except hundreds of those oak trees which bore the full brunt of it. What made these trees survive such a massive storm has revealed to us that these trees are like whole living blueprints of how to survive hurricanes – inspiring hurricane resistant houses.
The trunks can flex in the wind, their branches flex and their leaves spiral into a Fibonacci sequence in the wind so as to bear the minimum damage. The whole family of oaks nearby have an underground connection which makes their foundation really networked and solid.
We sure have a lot to learn from nature.
Amazing things, trees. We truly couldn’t exist without them… for our air, our shelter, our food…every element of survival. Not surprising we can look to them to be safer during a natural disaster.
We really do have much to learn from the way the natural world deals with natural disaster, not to mention daily life. Taking elements and functions from nature and using them to innovate designs for humans goes back virtually to the beginning of time, like the aerodynamics of an airplane being modelled after bird flight (the simplest example, but nevertheless…).
Thank you, once again, for the always engaging information. Yours are the only e-mails besides those from my daughter that I truly always look forward to. Nicely done!