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Design Concepts: Surviving the Post-Apocalyptic Scorched Earth

by Matthew Zuras on April 1, 2010 at 01:30 PM

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless.

Why should design always be bright, happy and utopian? We're facing some catastrophic times here, people! President Obama just signed a historic health care bill into law, and ex-Governor Sarah Palin is eyeing the Oval Office for next term. Both ends of the political spectrum are worried that either situation will initiate the End of Days. Lest we forget, we'll soon be upon 2012, when the Earth's core will spill out through every volcano and reduce what's left of our verdant forests to brittle desert. Okay, we're not sure all that's going to happen, but we thought we'd imagine what kind of designs would help us to survive the dinosaurs and dragons that will surely crop up after geological/nuclear/cosmic disaster. Read on, fellow Mad Maxes, and learn how to fight for your life end-of-civilization style.

Masked In Flight by Sruli Recht

Doesn't this mask just scream dystopic nightmare? When the zombie hordes start their mayhem, you'll need some protection from their undead germs. Designer Sruli Recht created the Masked In Flight series of Stormtrooper-like face coverings, presumably in response to a world worried by H1N1 and the like. This mask features a hinged eye guard atop its "single grill air-purifying respirator." If that doesn't protect you from sprays of gushing zombie blood, we're not sure what will.



Structural Skin by Chu Hyung Kwon

Zombies are a danger, but they're not too fast. (Don't believe the Hollywood 'Zombieland' and '28 Days Later' sprinting business; we think we're safe in assuming that death isn't like a meth binge.) What you really need to worry about are the marauding bands of road-pirates and atomically-super-sized lizards that will be crawling about your desert homeland. Your best bet is Chu Hyung Kwon's Structual Skin car, which is really more of a small tank. Originally designed for rally racers (which will all get chewed up by the Kraken in 2015), this off-road baby features a carbon/kevlar composite chassis with a flexible outer body. That'll help when you have to dodge crossbow arrows and megalizard claws, but the self-righting system and pit-climbing ability truly make the Structural Skin more than your average post-apocalyptic dune buggy.



Keg Apartments by Aristide Antonas

Eventually, you'll need somewhere to take root -- and what better place than an old tanker trailer? Think about it: it's mobile, it's huge, and it's protected in metal. Worried about locust swarms and acid storms? Not in this monster of a home. Aristide Antonas' Keg Apartment features a lofted sleeping area and sleek bathtub (assuming there's enough fresh H20 to still go around), so that you can be polished and refreshed when facing the modern wasteland. Who wants to battle an 18-foot cyborg assassin with bags under their eyes? No one, that's who.



Room Room by Encore Heureux and G Studio

But let's say that you need to leave the comfort of your Keg Apartment and go out on a contraband-hunting mission. You're going to sleep on your moped? We don't think so. Just hitch your space slug up to the front of the Room Room mobile structure, and roll into what remains of town, packing as many unclaimed MREs as you can find into this polygonal space. You can sleep in the top compartment, or flip it upside down for a longer stay. (We don't recommend the latter.) Oh, and if your space slug gets eaten by tyrannasauri while you're dozing, don't worry! You can always schlep your haul rickshaw-like, thanks to Room Room's design. But then again, if that happens, you have bigger problems to worry about.



Vital Skin by Sarah Taiho

After a long day of dispatching dragons on your way back to camp, you'll have worked up quite a thirst. Too bad all of the rainwater is full of nanospores that like to eat your medulla for lunch. So Sarah Taiho's Vital Skin water bottle, fortunately, is exactly what you need. A rubber skin sits over the top of the bottle, helping to keep out dirt and microbial nasties. When the rainfall starts, just flip the rubber tip over and it becomes an ingenious filtration system. (It also eliminates the need for an endless supply of pricey bottled water, which is what helped to bring on the End of Days in the first place.) As for food, we don't have too many tips. We hear that the uranium-rich soils in Utah make for amazing megacarrots, but you'll have to slip past the alien overlords to get there.

Tags: apocalypse, aristide antonas, AristideAntonas, armageddon, chu hyung kwon, ChuHyungKwon, design, design concept, DesignConcept, DesignConcepts, encore heureux, EncoreHeureux, features, g studio, GStudio, keg apartments, KegApartments, masked in flight, MaskedInFlight, room room, RoomRoom, sarah taiho, SarahTaiho, Srulirecht, structural skin, StructuralSkin, top, vital skin, VitalSkin

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