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Safe House: Zombie-proof and stylish to boot

In safe mode, this "concrete monolith" has you completely protected from hordes of brain-munching undead.

Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
Tim Hornyak
2 min read
Doomsday charm: The Safe House has a drawbridge and retracting walls to keep intruders out. KWK Promes

It was just over a year ago that the CDC told the public how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, tongue firmly in cheek.

Today, it ain't so funny. Following the stunning case in Miami, Fla., of a drug-addled man eating another man's face, there have been reports of horrifying cannibalistic crimes in Texas and Maryland.

Naturally, there's a Google map of these and other incidents foretelling zombie doomsday.

Ridiculous? Yes. But even the CDC weighed in on it, with spokesman David Daigle reassuring everyone that there's really no such thing as zombies.

Oh but there are more things in heaven and earth, CDC, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

That's why this home by Polish architect Robert Konieczny of KWK Promes looks very inviting just now. And it's a tad cozier than the apocalypse-proof condos in a missile silo that I wrote about the other day.

The Safe House has walls one and a half feet thick and was built in 2009 in a small village outside Warsaw. An unlikely spot for a zombie uprising, perhaps, but maybe zombies like such bucolic farmland.

Konieczny's clients wanted security above all, and the most striking feature of the house is its ability to transform. Part of the exterior walls, 7 feet high and up to 72 feet long, can retract from the driveway area, where they form a protective courtyard, to seal off the lower floor. Check it out in the vid below.

Hunker down in the zombie-proof Safe House (pictures)

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An anodized aluminum shutter 45 feet across rolls down to protect the rear of the house, while 9-foot-tall shutters swing shut upstairs. There's even a drawbridge that can cut off access from the roof terrace above the adjacent indoor swimming pool.

"The whole building is a concrete monolith, while its mobile parts -- for the sake of considerable size -- are light steel trusses filled with mineral wool. As a result, the building is perfectly insulated when closed," KWK Promes says. "The whole house as well as the mobile elements are clad with cement-bonded particleboard."

I'm not sure that would keep out an army of determined zombies, but it could keep them at bay until help arrives.

Provided you aren't the last human left alive.