I got my start in the construction business when I was 13 and my Uncle Joe hired me to help him build a nuclear fallout shelter.
These days we would call it a bunker, but this was 30 years ago, when a lot of people were terrified about the eventuality of nuclear war.
Looking back, neither of us had the experience or the intelligence to build a structure capable of withstanding a nuclear bomb. That said, Uncle Joe paid me five bucks an hour, so I made money and I also got an education that would help me for the rest of my life. First we had to dig, and we spent days on end digging up the entire back yard. Then we needed to start on the floor and the walls, but before we could pour cement we needed to put down the rebar rods, and connect everything with double loop wires ties. Uncle Joe explained to me that the cement was not enough, that it needed to have rebar rods supporting it, and the wire ties were used to bind all the rebar together into a grid. This spider’s web of rebar rods and double loop ties would anchor the cement, and make it ten times stronger. Decades later I still remember that job vividly, and I still use the same approach to forming the rebar rods and securing them with double loop wire ties. There have been countless innovations in the world of construction, but it is still hard to bear good old fashioned rebar and wire.
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