re: What would've been the worst tornado to take a direct hit in living in a solid brick house

Joplin was bad enough to drive a wooden post through concrete.

It might not be the worst, but anything that level and above is not something anyone wants to have to deal with at all.

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I designed that structure. It’s right next to the school now. It’s solid concrete with a frick-ton of rebar in it. 25’ deep anchors on the foundation. Each module weighs over 80,000lbs.

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Just for kicks what wind loading did you use, both mph and psi for lateral loads and uplift? I'd imagine it being a school the importance factor and ASCE 7 pushed the factor of safety pretty high.

Joplin is an old city with some impressive buildings from its mining days. A number of the homes, buildings destroyed weren’t just wood framing, vinyl siding. Rock, limestone block and brick construction structures completely gone. The hospital was steel and concrete construction. Other storms might have been worse but most brick homes didn’t survive a direct hit of the Joplin tornado.

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don't remember where it happened, but a few years ago an F4 leveled everything in an area except 1 house that didn't even lose any shingles

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Looks like somebody prayed.

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Joplin was bad enough to drive a wooden post through concrete.

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The granulated debris from Smithville was a thing of horror films. You have to understand that tornado was at the upper threshold of all damage indicators used for rating tornadoes, and it was moving between 55-60mph on average with its top speed being over 60mph at times.

It ground plywood, 2x4s, telephone poles, trees, cars, asphalt......everything into a powder so fine that concrete less than a year old was worn away, not sucked up (though some was, even slab foundations were lifted into the storm), but worn smooth with some parts taken to the dirt underneath, as if that new concrete had been around for 100 years or more.

Homes fortunate enough not to have been completely swept away looked as though they were sandblasted with paint worn away and tiny debris embedded in siding, driven deep into it.

The forward speed of that tornado meant that it did that complete damage in a matter of 3, maybe 5 seconds. Think about that......all of that stuff gone, completely gone in......

1 Mississippi
2 Mississippi
3 Mississippi

The fury of Nature in those brief seconds is unfathomable to me. It is an example of what the atmosphere is capable of when literally all parameters are......perfect.

Only thing surviving 300 mph winds is going to be solid steel or rebar enforced concrete walls. Stone or brick can withstand F3's but not much higher.

A lot of European homes are built with concrete walls. They might be able to survive depending on construction. We don't build with concrete here because the American motto is fast and cheap.

A nuclear power plant is your safest (above ground) place to be if you decide to take an EF5 hit. Those reactors are essentially bomb shelters. 6 foot thick reinforced concrete walls.

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A nuclear power plant is your safest (above ground) place to be if you decide to take an EF5 hit. Those reactors are essentially bomb shelters. 6 foot thick reinforced concrete walls.

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Some of the above-ground safe room structures built to high standards can survive EF5s these days. I'd have to go looking for the pic, but one of the recent high end EF4s in Arkansas hit a house with one of those shelters. The roof was gone, one wall was gone and the rest were collapsed. The safe room that doubled as a closet was still standing intact with everything inside untouched.

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was traveling over 100mph

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This seems like an exaggeration

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If I was building new construction these days I'd put in a safe room / shelter. Reinforced concrete walls/roof with a deeper foundation.

Still need a door though and some ventilation.

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One of my neighbors did this when they built an addition onto their home. They built using FEMA plans and made it into a walk-in closet. You wouldn't be able to tell it was there if it weren't for the ridiculously heavy door. I have a copy of the complete plans that they gave me kicking around somewhere. They're legit when done right.

FYI: You can register the exact location of your shelter/safe room with your local/county EMA and FEMA so that there is a record of its existence in case nothing is recognizable and you wind up trapped.

There was one hit Greensburg,KS it wiped out 1/2 the town. You could draw a line where the town was from where it used to be. Mikes of streets and driveways with no structures. Then at a red light on the other side of the street Greensburg was there like nothing happened. I don’t remember the year but I’m going to say 2006 or 2007 ish.