Sixteen years ago Israel decided to upgrade its civil defense arrangements. They passed a law mandating that new houses have at least one "bomb proof" safe room, to be used as a shelter during rocket attacks. But most builders ignored the law. It's expensive. To add such a room to existing houses would cost about $30,000 per home. Aware of the very real danger many Israelis went ahead and designated one room in the house as the "safe room", perhaps reinforced it a bit, and stored emergency supplies there.

Now a defense firm has come up with a cheaper solution, especially for existing homes that do not have a fortified safe room. The new systems uses 60mm steel plates that can be installed (in 5-7 days) to an existing room and provide blast protection against a large conventional warhead going off nearby. Such an explosion would blow in all the windows and wreck the interior, wounding or killing the inhabitants not inside a reinforced safe room. The new design was tested using a home in a remote area, fitted with the instant safe room and exposed to a large explosion similar to a missile warhead. The safe room and its contents were a bit shaken but otherwise unharmed. The rest of the house was wrecked. The new system costs $21,000-24,000 and is growing more popular as Iran continues to threaten to fire hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel.