The simple answer is a house built of the foam/concrete method with a concrete roof would most certainly survive. Even a house made of wood can be made to survive  the winds of a  F4-more or less, its going to look like shit though, forget about a direct hit.

Oklahoma is the leader in the research and the manuals on how to do it are available from any municipality. The 3 big issues are to keep the windows in-place,then the roof and then to tie the entire thing from the top of the roof to the slab with simpson metal strapping. The windows always go before the roof, so if those are secure your fine, if you get a breach its going to be bad luck because the wind will get in and create a force exactly like how a airplane wing works and the roof will literally lift off.

There are a lot of studies done now and they know very well how to make a house survive a f4  tornado, its the F5 that gets creepy. Getting back to the concrete structure, as long as the windows held you would be fine, if you lose those then the inside of your house be torn up. The current concrete homes being built in tornado valley have a back up strong room( a solid concrete room with no windows and solid metal door. They will also survive most small arms fire, I have no clue about 50 cal but I would say no way to AP 50cal.

All the homes being lost are for the most part pretty old, or not designed to the Oklahoma standards. Oklahoma dictates that new homes have to have a strong room and I did see a couple homes yesterday were that was all that was left.

and a blast wall covering the entrance.

It seems like the easiest thing would be to build a safe room in the corner of the basement.

It's completely doable to design an aboveground F5 proof house, but the thing would be so expensive that almost no one could afford it.

Aren't ICF homes touted as being tornado-resistant?

Armour Homes

Just develop a force field of some kind.

Just build the damned thing undergound.

Why most houses are not built below ground in Tornado Alley is beyond me.

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Maintenance issues are one reason, plus the odds of a tornado hitting your house are lower than you'd think.

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Nobody has basements around here, but I have heard of buried containers and schoolbuses. I've thought about it myself...

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Arizona has tornadoes, and so does California.  We just don't usually get very violent tornadoes.

That pill box needs less flowers and more machine guns.

WTF is that?.... the Teletubbies' dungeon or something?

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