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April 16

Why rich Americans have homes made of woods instead on bricks and concretes?

I have seen in many movies that those who stay in suburbs even though they own cars still they stay in wooden homes. Their windows don't have strong iron grill.

Wooden homes can easily burn in fire and be thrown apart by cyclones.

They dislike homes made of cement, bricks and windows with iron grill?

Movies show so many serial killers, stalkers roaming in USA.

Many horror movies show some lonely old man staying inside of a dense jungle. No neighbors, no family.

In recent LA fires many rich people have wooden homes and the homes were destroyed in fires. Homes made of bricks and concrete will not be destroyed by fire.

Other than that movies like Back To The Future, Twilight show as if small towns in USA are full of people, but in YouTube I have seen that small towns streets and shops are mostly empty not like people walking on streets, saloon full of people. High schools full of students like Jack Reacher.

Only in old small town videos of 1940s, 1950s I have seen that USA small towns have population density like TV series set in small towns. 2409:40E1:1001:3C30:3D3E:6AB:C2E9:2411 (talk) 06:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In general, they don't. Your question is based on so many false premises it's difficult to know where to start. Maybe you should first gather your information from reliable sources and not from movies and TV shows. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm waiting for the connection between the wooden houses and the many serial killers, but feel I may ultimately be disappointed. YouTube has a lot to answer for... Martinevans123 (talk) 09:10, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Houses can be rebuilt. The house burning down is not the problem. The stuff inside the house being destroyed is the problem. What is the point of having a burnt out cement frame if everything you own inside it is gone? Therefore, there is no value in saving the walls.

As for windows, there are windows with iron bars in some areas. Those areas tend to be very poor areas. So, iron bars on windows is considered a bad thing. It means that you can't trust your neighbors. There are societies where people feel it is acceptable to steal from one another. In most of the United States, theft is considered wrong. If something does not belong to you, don't take it. Again, this opinion is less frequent in poorer areas, but it is not absent. Poorer people can be honest. Richer people can be thiefing dirtbags.

The United States is a car culture. Gasoline is very cheap compared to most other countries. In large cities where attempting to drive is difficult, you find people walking. In small towns where driving is easy, people drive. Much of the United States is suburban. Housing is condensed into neighborhoods. Outside the neighborhoods, there are light commercial areas with grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants. It is possible to walk to the nearest store, but driving is easy and convenient. There are many small towns with main streets that are closed and boarded up. You will find that those places do not have convenient parking, which prohibits people from diving, parking, and walking around. Small towns that specifically create good roads and plenty of parking continue to have strong commecial centers and people walking through them.

Very few Americans look like Jack Reacher (the accurate version, not the short Tom Cruise version). Depending on the source, an average man in the United States is between 5'8" and 5'10" (1.73 to 1.78 meters). Jack Reacher is at least 6'3" (1.91 meters).

Finally, your opinions are clearly based on movies and television shows, which are not real. If I were to base my opinions of India based on Bollywood movies, I would claim that everyone in India lives in cardboard houses and, for no apparent reason, random crowds all start dancing in unison at weird times. Movies are not real. Television is not real. Even reality television is not real. If you want to know what it is like in any other country, go there. You will find that the people there are working to pay bills so they can spend quality time with their families. That's it. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:02, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Concrete houses can stand up pretty well to tornadoes (assuming that's what you meant by "cyclone", an obsolete term for a tornado, which turns up in The Wizard of Oz), but they tend to be ugly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:58, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Hey Jethro, there's a twister a-comin'. Ah can feel it in ma knees!" Martinevans123 (talk) 15:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy link: The Beverly Hillbillies. Jethro ought to listen to Granny too, but perhaps he wouldn't. True story: My grandma was from Nebraska, and when she was a youngster, her brothers and their house were picked up and scattered by a tornado. Fortunately for them they didn't get hurt. More importantly (to my being here), she and my great-grandma had enough sense to ride out the storm in their storm cellar. Modocc (talk) 17:54, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Secondary courtesy link: Gary Larson - "Dang! Get inside Ma...".) Martinevans123 (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gee, Nebraska sure do sound kinda excitin'! Martinevans123 (talk) 18:26, 16 April 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Dorothy was from Kansas. And the twister comment reminds me of the presumably-Kansas-born farmhand Hunk yelling, "It's a twistuh! It's a twistuh!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:47, 16 April 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Kansas or not, I bet he never got decent house and contents cover... Martinevans123 (talk) 19:51, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclone is the proper meteorological term for a low-pressure area with spinning winds, ranging all the way from dust devils to polar vortices. In India, I expect it normally refers to a tropical cyclone, the weather phenomenon in the US also known as a hurricane. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:42, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wood floors are often preferred because it's far kinder; it's more elastic and less jarring to our bones when we move about, and gypsum board is used for lining walls and ceilings, for the same reason, and because it is fire-resistant. In addition. smaller buildings' structural frames don't have to be constructed to bear the masonry's additional weight which could be prone to collapsing during a catastrophic earthquake. Modocc (talk) 15:27, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To call gypsum board fire-resistant isn't necessarily true. With normal drywall, the gypsum is held together by a layer of paper on either side, which is very much flammable. You can however purchase special drywall which is treated with fire retardants, but I personally think that's just an upsell for contractors. Source: Have done a lot of drywalling. MediaKyle (talk) 20:02, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Concrete and brick is very much the standard in most of Europe (the Nordic countries are an exception; they love wood). I never considered it jarring on my bones, despite never wearing shoes at home. I'm a forefoot striker when unshod. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in much of the western world windows with iron bars are mostly associated with prison cells. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:40, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage Matt Deres (talk) 16:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In earthquakes, wood frames flex but brick walls crack. Hence brick is relatively rare in California, which includes Hollywood. —Tamfang (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the original question — brick houses can burn. As noted above, this is partly an artefact of the contents burning, since bricks are used only for the exterior walls and important interior walls, particularly load-bearing walls. It's also related to the fact that roofs are often not built of fireproof materials — wood is routinely used to support the roof, so even if the roof uses fireproof materials such as roof tiles, they may collapse because they rest on wooden beams that have burnt. A house near me (see Google Street View, the one with the circular windows and half-circular garage door) burnt several months ago and has since been demolished, despite being built of brick. Imagine that everything except for the bricks burns — you're left with some brick walls and nothing else, and the mortar may crack in the fire. If your brick building suffers a bad fire, and you're left with something looking like the picture (which is the result of abandonment, not fire), at best you're still going to need to rebuild just almost everything, and weak mortar may make even the remaining walls untrustworthy. Plus, you're stuck with the previous floor plan and fenestration. Might as well just knock everything down and build from the ground up, since it will cost almost as much as a new house, and you'll get what you want with masonry that you know hasn't been compromised by fire. Nyttend (talk) 02:39, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]