Tsunami balls on the brink of mass production

Julian Sharpe first envisioned the tsunami ball as he sat looking at the surf in Cannon Beach on a family vacation. He wondered what would happen if the “big one” hit while his family was there. How would they survive?

After four years of work, testing and globe-trotting, Sharpe is close to putting his Survival Capsules on the market.

“I’ve reached a point now where I really have to get in and start producing these capsules and I’m looking for some investors,” Sharpe said.

Sharpe wants to get a production line up and running in Japan, where there is huge interest in his product. He’s found interest around the country, including in Florida and New York.

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“Now we’re seeing a huge number of people who are really keen on it,” Sharpe said. “We’ve had some very interested parties in Japan.”

The survival capsules are metal balls tethered to the ground or the top of a building that rise with the water. They are hardened against impacts and coated to protect against fire. There are 60 minutes of oxygen for each occupant.

Sharpe wants to get all his models and sizes out to Japan and begin to put capsules on the ground. The capsules come in two, four, six, eight and 10-person models. They are not cheap. They run about $13,000 for the two-person capsule, though Sharpe expects that to come down significantly once production gets up to speed.

It’s been a long and difficult journey from that moment in Cannon Beach where he hatched his idea, but he says he has no regrets.

“We’ve had a lot of trials and tribulations, but we’ve been persistent and now I think we’re pretty much ready to go into full production,” he said.

Sharpe says he’s getting a lot of interest from hospitals, schools and apartments; places that have a lot of people to evacuate in a short time.