• Josh Jordan started Houston Bomb Shelter to construct emergency shelters for nuclear disasters.
• High-end clients will spend up to six figures for large shelters.
• Clients often want discretion to protect themselves from neighbors who don't have their own shelters.

This is an As Told To essay based on a conversation with Josh Jordan, a Texas-based engineer who founded Houston Bomb Shelter, which constructs private emergency shelters. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The danger of nuclear war has been around for almost 100 years, but recently renewed concern is driving a new interest in bomb shelters. So, I'm just trying to fill a need in that marketplace.

We offer a variety of different shelter structures. The above-ground option is the cheapest solution because it involves the least invasive construction techniques.

The one that I think is the best is a partially submerged solution. We'll dig out about three or four feet in someone's backyard, for example, and then put in a structure that is maybe three or four feet above the ground.

Of course, the ultimate option is a fully submerged solution, but those are a lot more expensive.

Shelters are not as romantic as in the movies. They are normally about 10 feet wide and 20 to 40 feet long. The majority of my clients are upper middle class, and they say, "Well, instead of getting the nicest Mercedes, I could use the extra $40,000 on a solution that could save my family's life." They rationalize it that way.

I've had some people contact me for larger shelters, but those are executive, C-suite-level people. They're not household names, but you look them up and find they're the CEO or COO of a company. Their budget is much higher. They don't seem to mind spending well into six figures.

Some clients don't want to tell their neighbors because they're nosy. They don't want to tell their homeowners association because then everyone's going to want to go there in case of an emergency. They think, "They're my neighbor, why wouldn't they open up their vault door for me? I've been their neighbor for 15 years." It's a sensitive topic for people.

So discretion is a requirement for our construction projects. We have a few different fake magnetic company decals to put on the side of the trucks, like pool guys or solar installers. Sometimes I offer to put up a big construction tent. We also disguise the shelter itself. Sometimes it looks like a shed or a doghouse. I like to make a trellis because that will keep most people from paying attention to it.

People aren't going to be staying in these things for years, or decades, or months, even. After a week, the radioactivity level drops substantially, and moving around is considered safer. After three weeks, there's hardly any remnants, and it's relatively safe.

There are two parts of a nuclear blast that are a concern. The initial blast has high-velocity winds and heat. A lot of people would die from that without shelter.

Then, generally speaking, there are between 30 minutes and 75 minutes before fallout starts. Fallout is just the dust that settles from the explosion, but radioactive particles attach to that dust. It makes this dirty snow that sort of seems like ash. That's what is going to be dangerous for the next three weeks.

If people survive that first blast, that's great. Then they have one to three weeks where they really need to be sheltered in place and not go anywhere. And that is the ultimate goal of the service that we provide: a safe place for people and their loved ones.

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• Rep. Rob Menendez — son of the scandal-plagued Sen. Bob Menendez — faces a tough reelection race.
• Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, styling himself as an anti-machine candidate, could defeat him.
• The younger Menendez is out to prove that he can win without his father's political support.

When Rep. Rob Menendez decided to enter politics, his last name was undoubtedly his most valuable asset. Now, it's his greatest liability.

Sixteen months into representing a House district in New Jersey just across the river from Manhattan, Menendez is staring down a well-funded, formidable primary challenge from Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, who styles himself as a progressive urbanist and — perhaps more importantly — is not the son of Sen. Bob Menendez, who's been all but permanently sidelined by his lurid corruption scandal and could face time behind bars.

Polling has shown that the younger Menendez could lose, and the congressman has to contend with two dueling headaches ahead of the June 4 primary: separating himself from his scandal-plagued father, and surviving the loss of the state's long-standing "county line" ballot system, which has helped party bosses essentially coronate candidates like Menendez for decades. Running for reelection under what he calls "the most unique set of challenging circumstances you can imagine," Menendez is out to prove that he's able to stand on his own, and that he's more than the "nepo baby" caricature that's dogged him for his entire life.

"For all the times that people have said that I've only been able to accomplish something because of my father, that's now clearly no longer going to be the case when I win reelection," Menendez told me in April, as we sipped beers at the back of a Jersey City pub. "That's what's so exciting about this election."

Aside from the last name, one could be forgiven for failing to recognize the congressman as the senator's son — the 38-year-old Menendez comes across as a charming, wonky frat bro. "The best way I've heard myself described is as a geriatric millennial," he told a gathering of voters in Hoboken the day before we sat down. He sports a hi-top fade haircut, wears Nike Air Force 1 sneakers with his suits, is a skilled extemporaneous speaker, and carries himself with the self-assuredness that comes with growing up in a politically powerful family. Indeed, Menendez has never known a time when his father was not an elected official.

His political survival now depends on separating himself from his father, a task that's clearly both politically and personally difficult for him. Menendez, who has not been implicated in his father's scandal, euphemistically refers to the ongoing criminal proceedings as the "challenges he's facing" or his "legal troubles," sometimes flashing a nervous grin when the topic comes up. He won't even comment on his father's stated intention to run for reelection as an independent if he's cleared of the corruption charges facing him, a move that could jeopardize Democrats' chances to retain the seat.

"I don't have the capacity to think through, well, what if, what if, what if," Menendez told me. "There's a lot that I have to deal with right now."

'This is a true test for democracy'

The younger Menendez's entry into politics was swift. In 2021, he was nominated by Gov. Phil Murphy to serve as a commissioner overseeing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Six months after Menendez assumed that office, Rep. Albio Sires announced that he would not seek reelection and immediately endorsed the younger Menendez to succeed him. The rest of New Jersey's political establishment quickly followed, including local party organizations, and Menendez sailed through the primary in his deep-blue district with nearly 84% of the vote. Contrary to even some of his supporters, the congressman seems to have difficulty acknowledging how easy it was for him to get to Congress.

"I think sometimes people look at the result, and look at the support that we ended up with, and they say, oh, well this was all packaged together, this wasn't competitive," Menendez told me. "But you know, we treated it, and we ran it, like a real spirited race, like we were 30 points down every single day."

Mayor Bhalla told me that he began contemplating his primary challenge shortly after the elder Menendez was first indicted in September. As a congressional candidate, he's emphasized that Hoboken hasn't had a single traffic death in over 7 years under his "Vision Zero" strategy, earning the city plaudits from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and a bevy of positive national headlines. Fluent in the language of contemporary urbanism, Bhalla frequently invoked phrases like "daylighting" and "bumpouts" and "class two bike lanes" and "signalization" during our conversation.

His candidacy is also historic: If elected, he would be only the second Sikh American ever elected to Congress, and the first one to wear a turban. That facet of his candidacy has also contributed to his ability to outraise Menendez so far — an analysis of Bhalla's contributions shows that the vast majority of his $1.6 million war chest has come from South Asian American donors around the country. A coffee table in his mayoral office features a smattering of books on Sikhs, urbanism, and the city where he's been mayor since 2018.

Bhalla is slightly to the left of Menendez — the mayor supports Medicare for All, the congressman does not — but there's not a ton of daylight between the two on policy matters. They're also largely on the same page on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Bhalla told me that like Menendez, he would have voted for a recent bill to provide more military aid to the Jewish state.

Sitting in his recently opened campaign office, the mayor told me that the most important facet of his candidacy was his fight against New Jersey's party boss-driven political culture. Beyond his bid to unseat Menendez, Bhalla is also staking much of his candidacy on his opposition to the "county line" system, which has been struck down for this primary — and possibly forever — as a result of a lawsuit filed by Democratic Rep. Andy Kim in the midst of his short-lived Senate primary campaign against First Lady Tammy Murphy. "This is a true test for democracy, to see whether or not we can bring a voice to average residents," said Bhalla, deriding the "top-down party boss-led power" in his northern New Jersey district.

Bhalla filed an amicus brief in that lawsuit after coming out against the line, which has been proven to give a massive boost to those who receive the endorsement of local party organizations. Having been endorsed by those organizations, Menendez was set to benefit from the line this primary. Now that the candidates will compete under the "office block" ballot format used by every other state, Bhalla's chances of unseating the congressman have dramatically improved.

"This election is really a choice between a record of progressive accomplishments versus sort of the epitome New Jersey bosses," said Jersey City Councilman James Solomon, a Bhalla supporter who has long opposed the county line system. "With the congressman, you've got somebody who partnered with his dad's political machine to basically intimidate his way into Congress, is the best way I can describe it."

But the mayor hasn't always been a fierce opponent of bossism. Before beginning his crusade against the line in January, Bhalla sought the endorsement of the very party organizations he's now criticizing, in an effort to give him the unfair advantage he now opposes. Bhalla has also acted as a party boss himself, using his influence to place his former chief of staff in an advantageous position on the ballot in a 2023 state assembly race.

Menendez was eager to highlight that hypocrisy in our conversation, deriding Bhalla as a "political opportunist" who was "calling every single mayor, asking them to put him on the line" after Senator Menendez was indicted and the congressman's own machine support appeared less than certain. "This idea that he is someone who's always fought the line is absurd," Menendez told me. "When he didn't get the line, then he pivoted."

"Once the idea of abolishing the line wasn't just a pie-in-the-sky dream, but could actually happen, I stood up and spoke out," Bhalla told me of the apparent hypocrisy. "I'm still waiting for Rob Menendez to do the same."

To that point, I pressed Menendez four different times on how he felt about the "county line" system, the ultimate fate of which is still being litigated. Each time, he declined to clearly state whether he preferred keeping the system — which largely helped him get elected in the first place — or favored its abolition. The congressman insisted that he wanted "clarity on the issue" and that he wasn't outright opposed to the abolition of the line.

"I guess the reason that my answer is not satisfying to you is because I may overvalue consistency," said Menendez. "The decision's done, and I'm actually really good with it, because we're going to win, we're going to have a decisive victory, and no one's going to be able to say it was only because of the line, or it was only because of my father."

'I mean, definitely the name helped'

It's been a nasty primary race, and there's still a whole month left. Bhalla and Menendez have swiped at one another on social media over gold bars, Sam Bankman-Fried, Bhalla's 2022 endorsement of Menendez, and more. The congressman has been particularly incensed by Bhalla's efforts to tie him to his father's corruption scandal.

During Bhalla's opening speech at a candidate forum in Jersey City — the duo's first joint appearance at such an event this cycle — Bhalla argued that the district's constituents were suffering from a lack of "connective tissue" with their representation in the House, prompting eye-rolls and smirks from Menendez, seated just feet away.

One constant, yet confounding subplot of the drama of this primary has been Bhalla's tensions with his own city council. Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher, an opponent of the line who also backed Kim over the governor's wife in the Senate primary, has endorsed Menendez, calling the mayor a "terrible candidate" who has been "dishonest all the time" during his tenure.

The day before I spoke with Menendez, Fisher organized a town hall-style event for the congressman in her apartment complex — a waterfront property that once served as a warehouse for the Lipton Tea Company. Five of Hoboken's nine city council members attended, two of whom told me that they view the mayor as uncompromising, headline-obsessed, and inaccessible. "Everything here is a headline or a deadline driving the process," Councilman Paul Presinzano said of Mayor Bhalla. "His agenda has been: me, me, me."

It's a perception that Menendez has also leaned on, aided by the conspicuous — and at times, disruptive — presence of a documentary film crew at the Jersey City candidate forum, which Bhalla quickly departed as Menendez stayed to shmooze with voters. "He has a camera crew following him, okay!?" Menendez exclaimed to me. A Bhalla campaign spokesman told me that film crew had reached out to the mayor's team, and that they're profiling several South Asian candidates running for office this cycle.

The meet-and-greet, where Menendez easily fielded pre-filtered questions from a crowd of roughly 100, illustrated the challenge the congressman faces in making his case for reelection: his record is thin, and he has yet to put his name on any major legislation, owing to being a freshman member of the minority party. Menendez talked up his constituent services operation, saying that he had solved over 1,500 cases — mostly immigration-related — and had brought back millions of dollars in federal funding to the district. He also talked about landing a "highly coveted" spot on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, touted his efforts to make the nuts and bolts of government work, and even provided an anecdote about how his elementary school science fair was anonymized as a result of claims that his father — then the mayor of Union City — was somehow exercising influence over the judges to help his son win.

Yet the congressman is still adjusting to the reality of running in an environment where the power of the machine has been diminished, speaking more about the "durability of the relationships" that he's built than the notion of grassroots support that other politicians, including Bhalla, typically invoke. In front of voters in Hoboken, he spoke at length about how he believes Congress should be "the most boring institution in the entire world," expressing irritation at the fact that his one of the few viral breakout moments of his tenure — referring to Donald Trump as "Orange Jesus" during a House Homeland Security meeting in February — got "exponentially more attention than doing the real work."

"Listen, it's a new type of campaign for him," said Fisher, explaining why she helped organize the event. "He hasn't created the brand to win an election in a way that he has to do with this year, versus how he's done it in the past. That's the difference between having the benefit of the line, and having to run on your own record."

And despite their misgivings with Bhalla, several of the Hoboken city council members tended to squirm a bit when I asked them about their mayor's primary critique of Menendez — that he's only in Congress at all due to nepotism and the power of the county line.

"Do I think it was nepotism? I mean, definitely the name helped," said Presinzano.

"The politics behind it, that allowed him to run in a way that made it difficult for other people, had nothing to do with Rob's willingness to say yes," said Fisher. "Rob's been in the seat now for a year and a half, and he's absolutely earned the right to be reelected."

'I also trust people to distinguish between us'

With the sudden end of Tammy Murphy's Senate bid and the resulting collapse of the "county line," the race to represent New Jersey's 8th district is poised to be the first real test of what the state's post-line politics will look like — and whether the Menendez brand is permanently dead.

One common refrain I heard from Menendez's backers is that he doesn't have to do this, that continuing to seek office in this environment — and while raising two young children — is proof of the congressman's commitment to public service. To that point, Menendez's financial disclosures show that he made more than $456,000 in 2021 from practicing law, more than two and a half times the $174,000 salary he makes as a member of Congress.

There are a variety of factors that will work in Menendez's favor in this primary, including the endurance of well-organized turn-out operations run by Democratic machines in places like Union City. He's also maintained the support of several other members of the New Jersey delegation, along with House Democratic leadership, despite those same lawmakers' months-old calls for his father to resign.

"He's really talented — a leader who has done nothing but earn my confidence," Sen. Cory Booker told me, while praising Bhalla as an "an extraordinary leader as well" who's a "longtime friend."

Bhalla also hasn't gotten help from other reform-minded candidates. Kim has declined to endorse either Menendez or Bhalla, while Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop — a 2025 gubernatorial candidate who's positioned himself as anti-machine — has simply declined to endorse Menendez rather than affirmatively back the mayor.

At the same time, the elder Menendez's trial is set to begin this month, guaranteeing that as they head to the polls, voters in New Jersey will once again be reminded of the gold bars, the wads of cash stuffed into pockets, and the allegations that the senator corruptly carried out the interests of autocratic Middle Eastern governments.

"Some people may be impacted by my father, and the challenges that he's having, and I understand that," Menendez said at the Hoboken meet-and-greet. "But I also trust people to distinguish between us."

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• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway grew its cash pile to a record $189 billion last quarter.
• Buffett's company added $21 billion to its stash of cash and Treasuries in three months.
• Berkshire dumped a net $17 billion of stocks, and boosted its buyback spend to $2.6 billion.

Warren Buffett's money mountain grew even larger last quarter as the billionaire struggled to find bargains with markets near record highs, and sold stocks at the fastest rate in years.

The famed investor's Berkshire Hathaway raised its stockpile of cash and Treasury bills by $21 billion to a record $189 billion — a 13% increase in just three months.

Buffett's hulking conglomerate revealed that fact in its first-quarter earnings report, published just before the kick-off of its annual shareholder meeting, which has been dubbed "Woodstock for Capitalists."

The centibillionaire and his team only spent $2.7 billion on stocks last quarter, while they dumped $20 billion worth, marking their largest quarterly disposal in several years. They offloaded over $17 billion of shares on a net basis.

Berkshire's net stock sales totaled $24 billion in 2023, which was a big turnaround from its purchase of $34 billion of stocks on a net basis in 2022.

On the other hand, Buffett deployed $2.6 billion on stock buybacks last quarter — Berkshire's biggest quarterly outlay since he repurchased $4.4 billion worth of the company's stock in the first quarter of last year.

Berkshire spent roughly $9 billion on buybacks last year, and just under $8 billion in 2022, down from over $24 billion in both 2020 and 2021.

The parent company of See's Candies, Geico, and NetJets grew its operating income by 39% year-on-year to $11.2 billion last quarter, as strong growth in its insurance and energy divisions offset lower earnings at the BNSF Railway.

Another major highlight was Pilot Travel Centers. The truck-stop chain, which Berkshire took full ownership of early last year, grew its revenues by 32% year-on-year to $12.5 billion for the period spanning February and March. However, its pre-tax earnings nearly halved to $70 million.

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• Illia Ponomarenko is one of Ukraine's best known war reporters.
• He has covered the Russia-Ukraine conflict since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
• His book "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story Of Wartime Kyiv" is out May 7.

Illia Ponomarenko grew up in the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. He was a student at Mariupol State University in 2014 when war broke out in the Donbas, and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Ponomarenko told Business Insider, "We were patriotic, we were enthusiastic. We had the sense that the country was in our hands, and we wanted to make this country a better place following the revolution," referring to Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, which ousted the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

While Ponomarenko, 32, said he was unable to serve in the Ukrainian military himself due to medical reasons, he still wanted to help, so he picked up a notepad and pen and began reporting on the war.

Ponomarenko would go on to visit the front lines countless times, reporting first for a local paper in Volnovakha before joining the Kyiv Post. He would go on to cofound the Kyiv Independent in 2021.

He said he survived a number of close calls in the intervening years, including "the most dangerous two hours" of his life in May 2017 during a Russian mortar attack on Avdiivka.

Almost five years later, during the Russian siege of Kyiv, a tank shell struck the apartment building where he had been living at the time.

But still, Ponomarenko did not flee. Rushing to report from the front lines had never been a choice, he said, but rather a "duty" that he felt compelled to fulfill.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ponomarenko has become one of Ukraine's best-known journalists, with around 1.2 million followers on X, formerly Twitter.

His posts are an insight into the man himself: brusque, purposeful, and laced with humor.

His first tweet after Russia's invasion: "This is it guys. See you in victorious Ukraine."

'War makes people reveal their true selves'

Ponomarenko had a chance to leave Ukraine after Russia launched its invasion.

He hurried himself, his girlfriend Natalya, a couple of his friends, and his mother, who had still been living in Volnovakha when the Russians crossed the border, to his girlfriend's parent's house near the border with Moldova.

But something didn't sit right with him. "I'm a war reporter," he writes in the new book, "I Will Show You How It Was," which is due to be released on May 7. "I need to be with my military now."

A few days later, he returned to Kyiv, where Russian troops were rapidly advancing.

"This was the best and most correct decision of my entire life," he told BI. "I refused to make a deal with the devil. I followed my conscience."

Ponomarenko said he believes the war has "shown what ordinary people are capable of" and has helped reveal "their true selves," pointing to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as evidence.

He said he had always been slightly skeptical of the Ukrainian leader's reasons for becoming president and his behavior in office, thinking of him as a bit of a showman.

But he said the war had brought out the best in Zelenskyy and transformed him into a leader.

He added that the war had also had a marked impact on his mother, who had been staunchly pro-Russian prior to the invasion.

"She was among so many pro-Russian people who saw what they needed to see," he said.

Ukraine is taking serious losses on the eastern front, but they're not out of the fight, he said

Ukraine has faced a series of major setbacks on the eastern front in recent months.

In February, as the war entered its third year, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the wartorn city of Avdiivka, an important strong point in defense of the country's logistical hub at Pokrovsk.

Since then, Russia has continued to advance in the surrounding areas.

Last week, a Ukrainian blunder allowed Russian troops to advance and capture large parts of Ocheretyne, a village just to the northwest of Avdiivka, while the battle for Chasiv Yar, another crucial city in the Donetsk region, is also raging on.

Capturing it would put Russian forces within striking distance of Ukrainian operational and supply centers in the area.

Ponomarenko told BI the situation was "catastrophic."

"The six months of chronic, acute lack of defense aid, critical lack of munitions, manpower – Russians are making use of this momentum," he said.

But, he added, "It's not an apocalypse. We're still in the game."

Kyiv and Bucha: Symbols of hope

Part of the issue, Ponomarenko believes, is that Ukraine has lost the sense of unity and togetherness that it had during the first months of the war — "the rage of the doomed," as he calls it.

"All ethnic religious or social boundaries disappeared. A blue collar guy could stand next to a minister," Ponomarenko writes in the book.

But after more than two years of hard fighting, "the situation is naturally different today," he added. "Large-scale mobilization has had a significant strike upon the public morale."

Ukraine needs "a bit of the spirit from the battle of Kyiv, that outburst of patriotism, enthusiasm," he said. "It was a bright moment of pure bravery and hope."

Ponomarenko now lives with his girlfriend in Bucha, which became known around the world for atrocities carried out by Russian troops.

The journalist recalled the first time he visited the city after Russia abandoned it, noting that there was a "feeling of evil" and a "smell of death" that stretched across the streets.

Human corpses, limbs, and dead dogs lay strewn on the ground. It was a "hellscape," he said.

At the time, some were convinced that Bucha would never recover, but returning citizens have helped revive the city with the assistance of a donation from the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Now, Ponomarenko said he could smile while thinking about the city's peaceful streets, its blooming flowers, and the people strolling in its parks.

"Bucha was the greatest moment for me because it shows that life prevails," Ponomarenko said. "Life always prevails if only you fight on."

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• The housing market has been brutal in recent years as prices keep rising. 
• While high mortgage rates didn't bring prices down, steep insurance costs could put a lid on further appreciation. 
• "You can see in the course of even a year or two, prices begin to respond because people are very sensitive to this."

When mortgage rates started to spike in 2022, the thinking was that higher borrowing costs would put a lid on prices, which had spiraled endlessly upward since the pandemic sparked a buying frenzy. 

That didn't quite happen, and home prices have kept climbing, so much so that a recent report from Zillow said would-be buyers need to earn 80% more than pre-pandemic to afford the median-priced home. 

But there's an under-the-radar factor that could soon pull down home prices nationally, real estate experts told Business Insider — soaring home insurance costs. 

Home insurance premiums, which surged 4.5% year-over-year in March alone, according to the FRED economic data, could be the last straw for home buyers amid a litany of rising costs. 

Insurance comparison platform Insurify said in a recent report that annual insurance rates skyrocketed 19.8% from 2021 to 2023, and the company forecasts another 6% surge in 2024, which would push the average annual rate to $2,522 by year-end.

Real estate experts said that though they aren't the top driver of home prices compared to mortgage rates or housing inventory, they still have the power to influence what buyers are willing to pay over the long term.  

A growing national burden for buyers

Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, said in an interview with Business Insider that rising insurance costs are especially severe in states like Florida, where climate disasters factor into the risk forecast, but they're rising all over the US. 

"There are places all over the country that are gonna have their own climate issues," she said, while referring to Texas heat waves last summer, which she said are likely to be repeated this year, and the persistent smoke and wild fires plaguing the West Coast.

The insurance costs usually come as a surprise to home buyers in those areas, Fairweather added. 

"The problem is that most people don't go through the process of finding out how much insurance will cost until they've already made an offer on a home and they feel like they have to go through with it or they'll lose out on their earnest money if they back out," she said. 

Pressuring home prices

Danielle Hale, the chief economist at Realtor.com, told BI that lenders typically require various forms of insurance from buyers who take on a mortgage, and if the insurance costs are too high, it can disqualify the buyer from getting the loan. 

"As costs rise, the pool of buyers who can qualify for the mortgage is more limited, and the price of the home may need to fall in order for a buyer to be found," Hale said.

Jesse Keenan, a sustainable real estate and urban planning professor at Tulane University, said that homebuyers are very sensitive to the long-term operational costs of having insurance, and usually, the value of a home will decline if insurance is particularly costly. 

"So at the end of the day, it's buyers and sellers capitalizing risk," he said. "And they're coming to terms with what that risk may be."

He also noted that insurance markets are getting better at discovering and assessing risk, thanks to things like geospatial technologies and advanced computing. 

"The implications of that are that technology is helping companies price at a much more precise measure of risk, so with all that information, consumers are now saying, 'you know what, this is worth more, this is worth less.' And as a consequence, the value of properties that are shaped are shifting, mostly down," Keenan said. 

In some extreme cases, that sensitivity has already prompted home price repricing in locales with extremely high insurance premiums, such as Louisiana. 

"You can see in the course of even a year or two, prices begin to respond because people are very sensitive to this," he said. 

To Fairweather, it's more precise to say the rising insurance will make home values grow more slowly than they would have, as the robust demand still characterizes the current market. 

"In general, demand exceeds supply, even though homeownership has become so unaffordable. We take into account prices and mortgage rates and now rising insurance costs, but there's still people wanting to buy homes," she said.

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• Realtors Eric and Beth Ann Mott relocated from Denver to Thousand Oaks, California, in May 2022.
• The Motts attribute their move to a growing preference for California's weather and lifestyle.
• Despite common misconceptions, the Motts find California financially comparable to Colorado.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with married realtors Eric Mott, 59, and Beth Ann Mott, 57, about their experience moving from a suburb in Denver, Colorado, to Thousand Oaks, California, in May 2022.

Eric: Denver used to be a really great place to live.

I was born in California. But my folks and I relocated to Denver in 1977 when it was still a cow town.

Beth Ann: I ended up in Colorado because of Eric. We did long-distance dating between Kansas City and Denver. When we got married in 1996, I moved with him to the Denver area.

Eric: We're both full-time realtors with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. We bought some investment properties in Denver, and in 2009, we 1031-exchanged three of those properties for a place in Thousand Oaks. So, we've actually owned our current home here in California since 2009.

Beth Ann: We planned on getting to California at some point. But it took us about 14 years to see that come into being.

Denver used to be a great place to raise a family

Eric: Colorado was one of the first places to legalize recreational marijuana, which we did not vote for. In our opinion, that's when things started turning in Denver.

The homeless population in Denver is pretty insane, even in the suburbs. It really started to affect our quality of life. We started feeling uncomfortable going downtown.

The traffic got really bad, too. Twenty years ago, it was much easier to go up to the mountains and ski for a day. But now, the traffic is just hideous. If you want to have a ski day, you'd better be willing to get up at 5 a.m. and not get home until 8 p.m.

We liked to take cruise vacations to escape Denver during the winter. Over time, we realized we are more ocean people than mountain people. We just got sick and tired of the snow in Denver.

It was really a combination of different things that changed the environment. It's just not what we used to enjoy.

Beth Ann: We first started considering a move to California during COVID when we were sitting at home and couldn't go anywhere. We had always talked about ending up in California someday, and we thought, "Why can't someday be now?"

COVID also forced everyone to do things remotely. We started doing a lot of client appointments via Zoom. So, the seed of the idea was born out of the possibilities that COVID created. We said, "Why wait?"

We tested it out in 2021, doing a lot of traveling and working remotely with our real estate team in Denver. It worked. So, that's when we pulled the trigger for the actual move in May 2022.

We moved into the house we already owned in California

Eric: The moving process wasn't too bad. We did a bit of downsizing. And we're renovating now.

Beth Ann: We still have our business in Denver. I commute and manage our team there a couple of times a month. We both got our California real estate licenses, too. Ultimately, the goal is to split our resources about 75% in California and 25% in Colorado.

Eric: For me, moving to California was like coming home.

We can get to the beach in 20 minutes. We can access hikes in the Santa Monica mountains at the end of our street. The Conejo Valley is like a small town. There are orchards and farms. And wherever you drive, there's green.

Beth Anne: It's beautiful, plus we have nice weather. I love things that bloom, and it's blooming here all the time.

Eric: We're also both golfers, so it's nice being in California where you can golf year-round and don't have to worry about snow on the course. We joke in December, when it's a high of 60 degrees, "Oh it's cold!" But it's really not.

Beth Ann: The traffic here is tough, though. Anytime you have to go near downtown, it's definitely not a pleasure. But the traffic in Denver was nearly as bad.

California is financially comparable to Colorado

Eric: Everybody always says the taxes in California are so much more, but they're really not when you look at them. The sales tax rate in Thousand Oaks is 7.25%, whereas where we lived in Colorado, it was 2% more. That adds up.

Beth Ann: Insurance rates in Colorado are really expensive, too. So, it's actually not that much different cost-wise living here. In fact, it's a bit cheaper. For example, we're paying less for homeowner's insurance in California than we were in Colorado. Same with property taxes.

Eric: The value of our home here in California was the approximate value of our home in Denver, dollar-wise. Our insurance policy there was around $2,300 a year. Out here, it's only $1,400. I also added on earthquake insurance, which is another $900. So it's about the same price even with the earthquake insurance as in Colorado.

The utilities here are a lot cheaper for us as well. We haven't used our air conditioner since September, and we didn't have to turn our heater on until January. That's savings in my mind.

Beth Ann: The prices at grocery stores in California, however, are a little bit higher.

Eric: But in California, there's no tax on food. That was a pleasant surprise when we first got here.

There's so much propaganda out there about California.

Beth Ann: You can't paint California with just one brush. I wouldn't have wanted to move to Los Angeles. But living in a place like Thousand Oaks is a different experience.

I think the only things we miss about Colorado are our family and our clients.

Eric: There are still things we like about Colorado, but we visit. We're enjoying the lifestyle that we're living in California.

Beth Ann: I think California will continue to be our long-term play.

Eric: California has exceeded our expectations.

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• Boeing is about to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time.
• Boeing's latest airplane malfunctions don't necessarily mean the astronauts are in extra danger.
• Still, the FAA, NASA, and other aerospace experts have questioned Boeing's overall safety culture.

Defense and aerospace giant Boeing is about to fly astronauts in space for the first time.

NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are set to climb aboard Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spaceship on Monday evening, rocket through the skies, and cruise around Earth until the spaceship docks to the International Space Station early Wednesday.

They're scheduled to live on the space station for about a week, then brave a fiery plummet back to Earth with the spaceship deploying parachutes to land in the southwestern US.

This Crew Flight Test mission is over a decade in the making. Starliner is finally catching up to SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which has been working overtime to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS for NASA while Boeing lags behind.

Boeing might be fresh on your mind for another reason, though. Its latest series of passenger-plane woes began in January, when a panel ripped off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner shortly after it took off from Portland. Several people were injured, but luckily nobody was in the seats beside the gaping hole that opened on the plane.

Then Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both reported loose parts on their grounded Boeing planes. The Federal Aviation Administration launched a six-week audit of Boeing and its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, while the Department of Justice began a criminal investigation.

Does any of that affect the astronauts' safety aboard Starliner?

"This is a clean spaceship and it's ready to launch. And I can tell you from NASA's point of view, we don't launch until it's ready," NASA chief Bill Nelson told reporters on Friday.

NASA clearly trusts the spaceship now, but there have been problems.

On its first attempt to fly to the ISS uncrewed, in 2019, a software error caused the spacecraft to burn through its fuel shortly after launch, forcing an early return to Earth. Dozens of other issues were uncovered during that flight. Then, a problem with valves in the propulsion system delayed its second attempt, which ultimately reached the ISS.

In some aerospace experts' eyes, the airplane issues aren't completely irrelevant.

"I really don't think there's one direct connection," George Nield, former associate administrator of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, told Business Insider.

"It's different people, it's different missions, even different cultures probably within those units," he added. "But at the same time, senior leadership does have a very important role to play in setting the overall safety culture, setting overall priorities, and setting the expectation of the ability to speak out."

In response to a request for comment, a Boeing spokesperson referred BI to four of the company's public Starliner press briefings with NASA. The spokesperson did not specify which comments in the briefings were relevant.

Boeing's safety culture has been a concern to the FAA and NASA

The FAA investigation found dozens of manufacturing problems at both Boeing and its supplier, including inconsistencies in employees' understanding of quality control and procedural problems on the plant floor, The New York Times reported.

An expert review panel also reported "a disconnect between Boeing's senior management and other members of the organization on safety culture," as well as doubt about whether the company's safety-reporting system "ensures open communication and non-retaliation."

Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautics industry analyst at the Leeham Company, says Boeing's problem is its history of focusing on key performance indicators, or KPIs.

"It changes the criteria for advancement in the company," Fehrm told Business Insider. Rather than being a good engineer, he says, KPIs incentivize being a good politician. They make shareholders happy, but they don't always result in the best product.

The Alaska Airlines plane malfunction is "a symptom of the sickness," Fehrm said. "The sickness is the 25 years of culture which is prioritizing numbers before best knowledge on what to do."

That culture was also behind two deadly crashes of 737 Max planes in 2018 and 2019, Fehrm says.

NASA, too, investigated Boeing's company culture after the error-ridden 2019 Starliner test flight. Doug Loverro, a NASA associate administrator overseeing the program at the time, said that the two deadly 737 Max crashes were on his mind when he launched that inquiry.

After those disasters, Boeing hired a new CEO and board members with engineering backgrounds and established an Aerospace Safety Committee.

Those were definitely improvements, Fehrm said, but it doesn't change the middle management that has filtered up by embracing KPIs.

"The desire to get the production rate up to the max is still there, and the old habits of cutting some corners in order to shape numbers are still there," Fehrm said.

"The culture of Boeing is an oil tanker. It's a ship," he added. "You can only turn so fast."

Spaceflight is riskier than aviation

NASA and Boeing have calculated the probability that a catastrophic mishap causes astronauts to die on a Starliner flight — euphemistically, they call this scenario "loss of crew."

NASA's minimum requirement for crew safety was a 1 in 270 chance of loss of crew. Boeing exceeded that with 1 in 295, according to Steve Stich, who manages the NASA Commercial Crew Program that birthed Starliner. He added that those calculations are for a full 210-day mission, while Whilmore's and Williams's test flight lasts just one week.

Of course, odds like that would never fly for commercial airplanes.

Spaceflight is so much more dangerous than aviation in part because it's so much younger. For more than 100 years humans have been building and flying planes, making deadly mistakes, and learning from them.

The US has flown about 400 crewed spaceflights, and four of them have resulted in fatal malfunctions, according to a 2020 analysis. That's a 1% fatal failure rate, which is 10,000 times greater than the rate for commercial airliners.

Spaceflight involves extreme environments and powerful rocket engines. There are simply more hazards the further you go from the ground.

"Even after many years and many hundreds and thousands of flights on an airplane, we still have to have a healthy safety culture. And that same situation applies to space activities, even more so," Nield said.

Starliner has extra safety features

Starliner's flight on Monday is a test, and the spacecraft has already been through a rigorous testing process at NASA's behest.

Boeing has fired the spacecraft's thrusters on the ground, tested its parachutes, and launched it and immediately aborted in order to test the mechanism that would jettison the spacecraft away from a failing rocket. Boeing also completed a series of reviews and corrections to resolve issues it discovered during its two uncrewed flights.

The astronauts have played a very hands-on role.

"We've got our fingerprints on every single procedure that exists for this spacecraft," Wilmore told reporters in a Q&A on Wednesday.

Starliner also has extra safety measures built into its design, Whitmore and Williams said in the Q&A.

For one, it has no "black zones" — parts of the flight trajectory where a certain type of spacecraft failure would be unsurvivable. That's partly thanks to its unique ability to switch between three different flight modes: fully automatic, manual control with computers, and a backup mode that's fully manual with no computers, as a failsafe.

Starliner can also abort its flight anywhere from the launchpad "all the way up through orbit," Williams said.

"We're on the tippity top end, so we'll be ok," she added.

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• Michael Cohen was found to have 39,745 contacts stored in his cellphone, said a data analyst.
• Data from Cohen's phone contained a recorded call discussing a $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal.
• Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, is set to testify against the former president's New York trial.

Prosecutors at Donald Trump's hush money trial wrapped up Thursday's proceedings with testimony from a digital data analyst who works for the Manhattan District Attorney.

Douglas Daus, testified he had extracted data from two iPhones belonging to Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, and so-called "fixer"

One device had 39,745 contacts, which Daus described as "unusual."

"I've not seen contacts of that many being on a phone," he said. Daus, who works in the high technology analysis unit at the New York County District Attorney's Office, said he had analyzed "maybe thousands" of phones, per Associated Press.

Hope Hicks, a former advisor to Trump and who testified before the jury on Friday, as well as Trump Organization accountant Allen Weisselberg, First Lady Melania Trump, and Trump himself were all in his phonebook (there were 10 pages of contacts related to Trump), per Deadline.

One of the phones contained a recording of a September 2016 phone call made by Cohen to his client, Trump, which first became public in 2018. The call was played before the jury.

In the call, Trump can be heard responding to Cohen saying he needed to open a company and that he's spoken with the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, about how to set the whole thing up. This company was to facilitate the $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.

"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said, referring to David Pecker, then-CEO of American Media. This tabloid publisher bought McDougal's story for $150,000, intending to bury it.

Cohen, who is believed to have paid the hush money at the heart of the case, was once a fierce Trump ally. Now, he is an outspoken antagonist of the former president, testifying against him.

Cohen has frequently mocked Trump on his podcast and his account on the social-media site X. But the former fixer said recently that he would gag himself and stop criticizing Trump online and on his podcast until after he had testified.

One of Cohen's favorite jabs became the subject of more gag-violation arguments at the trial on Thursday.

Trump's defense attorney, Todd Blanche, complained that Trump had to remain silent about witnesses and jurors while his opponents get to say "anything they want" — citing Cohen, whose favorite insult for the former president is Donald "Von ShitzInPantz."

Donald 'Von ShitzInPantz' has now formally entered the public record.

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• Text messages shown in Donald Trump's hush-money trial reveal attorneys' struggles to manage Stormy Daniels.
• Michael Cohen, Trump's ex-attorney, appeared frantic in messages after the hush-money story broke in 2018.
• Prosecutors allege Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 days before the 2016 election on behalf of Trump.

Text messages introduced as evidence in Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial show how ex-attorneys for Stormy Daniels and the former president struggled to control the woman after the bombshell news of the money-for-silence scheme broke more than six years ago.

The series of messages between Trump's personal-attorney-turned-nemesis, Michael Cohen, and Los Angeles lawyer Keith Davidson were displayed for the Manhattan jury as Davidson was on the witness stand this week.

Davidson, Daniels' former lawyer who brokered the hush-money agreement over the 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, testified how Cohen became "frantic" after The Wall Street Journal, in January 2018, first published the story about the $130,000 payment made to the adult film actress.

The text messages between Cohen and Davidson during that time period show it, with Cohen repeatedly pleading for Davidson to call him.

"WSJ called stormy. She didn't answer. They say they are running story & have a deadline of tonight for her to comment," Davidson texted Cohen on January 10, 2018, two days before the story was published, the messages show.

Cohen quickly replied: "Write a strong denial comment for her like you did before."

'This is no good'

Days after the hush-money story broke, Cohen messaged Davidson to say he had Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — scheduled to appear "tonight" on Sean Hannity's Fox News show.

Davidson responded that she couldn't do it that day.

"She is flying to LA tomorrow. I'm trying to get her to commit for tomorrow," Davidson texted.

Cohen responded, "It's really important. Why?" and begged for Davidson to call him.

"This is no good. We need her as by doing tomorrow you just create another news cycle instead of putting an end to this one," Cohen wrote.

Minutes later Cohen texted Davidson, "Please call me," before he again texted, "Cmon!"

"Let's forget tonight. They would rather tomorrow so they can promote the heck out of the show," Cohen messaged Davidson about a half-hour later.

Messages show Cohen's 'pants on fire stages'

More than two hours later, Cohen backtracked, messaging Davidson, "The wise men all believe the story is dying and don't think it's smart for her to do any interviews. Let her do her thing but no interviews at all with anyone."

Davidson then replied, "100%."

"Thanks pal," Cohen messaged back, adding, "Just no interviews or statements unless through you."

In Davidson's testimony Thursday about the text messages regarding Daniels potentially appearing on Hannity's show, he said, "This was sort of in one of Michael Cohen's pants on fire' stages, where he was sort of frantically trying to address the fact that Stormy's story had percolated into public consumption and he — he was frantic."

"I was in a trial and — which is fairly all-consuming — and it was just many, many, many phone calls and many, many text messages with little regard for my schedule," Davidson told the jury.

Davidson testified that he believed Cohen thought if Daniels went on Hannity's show, it "would somehow help him and his client."

"I had an understanding that he believed that she would further deny the interaction," Davidson told the jury.

Daniels initially denied an affair with Trump, including in written statements issued to the media after the hush-money story broke. But months later, she said she did, in fact, have sex with the then-"Apprentice" star in 2006.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office say Cohen made the election-influencing hush-money payment to Daniels on Trump's behalf to buy her silence about the affair she had with him — and that Trump lied on documents to cover up his reimbursements to Cohen.

Trump, who faces 34 felony counts alleging falsifying business records, has repeatedly denied having an affair with Daniels.

'Why is she going on Kimmel after the Sotu'

The text messages between Cohen and Davidson also show the internal chaos that ensued before and after Daniels appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on January 30, 2018, following Trump's State of the Union address.

"Why is she going on Kimmel after the Sotu," Cohen texted Davidson days earlier. Davidson replied, "Idk I was pissed. She said this is her shot. I'm meeting with her this weekend to prep her and get the statement."

During Daniels' interview with Jimmy Kimmel, she suggested that her signature under a statement denying she had an affair with Trump had been forged.

"She just denied the letter," Cohen texted Davidson at the time. "Claiming it's not her signature."

"You said she did it in front of you," Cohen added. Davidson responded, "She did. Impossible – she posted it on her own twitter page."

Cohen then texted, "They showed her signature and she claimed it was not hers on Kimmel."

"Wtf," Davidson replied.

Cohen messaged minutes later, "The press is already beginning to send me e-mails."

Shortly after, Cohen texted Davidson to "please tell" Daniels' then-manager Gina Rodriguez "to ensure" Daniels "responds the same as your statement tomorrow when she does the view."

"This is not a comedy show!" Cohen fumed.

"Gina is ticked off at stormy because stormy made her look like a liar," Davidson told Cohen, referring to Daniels' agent. "Gina says she is going to have a LONG talk with stormy on the plane to NY tomorrow. She assured me this will get handled."

Davidson testified Thursday that Daniels signed the widely-circulated statement denying an affair with Trump, but that he wrote the statement himself.

The lawyer also testified that "an extremely strict reading of this statement would technically be true."

"I don't think that anyone had ever alleged that any interaction between she and Mr. Trump was romantic," Davidson said.

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• The 2024 Mount Everest climbing season was delayed due to crumbling ice in the Khumbu Icefall. 
• The Khumbu Icefall is one of the most dangerous obstacles to cross on the path to Everest's summit.
• As global temperatures rise due to climate change, this icefall will only become more treacherous.

Climbing Mt. Everest is a dangerous endeavor right from the start. Before climbers summiting via the South Col route can even make it to Camp 1, they must face one of the deadliest passages of all. A 1.6-mile stretch of slowly cascading ice just above Base Camp called the Khumbu Icefall.

It's a treacherous maze of crevasses that can stretch over 300-feet-deep and house-sized "ice towers" that can break free unexpectedly, triggering deadly avalanches like the one that killed three Sherpas last year.

It's called an icefall because it looks like a frozen waterfall, but here on Everest, the term "fall" might as well be a dire warning to all. As of 2016, six people had fallen to their deaths, and that's just a small portion of the total lives lost to the Khumbu.

This icefall is so perilous a dedicated team of specialized workers is responsible for charting a safe route through it. They're called the Icefall Doctors, and this year, they delayed Everest's climbing season by 12 days due to unsafe conditions on the Khumbu Icefall.

And it will only become more dangerous as global temperatures rise, Paul Mayewski, Mount Everest researcher and climatologist at the University of Maine, told Business Insider. He studies how climate change is affecting the highest peaks on our planet.

What makes the Khumbu Icefall so dangerous

The Khumbu Icefall is essentially a slow-moving river of ice that gradually falls down the mountain as the Khumbu Glacier recedes.

Its movement is what makes it so unstable, giving rise to deep crevasses and deadly avalanches.

Between 1953 and 2019, 45 people lost their lives on the Khumbu Icefall. The three major causes of death were avalanches onto the icefall (49% of deaths), icefall collapse (33%), and falling into a crevasse (13%), according to Alan Arnette, a Mount Everest summiter and climbing coach who writes a blog about the mountain.

At the beginning of each climbing season, the Icefall Doctors are the first to traverse this treacherous icefall. They find the safest route through it, laying ropes and ladders along the way to help people navigate its cliffs and crevasses.

This year, the Icefall Doctors repeatedly encountered dangers that slowed their process. Insufficient winter snowfall and high temperatures destabilized ice towers and bridges, forcing them to re-evaluate their route several times, Outside reported.

"Going up there one part of the day and coming down the next day could look very different. And the probability of that getting worse with a warmer climate increases," Mayewski said.

Climate change is messing with the Khumbu Icefall

Rapid melting causes glaciers, like the Khumbu Glacier, to shrink and erode. In turn, this leads to more lakes and streams, but on a more dangerous level it also increases the risk of avalanches, ice falls, and crevasses, Mayewski said.

"The likelihood of that getting worse in a warmer climate increases because ice becomes more mobile," he said. "The warmer it is, the more flowing water. And that flowing water obviously destabilizes the ice."

Mayewski's research suggests that conditions are changing all over Mount Everest, not just in this region. His study of the South Col, Everest's highest glacier, revealed that one-third of its ice has disappeared in the last two to three decades.

"Even just walking around base camp, it's very obvious that there's been a lot of melting," he said.

These aren't the only dangers

While it's clear that climate change is making conditions in the Khumbu Icefall more dangerous, not all risks on Mount Everest are related to climate, Arnette points out.

In 2023, the deadliest climbing year in Mt. Everset's history, 15 of the 18 total deaths were caused by acute mountain sickness, falls, and disappearances. He feels that most of these deaths were likely preventable.

For example, acute mountain sickness — a mild form of altitude sickness — can be treated if climbers and their guides recognize the symptoms quickly and get to lower elevation, Arnette said. But if climbers choose to keep going, their condition can turn deadly. AMS claimed eight lives on Everest last year, according to the Himalayan Database.

Arnette believes that introducing more safety enforcement on the mountain would go a long way to reduce fatalities.

Climbers sometimes put themselves at risk too, by opting for low-cost operators, tackling Everest without enough climbing experience, or refusing to turn back even when showing signs of illness. In that last case, Sherpas often have difficulty convincing their clients to throw in the towel due to language and cultural barriers, Arnette said.

Will the added risks driven by climate change make climbing Everest impossible one day? Mayewski doesn't think so.

"Will people still be able to do it? Yeah, I think they will. Will it be more dangerous? Arguably yes — it's already pretty dangerous," he said.

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