A large number of hurricane and earthquake home-destructions can be traced back to failure of the nails due to pull-through, pull-out, or sheared-through nails. Bostitch engineer Ed Sutt came up with the obvious answer – a better nail. The hurriquake® nail has been designed (through extensive testing of simulated "houses" in simulated "disasters") to have the right combination of barbs on the end, larger head, stronger kind of steel, maximum-thickness (for strength) smooth shank part, and spiral near-head anti-wobble part to make houses stronger. The tests indicate that if you build your house with hurriquake nails instead of regular nails, your house will be twice as strong – at a total cost of $15 extra per house.
Picture from Popular Science Magazine, which gave this nail its 2006 "innovation of the year" award. Nail is 2.5 inches long and available from Bostitch Corp. in 0.113 and 0.131 inch diameter.