Eli5 how it’s possible to demolish buildings in tight urban areas without causing any collateral damage
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Destruction engineers are amongst some of the smartest people in the world, at least when it comes to pulling down buildings. They examine the blueprints of the building and determine the weak points (of which there are a few) and, armed with their extensive knowledge of explosives and other things, can very accurately design a method of laying out explosives that will cause a building to collapse in on itself.
It’s pretty cool stuff
I’m going to try and ELI5 the shit out of this:
Have you ever played Jenga?
If you have, you know that if you take a specific block out the tower will fall, and you can pretty much guess in what direction because you know where the weight of the tower is going to lean too.
During demolition, think Jenga, but big, and with a lot of math.
Buildings have structural points that help hold the mass of the building together. Using physics, engineering and some math, we know what will happen when you “take of the blocks” of the tower and where the parts of the building will crumble too.
This obviously isn’t perfect, so during demolition, they pretty much have to make the area clear of people, and cover up the area so small debris don’t damage anything major, but the most important parts fall where we want them because we choose how to damage the structures of the building.
It is important to note that from what I know, in urban areas, demolition is usually done from the top down floor by floor, and not through explosions or the total collapse of the building.
You can take the building down bit by bit from the top floor down, or you can do a controlled “implosion” and drop the building into it’s basement.
There are also demolition curtains held up by cranes to contain any debris to the construction site.
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