Thursday, September 09, 2021

How 9/11 Changed Skyscraper Design



As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's natural to take a look at what has changed on the years since. Those horrific moments when we all watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse live on TV were particularly scarring. You have to wonder how safe such tall buildings really are, as those towers were a model of safe architecture in their day. It might be reassuring to know that we've come a long way in both design and materials since the World Trade Center was designed in the 1960s, and especially in the past twenty years since they fell. (via Digg)

5 comments:

WilliamRocket said...

So, are they (lol) saying that newer designed buildings can't be demolished ?

Miss Cellania said...

No, they specifically said just the opposite. But they are safer than they've ever been before.

Bicycle Bill said...

Most demolitions of buildings, especially the implosions that everybody seems to like so much, depends on one thing that's been around long before 9/11, and hasn't changed one iota since then — and that's the law of gravity.
  
When the time comes to demolish the building, just place the charges so they kick out the proper supports, and the who;e thing falls down,

Unless it stands until 2056, by which time someone while have come up with the ACME Building Disintegrator Ray (as seen in "One Froggy Evening").
https://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/732/one-froggy-evening.html

-"BB"-

Anonymous said...

Bicycle Bill: that was their first attempt at taking down one of the World Trade Center towers. Fortunately, they failed--but unfortunately, they killed some people.

That was back around 1993. The leader of that enemy was nicknamed "The Blind Cleric."

The second attack on the WTC tower was in Sept 2001.

Bicycle Bill said...

I was aware of that one. A truck filled with ANFO (the same stuff that ravaged the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City) was left and detonated in a sub-basement parking level.  The intent was to cause the North Tower to collapse into the South Tower, bringing down the both of them. Since it wasn't close to the building's central support column, the building more-or-less shrugged it off with relatively little damage other than those immediate subterranean levels, although smoke penetrated both towers all the way to the 93rd floor.

Six people died, and approximately one thousand sustained injuries (mostly relating to smoke inhalation) during the evacuation of nearly 50K people from the two towers.

-"BB"-