[garyhope]

And of course, the opposite:

Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture (Paperback)
by Mario Salvadori (Author)

There might be another book that I bought a while ago on the same kind of things called “Why buildings DONT fall down” I can’t remember the exact title.

I bought it because I din’t understand why they DIDN’T fall down.

After having been through 2 major earthquakes when I lived in California, I don’t trust much of anything structurally.

I know that if we have a big one here in Texas, a lot of freeways and overpasses standing on spindly little one legged suppports are going to hit the dirt.

[AnAmericanMother]

That was the sequel.

Because the first book actually talks a lot about the failure points that caused famous things to fall down -- it also points out how to remedy them. It covers "Galloping Gertie" (and other bridge collapses), the Empire State Building plane incident, the KC skywalk collapse, and other less known incidents. The Nimitz Freeway collapse was discussed in detail.

If there's a big one in TX, it'll come off the New Madrid fault and it will hit here before it hits there -- and we won't be here to talk about it!