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Originally Posted by photoLith
The Sears Tower isnt looking as black as it was when I remember seeing at a kid living in Chicago. Maybe they need to clean it although I dont know how you clean steel since a lot of that is just weather over the years and maybe a little bit of rusting.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
the sears tower is clad with black anodized aluminum. it's not rusting.
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Indeed. It very well might hold up longer/better than a stone facade would if both were left completely unmaintained for some period of years.
Coincidentally, I was just thinking about survivability of the Sears Tower on the way to work today. I've been watching (probably too many) apocalyptic movies/shows (such as the Walking Dead) lately and it occurred to me that post-9/11 if society did completely fail that some of the trouble-making factions among the survivors might want to try to wreak some destruction on a grand scale and would easily find a good way to fell a building with a steel support infrastructure.
Barrels of petroleum, cords of wood or reams of paper, perhaps as much accelerant or chemical sources of oxygen as could be scrounged up placed in the 2/3 of a building on the side you wanted it to fall toward, all put on 2-3 floors above the foundation, light it up and in a day or so you very well might end up with a horizontal skyscraper. Obviously wouldn't work as well for concrete cores, but for completely steel ones it seems like a relatively simple task to pull off if society disappeared. This doesn't happen now mainly due to fire suppression (either active systems or active fire departments) and a lack of sufficient fuel to keep the fire hot enough, long enough to soften the steel sufficiently. But if there was no police or fire department, loading in enough fuel would just be a matter of time.