GOP CONGRESSMAN SEES THE LIGHT!!!

[geoschmo]

KlvinoHRGA said:
It's common knowledge that these buildings are designed, incase of catastrophic failure, to collapse down on top of itself as to avoid collatoral damage to the surrounding buildings.

It's actually not exactly. It sounds trite but buildings fall more or less straight down because that's the direction gravity is pulling them. Skyscrapers are designed to withstand stress loads primarily in a downward direction. They don't actually fall over like trees because the structural supports fail and they collapse downard way before the center of gravity can get out to the point where the building would topple over sideways.

You could build a building that could be tipped over far enough that it would fall over instead of collapsing down, but it would take so much extra reinforcing material that it wouldn't have much usable interior space for offices and stuff. Kind of like a tree.