I used to love to watch Fred Dibnah demolishing giant buildings using burning railway sleepers or a handful of blasting powder.
Demolition is still big business, but knocking down buildings is a noisy, slow process, given that concrete is usually heavily reinforced with steel.
Today’s invention is therefore a relatively cheap, quiet and rapid way to take a building down.
A folding four-legged spider is passed into a ground floor room via a window. This is opened out and each of four footplates set against the corners of the room. The legs run up to a central core which is in an elevated position.
Sudden,downward pressure on the core forces the feet outwards, tensioning and displacing the walls just enough to punch holes in the corners and destabilise the whole structure,
This pressure could be generated by dropping a large mass or firing a single explosive charge (It might even be possible to use a hydraulic, drill-like mechanism to corkscrew the core towards the ground).
This will cause the upper floors to descend and the edifice to collapse.
When the rubble is later removed, the spider can be extracted and reused.
