Building implosion
In the controlled demolition industry, building implosion is the strategic placing of explosive material and timing of its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings. Despite its terminology, building implosion also includes the controlled demolition of other structures, like bridges, smokestacks, towers, and tunnels. This is typically done to save time and money of what would otherwise be an extensive demolition process with construction equipment, as well as to reduce construction workers exposure to infrastructure that is in severe disrepair.
Building implosion, which reduces to seconds a process which could take months or years to achieve by other methods, typically occurs in urban areas[citation needed] and often involves large landmark structures.
The actual use of the term “implosion” to refer to the destruction of a building is a misnomer. This had been stated of the destruction of 1515 Tower in West Palm Beach, Florida. "What happens is, you use explosive materials in critical structural connections to allow gravity to bring it down.
The term “implosion” was coined by my grandmother back in, I guess, the '60s. It’s a more descriptive way to explain what we do than “explosion”. There are a series of small explosions, but the building itself isn’t erupting outward. It’s actually being pulled in on top of itself. What we’re really doing is removing specific support columns within the structure and then cajoling the building in one direction or another, or straight down.
- Stacy Loizeaux, NOVA, December 1996
Building implosion techniques do not rely on the difference between internal and external pressure to collapse a structure. Instead, the goal is to induce a progressive collapse by weakening or removing critical supports; therefore, the building can no longer withstand gravity loads and will fail under its own weight
Numerous small explosives, strategically placed within the structure, are used to catalyze the collapse. Nitroglycerin, dynamite, or other explosives are used to shatter reinforced concrete supports. Linear shaped charges are used to sever steel supports. These explosives are progressively detonated on supports throughout the structure. Then, explosives on the lower floors initiate the controlled collapse.
A simple structure like a chimney can be prepared for demolition in less than a day. Larger or more complex structures can take up to six months of preparation to remove internal walls and wrap columns with fabric and fencing before firing the explosives.
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spoilers for Weapons (2025)
I saw your take on the movie now that I saw it. I feel like the gun violence commentary didn’t land for me, it seemed to get lost after the second act. Sure, the parents were absent, the kid was getting bullied, and there was the very obvious bit with the rifle in the dream sequence. It even counted up 217 which I assume is a reference to some statistic about victims of shootings. But what was going on in the entire 2nd and 3rd act that illuminates any kind of commentary on gun violence, or anything at all?
I could kinda see one way the movie is using this Crash (2004) style convergent narrative to portray the aftermath of a close-knit community struck by a tragedy like a mass shooting. But the fact that the kids come back at the end seems to go against that formula, unless it’s also prescribing something. If Crash was a movie about how we beat racism, this seems like a movie about how school shootings or some other atrocity can be solved. But what’s Gladys? Some kind of brainworm infecting the children? Online extremism? Wokeness? It seems like, unironically, wokeness might be the best reading for what Gladys could represent if she’s a straightforward symbol, but Zach Cregger obviously isn’t trying to say that, and it would be pretty bizarre for wokeness to make a dude kill his husband. But she’s too normie-coded to represent extremism, which is the more obvious liberal narrative about what could cause mass shootings. And I don’t think she represents alienation which, if I’m simplifying, would be the materialist answer to the question. So I’m just kinda stumped, wtf was the point of that character? Old women’s bodies are scary, boo!
In the bits of the movie where it strayed a bit from the usual horror movie formula, i.e. the bits where it’s actually saying something, I was letting my mind go wild about what it was about if not school shootings. I was jumping at shadows, like when Archer goes and asks the other family to see the footage of their kid running away and the number of the house was 1948 I started thinking that it could be about the Nakba! Which, in some ways, works a bit better than the school shooting allegory. Gladys settles in Alex’s home, threatens and extorts him, ramps up violence against the whole neighborhood, and apparently wants to live forever. But that’s a huge reach, and there’s little evidence in the actual structure of the movie that supports that interpretation, although the image of the kids being kidnapped in the basement was evocative of a concentration camp where generations of displaced refugees would stay.
I guess I’m frustrated that I can’t fit the movie in any sort of box because Barbarian was a much more straightforward “men in patriarchal societies be out there doing some really bad stuff” theme, while this one is throwing me for a loop.
I just want to say one thing here:
spoiler
Crash (2004) is one of the most racist movies ever made IMO.
Yes 100%, but Magnolia isn’t as didactic so I couldn’t use it to make a point.
I actually think there’s a sort of underexplored Rashomon element.
spoiler
The cop looks more reasonable in the addicts telling (We don’t see the brutality and he is much more put together and speaking more coherently), the wife looks completely unreasonable in the teacher’s telling and incredibly sympathetic in the cop’s telling. It’s not just that different perspectives show new things we didn’t see before (Like the teacher and the cop actually having sex and the cop actually drinking in his version) but similar events are shown with an emphasis that usually puts more negative focus towards the person who is the current protagonist.
I’m a big dum dum and don’t understand themes at all, but I do have some things I feel like I should note.
spoiler
But the kids don’t actually “come back”. They’re permanently hurt by Gladys. The happy note is that some of them have started talking again. The parents still have to be hand fed soup. They are deeply traumatised at the end.
Gladys does one thing. She turns humans into objects. She literally dehumanises people and through removing people’s humanity uses them as tools (The term “Weaponises” is used). But yeah she’s not a very good metaphor for anything that makes someone do a school shooting. If anything I think she’s a better stand in for addiction, with the way Alex is forced to care for his parents pretty reminiscent of children taking care of their nonfunctional alcoholic parents. But she is of course covered in imagery of parasites, which doesn’t super work for alcoholism.
Also Alex is a victim, if the movie is attempting to do an allegory of school shooting rather than just borrowing the associated imagery and emotional beats, it is a school shooting allegory where the school shooter is a sympathetic child who does it out of necessity and is also the one who “saves” the children he has hurt. And the main victim of the town’s ire is the teacher, which I don’t think is typical of school shootings. There are elements of it, sure. One kid victimising his classmates and ending up as the one “survivor”, that kid being a victim of bullying, the parents mourning their children and redirecting their anger, the school assembly, the useless police, etc. But as you note, a lot of the elements also don’t fit.
spoiler
Yeah, lots of things don’t quite line up with the school shooting metaphor. And your point that Gladys turning people into objects immediately made me think about alienation but I’m still not sure. You think maybe weaponizing them is an allusion to military recruiting and it could be about war?
spoiler
It might be. But it doesn’t really do anything with military imagery outside of the actual guns, people are weaponised but it is never put in the context of actual military stuff. The only conclusion I can really reach is that it’s just playing with a lot of different imagery without fully grasping on to one in specific. And in that vein maybe the metaphor is one simpler? Gladys is simply dehumanisation?
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spoilers for Prisoners (2013)
I also noticed the parallel to Prisoners, but I felt like Prisoners made a pretty solid point about the war on terror, imagined threats, the effectiveness of torture in interrogation, etc but I didn’t see anything like that here. Heck, maybe that’s why I made the reach to Israel, because that’s a contemporaneous conflict that mirrors how Prisoners talked about the war on terror