A building implosion does not blow a structure apart. It removes just enough support that gravity finishes the job, and the whole event is engineered around that single transfer of work. Explosives account for a tiny fraction of the effort. The rest is preparation, and it takes months. Crews first strip the building to its skeleton, removing glass, cladding, partitions and asbestos, anything that would become uncontrolled debris. Engineers then map the load paths and identify which columns are primary and which are redundant. Only a fraction are ever charged. The rest are pre-weakened by hand: concrete chipped away to expose reinforcement, steel flanges cut into V-shapes with oxy-fuel torches so each column has a predetermined hinge. The charges themselves are small and specific: - Concrete columns: boreholes of 35-50 mm loaded with emulsion or gelatine explosive, often under a kilogram per column - Steel columns: linear shaped charges exploiting the Munroe effect, driving a copper...