Followupquestion,

You might want to listen to the first season of The Big One, which was on NPR. One of the things they talk about is how many towers haven’t really faced a big quake since they were built, and the City of LA refuses to say which buildings won’t stand up to even a medium quake. Quake liquifaction is a thing you should read up on; it’s scary because it’s a distinct possibility in some of the most populated cities in the world. Japan has done a great job of building earthquake resistance into their buildings, but again, very few of them have actually faced a massive, local quake, so it’s all based on best guesses. I know my single story isn’t coming down like a tower, and I can personally turn off my natural gas line to reduce fire risk. Towers don’t have individual gas shutoffs AFAIK.

All concrete construction reduces the risk of small fires spreading, but like the Twin Towers proved, once the building is on fire the only way down is the stairs, because external ladders aren’t tall enough. It also doesn’t help when the buildings are clad in flammable materials, like the residential tower in the UK that went up like a candle. I literally don’t stay above a certain floor in hotels when I travel in the US because even the FDNY’s tallest ladder only goes up 137 feet (41.75 meters for the metric lovers). Internationally, I don’t stay above the fourth floor, because most fire departments don’t have ladders to reach much higher than that.

That your building escaped without people inadvertently infecting others is great, but I hope you realize that part of what made Covid so dangerous, especially in the first year, was that it could spread before symptoms presented strongly, and that there was strong asymptomatic transmission. It’s not crazy to think some of those characteristics will be shared with other, much more deadly, viral strains, given that we’ve seen such hopping in bacteria. That’s why antibiotic resistance is so dangerous; germs share with each other. Positive pressure in the hallways being a positive presumes contagious individuals know they’re contagious and will stay inside their flat until they’re no longer contagious. I don’t think I need to tell you how unlikely that is for large segments of the population.

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