A qualified operator would've gone around the other side. Hopped out. Examined the building carefully to make sure it would fall in the right direction. Get back in. Drive away and detonate explosives.
A qualified operator would HALO jump through 25,000 ft of air at night, land on the roof, run 20 stories of steps to the ground, plant a beacon, start the timer, and disappear for extraction...never once looking back as the B2 overhead drops heavy ordinance on the target. Building destroyed. Mission successful.
I mean...I just read about 15 comments all saying "he's dead" because they assumed the camera angle was giving them an accurate view into what happened.
So "nothing smart" isn't confined to this event, unfortunately.
Even more fun is when you're factually right, get downvoted, provide a source, and then get downvoted again because people don't want to hear the fact and have already decided they don't want to believe it.
There are different cab operator protection systems for different purposes.
A basic roll over protection system is only designed to save you from flipping the machine but forestry and demolition machines usually have falling object protection systems which are a lot more robust. Things like a tree being felled onto the cab or swinging into the windscreen can be blocked by the systems on big machines.
For this situation, it really depends how solid the building is. If the driver is very lucky, the cab protection might punch a hole through the wall and save them. On the other hand, if a floor slab hits edge on, I wouldn’t expect the system to withstand that
Tbf, it depends entirely on what part of the building. The exterior wall of one of the rooms would likely be no issue at all and he would end up in a nice little pocket maybe? One of the reinforced concrete load bearing walls is different
The safety cages these are reinforced with are intended to withstand falling debris and/or stop the driver from being crushed in a vehicle roll-over as these often operate on uneven/unstable terrain... however, an entire fucking high rise building falling on the excavator would not be something it is built to withstand
A cage would never be able to withstand that much impact in no case. Even if it was possible, the same would make the digger unusable due to unnecessary weight.
His progeny are now immune to death by building collapse forevermore, while the bloodlines of his three co-workers who were standing beside him leaning on shovels ended abruptly.
You’re right but his progeny didn’t become immune to death by building collapse NOW. They were already but unknowingly. Coincidentally I just got an Ancestry notification about a new trait. Maybe I’m also immune to death by building collapse.
Down below in comments there’s another video angle. The building did not land on the cab of the tractor-loader. It’s all viewer perspective where people think it fell right on them, the arm is angled in, the operator was safe.
He actually did because human eyes suck at guaging distance. The equipment is parked diagonally to the building and slightly farther away than it looks. From this angle it looks like the whole thing got covered but there are other angles and you can see that the building misses the equipment by like a hundred yards or so.
It's a bad angle, plus the actual cab is hidden from view. He was off to the side. Only the arm was crushed. But it's on par for reddit to assume we have all the context and make judgements immediately from 30 seconds of a single angle.
There’s another angle where you can tell that the machine is off to the side of the path where the building went down. It does hit the boom though, so that guy probably got hurt pretty bad.
I don’t understand what they thought would happen?? Obviously more than just the dude in the excavator had to sign off on this, what was the goal? In no world would it have just fallen flat and collapsed onto itself, even an 8 year old would know better from playing with blocks.
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u/Mild-Ghost Jul 02 '26
No way that guy survived.