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What about building a huge skyscraper in New York City and later being told by an undergraduate student that it's got a critical design flaw that could make the whole thing collapse?

That happened.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/04/17/the_citicorp_t...




> LeMessurier realized that a major storm could cause a blackout and render the tuned mass damper inoperable. Without the tuned mass damper, LeMessurier calculated that a storm powerful enough to take out the building his New York every 16 years.

> In other words, for every year Citicorp Center was standing, there was about a 1-in-16 chance that it would collapse.

They dropped a factor here. Not every storm strong enough to damage the building without the damper would cause a blackout first.




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