Engineering Against Destruction

Japan leads the world in earthquake-resistant construction. Modern buildings use base isolation — the structure sits on rubber or sliding bearings that absorb ground motion while the building above barely moves. Tokyo skyscrapers are designed to sway during a quake rather than fight the force.

Tuned mass dampers counteract that sway: massive pendulums near the top of a tower move in the opposite direction. Taipei 101's damper is a 660-ton steel sphere visible to visitors. In Chile, strict building codes adopted after the catastrophic 1960 earthquake have saved thousands of lives in later quakes.