How To Be... a Demolition Expert

When I was a kid, firecrackers were never quite enough. I mean, a single firecracker is rather wimpy. Not that you can get them around here. I don't think my kids have ever even seen a firecracker, but we used to get big bundles of them every Christmas for quite a few years when I was in that 10-year-old range. We got enough of them to get plenty creative with them despite being told not to. But, other than sparklers, we never got any other kinds of fireworks, so we had to do something with them to achieve more spectacular results.

That usually meant experimenting with bundling them together, emptying them out, and blowing things up. Really, though, my favorite was just dropping them into a Coke can. Simple and loud.

I want to believe that people that go into demolition started out that way, playing with firecrackers, but bigger. But I don't know that.

Actually, a good background in construction is necessary if you want to be involved in de-struction. Tell that to any two-year-old, right? My oldest loved to knock things over when he was that age. The only reason ever to put something together, in his mind, was to knock it apart. I sort of imagine demolition people never growing out of that, but, again, I don't know that.

At any rate, it seems that many demolition experts say that hands-on experience is the best training for this particular job. You can get training, especially in the military, but you really need to do it to understand it. Be involved in it. Getting apprenticeships with construction companies that do the kind of demolition you're interested in can be a great way to get training.

The kind of demolition? Isn't demolition just blowing stuff up?

Well, no...

You can excavate, undermine, wrecking ball, explode, implode, and just plain old knocking it over. The demolition expert will need to be able to choose the best option for the job. Of course, building implosion is probably everyone's favorite. It's pretty spectacular and takes a lot of skill and a lot of preparation. Months worth, because any error can be disastrous. An error can include imploding on a day when the cloud cover is too low, which will direct the shock wave out into surrounding buildings rather than dissipate upwards. Yeah, I never considered that either. I would hate to have been the guy to have made that mistake the first time.
Here's one that went as planned:

So, although you can become a demolition expert without any proper schooling, the military is still one of the best ways to get trained in the field. They offer a broader range of experience and one more focused on explosives. If you really want to learn how to blow stuff up, the Army might be a good place to learn.