We couldn’t help but notice the sheer idiocy of Grant Cardone’s tweet on the tragic destruction of the Key Bridge in Baltimore when it was hit by a 95,000 ton cargo ship moving at 8 knots.

Grant Cardone does not understand simple physics.

Worse, he incorrectly turns an engineering failure on a ship into a question about America’s infrastructure:

What’s happening to our infrastructure?

But more importantly how can one collision collapse an entire bridge? #baltimorebridge pic.twitter.com/XPHcE7BifT

— Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone) March 26, 2024

The answer to why the bridge collapsed is simple physics: A massive 95,000 ton cargo ship hit and destroyed one the three pylons which support the bridge. This is all an energy equation, i.e. energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, the energy has to go somewhere. In this case, the energy destroyed the pylon and then propagated through the bridge span in seconds. In doing so, the energy destroyed all of the bolts and welds and other structural supports.

The destruction of one of the three support pylons cascaded into the near-instantaneous and catastrophic failure of the entire structure. Grant Cardone should have asked a structural engineer to explain what happened before he tweeted. Cardone buys apartment buildings so its not like he doesn’t contract with structural engineers on pre-purchase inspections.

Alternately, OT8 Grant Cardone could have telepathically asked fake nuclear physicist Dr. L. Ron Hubbard to explain it to him.

Cardone used his tweet on the ship-bridge collision to jump to a question about America’s infrastructure. This is non sequitur as a ship hitting a bridge is not an infrastructure problem.

The bridge pylons are key structural failure points as Dr. Stergios Mitoulis explains:

Dr Stergios Mitoulis, Head of the Structures Research Group at the University of Birmingham, said:

“The Francis Scott Key Bridge, known originally as the Outer Harbor Crossing until it was renamed in 1977, or simply the Key Bridge or Beltway Bridge, was a steel arch-shaped continuous through truss bridge spanning. The bridge is 1.6 miles long and the central part that failed was a 366-m long continuous truss.

A heave ship collided on the bridge and the pylon was not able to take the excessive collision/dynamic load and the bridge collapsed due to progressive collapse. Removing one support redistributes loads in the structure, akin to the way loads shift when standing on one leg. Thus even though it might look as a disproportionate consequence, the pylon collapse would lead to collapse of the bridge in all cases—this is not something that we can design our bridge decks for (i.e. complete failure of a pylon).

Sudden collapses of structures happen for many reasons. For example, due to years of condo owners voting to defer spending any money on essential and necessary structural repairs, the Champlain Tower South in Surfside, Florida suddenly suffered a massive and sudden partial collapse in 2021.