If you're not familiar with it, steel is actually surprisingly strong for its size. Look up "ultimate tensile strength" and "compressive yield strength". They a

If you're not familiar with it, steel is actually surprisingly strong for its size. Look up "ultimate tensile strength" and "compressive yield strength". They are many tens of thousands of pounds per square inch for structural steel. Even the tensile strength of small fasteners like bolts is very high in "human" terms: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/us-bolts-tensile-proof-load-d_2066.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/us-bolts-tensile-proof-lo... The bottom floor of a 100 story building is holding up 99 floors of weight. That's not how it works. All the load of the floors above is held by the columns, which go into the foundation.