Recently, I came across an internet firearms forum discussing gun safe security. Several forum members, including former military veterans, conflated their military service with scientific expertise, stating emphatically that American two-story homes can only carry a max load of 400 pounds on the second floor.
The kicker was this -- if you put a gun safe on the second floor, and you place it in the middle of your home, your floor will start to bend from the pressure. Eventually, the pressure will be so great that the gun safe will fall to the ground floor, perhaps taking parts of the second floor with it.
Here's a gif I created for a visual illustration:
At first glance, the assertion sounds reasonable, except that it's not. Gun safes don't have all their weight focalized at one specific point. Rather, the weight is distributed across a fairly generous surface area.
Furthermore, if American homes could only carry a maximum of 400 pounds, how do fat people live upstairs? Should homes be required to carry a warning sign for fat people urging them to NEVER stand on one foot when going upstairs?
Here's another gif I created:
Folks, it goes without saying that any strongly-worded assertion from the internet should be taken with a huge grain of salt. While some assertions are smarter than others, think about the implications of what you hear on the internet before granting them intellectual validity!