Giant structures reduced to rubble by disaster? You can't look away. Two engineering professors have created a great archive of disaster photos, along with lessons about what went wrong - and how to get it right next time.

Created by civil engineering professors Ross Boulanger of UC Davis and James Michael Duncan of University of Maryland, the Geo Photo Album is full of mega-disasters coupled with precise explanations of why buildings have topped or dams have burst. Essentially, you can read the album as a compendium of engineering disasters.

But it is also a compendium of engineering fixes - at least half the site is devoted to images of properly-conceived dams, gas storage tanks, and foundations, that are likely to remain standing in the event of disaster. Check out a few of the images here, along with Boulanger and Duncan's engineering insights. If you need more (and of course you will), you can go to the Geo Photo Album.

Say Boulanger and Duncan about this 1999 earthquake damage in Turkey:

The mat foundation for this building was exposed when it overturned. This building has a relatively large height-to-width ratio, making it more susceptible to overturning failure.