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It’s kind of got some “jet fuel can’t melt steal beams” vibes to it. The beams didn’t melt. The fire was just intense enough that it caused the tempered hardening to fail. Without which, they could no longer sustain the load of the rest of the building above it.

Architectural materials are designed to deal with typical loads, plus a decent margin of error. Most people don’t have beavers in their walls, so bite force isn’t a typical load. Neither is a fully-laden jet airliner crashing into your skyscraper.

In my state of Victoria, in Australia, it’s required to use steel frames for construction of homes in bushfire-prone areas. Fire is a typical load that meeds to be engineered for. However, a single-story house (we build out instead of up when there’s the space) doesn't need hardened steel beams, and without 100 floors to support it won’t collapse in a fire.

Generally things are engineered with a safety margin so that they are absolutely safe for regular use and minor manufacturing defects or unusual usage don't cause immediate failure. That ladder rated for 400lbs will hold more than 400lbs before it collapses. Sometimes much more. This is normal and sometimes manufacturers like to show off how far above spec they are.

That said, the human jaw is quite strong, and structural wood is not generally expected to withstand high perpendicular shearing forces. I also don't really believe Tesla solar roofs would hold up to bowling balls, despite that being essentially a very extreme piece of hail.

I mean he’s a beaver, he might be a little biased towards wood bite quality. Obv gets his fix on stuff that gets “lost” at the construction site, and they’re just not buying the good shit anymore. I feel for the rodent

Absolutely, modern construction is often about not using (/spending) more than the spec requires.

Basic wood will be lower grade because it doesn't need to be. And it will be cheaper because of that.

C16/C24 will be stronger and less knotty, and will meet a higher spec, for a price.

It's like those TV shopping channels showing you how many bowling balls a vaccum can lift. That is of course critical for a piece of plastic and electronics that sucks up dust. It's so stupid I can't help but laugh.

Framing material in the US is called SPF, which means spruce pine fir. Any of those species may be used and they have similar enough engineering characteristics that they are interchangeable. Occasionally a building will be designed to use a specific species (southern yellow pine etc). But mostly we engineer stick built structures for SPF framing.

Fir is used in the US (most commonly in the pacific northwest), it's just typically used for outdoor construction because it doesn't warp as easily and holds up far better outdoors than pine. So you will frequently see it used as decking, fences, or siding (although wood siding is getting pretty uncommon).

Fir is also sometimes used for framing like pine is but pine is usually cheaper. The only advantage fir has over pine for framing is that it tends to be a bit stronger. But there are very few places where you need that extra material strength and can't just use slightly more reinforced pine construction to acheive the same result.

The "new growth" part is because the trees are harvested from farms as soon as they're big enough. This is as opposed to "old growth" where the trees are more mature and stronger.

Think veal versus beef in terms of texture

is clearly definitely not a beaver

is clearly not trying to determine where to avoid shitty soft woods