alt Hacker News>Castles and cathedrals and city walls and the like don't fall down unless you intentionally ignore or obfuscate a ton of cracking a slumping and things moving, etc, etc.
There are many failure modes other than gradually cracking and eventually failing. Even in that case, by the time you notice such cracking, the cost of repair - if it can be repaired - is dramatically higher, and has tons of effects.
Yes, technically there are other ways things can fall down but they're generally exceptional. You can probably write off 100yr+ weather events let alone any consideration of seismic loading as issues for god. Nowhere did I mention cost. That things cost more to fix after construction is kind of a given.