You come in like a wrecking ball...er, with a wrecking ball. Or with a sledgehammer. Or maybe with some dynamite. You come in with something destructive, basically.

You're a demolition contractor, and it's your job to supervise others in wiping old, damaged, or useless infrastructure off the face of the Earth as safely and effectively as possible. Combine that super-cool job description with the not-bad-at-all salary of $50,000 per year, and you've got yourself an excellent career choice (source). 

Besides just, you know, demolishing stuff, you and your crew may also be called upon to remove dangerous materials like mold and asbestos from a site, or even do a little light cleaning or construction work.

 

You're sort of like a magician who makes entire buildings disappear. (Source)

As a demolition contractor, your weapon of choice depends entirely on the job you're doing.
For manual demolition (e.g., getting rid of the bits and pieces—concrete, wiring, wood, metal, etc.—at a site), you'll use basic hand tools like hammers, crowbars, chisels, and nail pullers. If you're getting rid of the big stuff, like an entire building or an overpass, that's mechanical demolition. For that, you'll use the fun toys like explosives, bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy-duty equipment.

Then there's green demolition, which is dismantling rather than outright destroying a structure, then recycling as much of it as possible. It doesn't sound as much fun as the reckless abandon-type destruction connoted by the first two, but the tools for this gig are the same as those you'd use in manual or mechanical demolition. All the hammers, crowbars, and dynamite you want.

As a child, your happiest moments probably involved mowing down sand castles at the beach and destroying the Lego structures built by your friends. You didn't just destroy for the sake of destroying, however—you also liked to envision what would arise from the ashes. (Not that your pals ever appreciated your post-annihilation suggestions about what they should create next.)

You also maybe fell in love with Dr. Bruce Banner's alter ego as a child and have a poster of your favorite comic book character on your bedroom wall to this day.

While demolition contractors don't make a ton of money, the work you do is important: without destruction, there can be no construction. For example, present-day Paris would look way different if King Louis Napoleon III hadn't decided to wipe out whole sections of the city during the 19th century to make way for civic improvements.

While the City of Light's wide boulevards sure are pretty, His Majesty's massive renovation project also gave Paris a huge economic boost and led to better public health. In other words, the demolition work you do paves the way for all kinds of awesomeness.

 

"Yeah, just hit that nail right there." (Source)

You'll be relieved to know you don't need a college degree to be a demolition contractor. You should, however, be in possession of excellent critical thinking and communications skills, so you can figure out how to safely destroy stuff and then convey your plans to your crew.

You'll also need to be happy working at both demolition sites and behind a desk—demo work is as much about getting the proper permits issued as it is about actually wrecking structures.

There are some hoops you'll have to jump through in order to obtain this job. You'll need to work for several years in the construction industry, then complete an apprenticeship that prepares you to oversee demolition work. You'll have to be thoroughly familiar with worksite safety rules and practices so you can protect yourself and the people who work for you.

Once you have the proper experience, you'll be able to find work with a demolition company...or you could start a company of your own, if entrepreneurship is your cup of tea.

However, there are some pretty big issues with this job you should be aware of:

• You could die a horrible death. Unlike most jobs, there are many, many, many ways to get hurt or even killed at a demolition site. 
    
• You could be out of work if the economy tanks. Construction—which includes demolition contracting—is closely tied to a country's economic performance. In a bear market, you might find yourself without much work, or maybe even unemployed. 
    
• You may not be able to break into this career. There are only a few thousand demolition contractors in this country, and not a lot of room for newbies.

If you like the idea of destroying stuff but can't get excited about taking down molding old homes, there are some alternative jobs you could consider. Military demolition experts blow stuff up, although there's always the chance that the thing exploding will contain anthrax, or some other unsavory substance. 

Or you could work in special effects in the entertainment industry. If you have a cerebral bent, you could always become a chemist, or you could study nuclear physics and work with the ultimate tool of destruction: the atomic bomb.

Basically, what we're trying to tell you is there are plenty of outlets for those destructive impulses your parents try so hard to keep you from indulging in.

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