The relevance of the work is due to the increasing possibility of impact on the critical building structures of industrial buildings of short-term dynamic loads in abnormal emergencies. These situations lead to significant damage of the constructions of buildings. There is a high possibility of human victims and significant damage of expensive technological equipment when the structures collapse. Therefore, in order to ensure further functioning of the structure, it is necessary to design building structures as well as the object on the whole with the properties of survivability under non-stationary impact. Such properties should be analyzed when constructing scenarios of origination and development of emergency situations as well as analyzing risks. In the course of the research the strain gauge methods were used to measure deflections, accelerations and loads on the samples. The work proposes a method for assessing the degree of survivability of a critical building structure under short-term dynamic loading based on the analysis of the energy parameter. Using the example of a specific test of a bending reinforced concrete element for short-term dynamic load the values of the specified coefficient were obtained.