What Really Happened to the WTC?

[DrTodd13]

To show I really do look at both sides, one conspiracy theories believes that demolition charges were placed at many of the upper floors of WTC 1 & 2 so that when the time came, the demolition could be started and would not appear too conspicuous. After all, you don't have that much fine control over which floors of the WTC would be hit. This theory seems quite unbelievable though not impossible. This makes me think that the conspiracy explanation is not very good either.

 

Would someone on the anti-agnostic side care to comment about the pulling of WTC 7? I haven't heard any reaction to that comment.

[kenrexford]

Here's what I think happened. I think the explosives were, in fact, placed inside the WTC. However, the plan was to blow up the WTC if a car bomb was set off in the basement. The airplanes would be enough without bringing it down.

 

However, the planes and the resulting fire triggered the explosives by accident. Thus, although Bush intended to blow up the WTC himself, this time it was an accident. You see, Bush cannot do anything right. To expect that he could pull off this explosion plot effectively is asking too much. He had to have messed up somehow, right?

[Al_U_Card]

Strangely, we were at work watching the live network feed that morning and I watched the 2nd plane impact the 2nd tower. Was that faked live as well? Were the charges only set off 45 min later when that tower collapsed first?

 

What a crock....but a fun crock.

[hotShot]

Have you ever seen a blacksmith working with iron?

 

It's not liquid, it's solid but can be formed. Steel and even concret change when they get really hot. Both loose their strength. Even normal furniture will cause temperatures of 1000°C when burning. The only reason houses don't collapse regularly is that the fires are usually not burning long enough to get the heat into the structure. Burning jet fuel will reach similar temperatures, and burning long enough will weaken a buildings structure.

Steel looses its strength at about 800°C.

Now think about the enourmous weight such a building has, when the steel starts to weaken the building will collapse. A collapse of that size will cause a lokal earthquake, surely strong enough to damage buildings.

 

Even bright people can talk nonsence, especially if asked the wrong questions.

[DrTodd13]

Have you ever seen a blacksmith working with iron?

 

It's not liquid, it's solid but can be formed. Steel and even concret change when they get really hot. Both loose their strength. Even normal furniture will cause temperatures of 1000°C when burning. The only reason houses don't collapse regularly is that the fires are usually not burning long enough to get the heat into the structure. Burning jet fuel will reach similar temperatures, and burning long enough will weaken a buildings structure.

Steel looses its strength at about 800°C.

Now think about the enourmous weight such a building has, when the steel starts to weaken the building will collapse. A collapse of that size will cause a lokal earthquake, surely strong enough to damage buildings.

 

Even bright people can talk nonsence, especially if asked the wrong questions.

Steel loses _SOME_ of its strength when heated to 1000 degress. It does not lose all of its strength. From what I have heard (which again is second hand evidence which is pretty much all of us are operating on), WTC 1 & 2 were around 4 times stronger than they needed to be to support their own weight in the presence of no wind. I have also been told that the steel used in these buildings loses about 50% of its strength at temperatures of 1000 degrees. Not all the supporting columns were subjected to these temperatures and even if they were, it still seems like you would still have 2x the load carrying capacity you needed. Like I said before, the winds were pretty calm that day so from these numbers it seems like it should have stayed up so either the 4x number is wrong, the 50% strength reduction number at 1000 degrees is wrong, there was a lot of wind, or the fire was hotter.

 

Prima facie, it sounds like nonsense to believe the buildings' collapse caused an earthquake that so damaged a building hundreds of feet away that it was in dangero of collapse while not causing irreperable damage to another similar building closer to the epicenter. They bring down big buildings all the time, some of them right into their own footprint less than a hundred feet from other buildings. These buildings can handle magnitude 5 or 6 earthquakes at least and isn't it pretty difficult to stand during such an earthquake. I don't recall any reports of anybody falling down due to shaking earth when the buildings collapsed. If there are reports of this I'd love to hear them.

[hrothgar]

Todd, i don't think anyone here is a structural engineer If anyone is, I doubt that they were involved in researching/writing any of reports in question.

 

Its all fine and dandy if you want to nitpick these reports, however, I have no interest in learning a new technical discipline just to provide you with a debate partner...

[EricK]

Would someone on the anti-agnostic side care to comment about the pulling of WTC 7? I haven't heard any reaction to that comment.

I think it is pretty likely from seeing the lead up to the Silverstein quote that he was talking about pulling the remaining firefighters out of the building to prevent any more needless loss of life.

 

Anyway, if the plan was already in place to blow up this building (and it would have to have been if there were explosives already in place) then why would he have had to tell people to "pull it"?

[hotShot]

Fire have caused buildings (burning long enough) to collapse for ages and will cause their collapse in future. And don't forget that a plane crashed into the building with about 500mph and will have ripped more than half of the static structure away. Look how deep the pentagon was penetrated by the third plane.

 

Standing next to the street you can feel a truck 40t just rolling past you.

The WTC is supposted to have a weigth some 500000 t (each tower), hammering to the ground.

 

If you insist on a conspiracy, have fun with it.

[DrTodd13]

I'm not insisting on a conspiracy. I'm saying that none of us have any reason to have 100% confidence in any given explanation. Don't sit here and quote me chapter and verse about orthodoxy and then when I simply ask a question say you don't have to defend your position because you're not an expert. If all you have to go on is that somebody with "authority" issued a report and told you what the official explanation is then basically what you are saying is that you believe something because you were told it. We all saw the planes hit the buildings and thus that is the most obvious explanation but there are a few curious oddities that have made some scientists question whether we are receiving the whole story. I've never seen such anger directed at people who are agnostic about something.

 

Earthquake info regarding WTC collapse.

 

By the way, why would he have said "pull IT" if he were talking about firefighters. Why wouldn't he have said "pull them."

[Winstonm]

As for heat, all I have read says that the maximum temperature of this fire could not have exceeded 1000 degrees F and it requires 1500 degrees F to melt steel.

This is even the official version.  The question then is what caused the pools of molten metal that were found?

Arrrgh...first you say that no molten steel was found (the only molten metal found was not steel), then you talk about molten steel over and over again. There's lots of metals out there, some of which melt at temperatures a lot lower than steel.

 

I pointed out, Hrothgar pointed out, the steel wouldn't melt, it would burn. He even points out that with just coke and a chimney effect you can burn steel. So why are you so hung up....

 

Never mind. You're not listening, so I'll stop talking.

I'm afraid you are not reading - I have never stated I believe this a conspiracy - all I've said is basically this: "Did you know there was this much controversy and did you know a third building went down?"

 

I then pointed out that some people much brighter, much more educated, and much better researched than me doubt the official version.

 

And you are right in that I probably did mix up the difference in the pools of metal found and a picture of a solidified piece - which is why I only touched on some of the ideas and suggested to anyone interested to simply research it himself.

 

Seems odd to me that even bringing up the idea that others question the official story brings out so much animosity.

 

Here is something you might want to look at, just to see what all the hullabaloo is about. It is a video of WTC 7 going down - there are obvious puffs of smokelike material coming from the sides before the building collapsed - and before you tell me this was from the floors interiors collapsing, watch the video. These puffs went up the building, not down. http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/Flash...west_corner.htm

 

There is also this interesting comparison video: http://www.911podcasts.com/files/video/Ita...teshow-WTC7.wmv

[hotShot]

Engineers said that the Titanic would not sink, but they did not expect anyone using an iceberg as a can opener.

I don't think engineers thought about airplanes crushing into the building, and they didn't design the fire distinguisher to hande 50 tons of burning fuel.

I also bet nobody designed the static of the sorounding buildings to withstand the effect the towers impact to the ground might cause.

I doubt that even experts really know what happend, because they don't have the neccessary scientific data. Any studies made of planes hitting houses, had in mind that the pilot would try to avoid it. Nobody seriuosly studied what 50 tons of burning fuel would do to a skyscraper, because nobody expected that someone would put it inside. And nobody was thinking about the shockwaves caused by a collapsing 500.000 ton building.

So even experts are sort of guessing here. And allthough a fire is not smart, it is acting multidisciplinary. So expertise in kinetics, static, chemistry and engenieering is needed gain a little understanding of what happend.

[Gerben42]

Did you know there was this much controversy and did you know a third building went down?"

 

In that order: No and yes. In Europe I have heard nothing of the crackpot controversy and yes, I knew a third building went down.

 

Seems odd to me that even bringing up the idea that others question the official story brings out so much animosity.

 

Well I'm sure it wouldn't if the alternative would not be so ridiculous. Who is paying people to come up with stuff like this? Chris Carter?

 

Any "open" questions about the buildings going down are not solved because no one cared to answer them carefully. The FEMA don't answer because they don't care enough, the conspiracy theorists don't answer since they like their own answer better.

 

I am sure if you employ me (or someone else for that matter) for the time I need to find out the scenario I can build you a nice simulation of the collapse including all the details you don't understand and in the conspiracy theory are explained by controlled collapse. But no one wants to spend that money.

 

Physics is terribly badly understood by most. Most Hollywood movies involving space or anything technological include errors that would make any physicist wince. And suddenly when the scenario is not likely but happened anyway we need crazy theories.

 

Be sceptical but just saying "ahh it's very unlikely that it's natural" and say "cannot be from natural causes" without bothering to look for explanations is not science.

[Winstonm]

Engineers said that the Titanic would not sink, but they did not expect anyone using an iceberg as a can opener.

 

Good point. :rolleyes:

 

I don't think engineers thought about airplanes crushing into the building, and they didn't design the fire distinguisher to hande 50 tons of burning fuel.

 

Supposedly not true - I am only relaying read info. Supposedly the WTC towers had been designed to withstand the impact of a airliner crashing into them. The jet fuel is probably accurate.

 

So even experts are sort of guessing here.

 

So it seems. The reasonable people I have read call only for a thorough investigation and a re-opening of case instead of guessing haphazardly. To me, with this much doubt it makes sense - especially as the ramifications of this one event have so dramatically affected the path of U.S. history.

 

My problem is that even if only a .00005% chance that something unsavory occurred that was in someway staged to produce a "louder" than expected horror show in order to engage in War on Terror, then it leaves me with too much doubt.

 

I remember Nixon vehemently denying that the U.S. had ever bombed Cambodia and no troops had crossed that border. I also remember Kent State where the National guard opened fire and killed U.S. college students. And I remember the Chicago Democratic convention where unarmed protest marchers were clubbed unmercifully into submission by the Chicago police department. These were all official acts by our government against our own citizens.

 

Yes, I want to know what happened. But I'm not about to simply accept the "official" version without reservation when this much doubt is cast by seemingly smart people.

 

Where would the U.S. be now if two reporters had not asked: "Why were CIA types breaking into Watergate - and then relentlessly followed up there own question?"

[mike777]

I was a very young Hippie(sort of) at that Chicago convention, you do not quite tell the full story. :rolleyes: but yes it was a police riot but not totally unprovoked at times.

 

It was silly to have a secret war in Cambodia rather than just tell the full truth with no apology as Regan often would. I guess it was in the nature of Nixon to act that way in many things.

[kenrexford]

Perhaps it was simply the hand of Allah?

[Winstonm]

Did you know there was this much controversy and did you know a third building went down?"

 

In that order: No and yes. In Europe I have heard nothing of the crackpot controversy and yes, I knew a third building went down.

 

Seems odd to me that even bringing up the idea that others question the official story brings out so much animosity.

 

Well I'm sure it wouldn't if the alternative would not be so ridiculous. Who is paying people to come up with stuff like this? Chris Carter?

 

Any "open" questions about the buildings going down are not solved because no one cared to answer them carefully. The FEMA don't answer because they don't care enough, the conspiracy theorists don't answer since they like their own answer better.

 

I am sure if you employ me (or someone else for that matter) for the time I need to find out the scenario I can build you a nice simulation of the collapse including all the details you don't understand and in the conspiracy theory are explained by controlled collapse. But no one wants to spend that money.

 

Physics is terribly badly understood by most. Most Hollywood movies involving space or anything technological include errors that would make any physicist wince. And suddenly when the scenario is not likely but happened anyway we need crazy theories.

 

Be sceptical but just saying "ahh it's very unlikely that it's natural" and say "cannot be from natural causes" without bothering to look for explanations is not science.

I am not a scientist.

I am not that highly educated.

My I.Q. tests early in life were not of genius level.

I do not proclaim expertise.

 

So, from a perspective of a layman, let me explain the doubts that have arisen in me simply about the official version - what actually happened I don't know - maybe official is correct. But here is what I see from my view:

 

1) Watching the video of the first building, you see it give way at the top, above the most severely damaged areas. These uppermost floors twist and begin to topple sideways, not down. Before these upper floors crash into the lower floors (from what it looked like to me), the lower building began to fall. If the cause of the collapse was the weight of the upper part, it doesn't seem by the video to have occurred that way.

 

2) On the way down, puffs of smoke blow out sideways from areas many, many floors below the fall-line. If this is caused by pressure from the fall, why did it not occur on each succeeding floor?

 

3) Red/orange hot molten meltel is seen pouring down the sides of the building. I have seen pictures of molten aluminum. This does not look anything like those pictures. What metal was this and what caused it to melt and pour down the buildings side?

 

4) On WTC 7, puffs of smoke blew out sideways starting on the upper floors from lower to higher in progression, before the building collapsed. Very similar puffs from the same areas, transversing the same way can been seen in video of controlled implosions. What caused these puffs in WTC 7 before it actually started to fall?

 

5) Why did the news audio tape from that day state explosions were heard from the base of the towers before the collapse? What caused these explosions?

 

6) FEMA track record for accuracy. Enough said.

 

7) The true nature of a real conspiracy: it doesn't take Bush and Cheney in on the deal - all it would take is a comment from Bush like, "We need a way to unite this country." From there, all it requires is a kook type like Bob Haldeman who passes on the "get it done" order. This is passed along to the next man to the next until you reach the "action" level', a handful of operatives. The actual planning, staging, and design of the operation would be in the hands of a very few and no one up the chain would know anyting about it until after the fact.

 

If you don't think this could happen, you have already forgotten Watergate. There is no doubt that Nixon never "orchestrated" the break-in. Most likely he said something like, "We need a way to discredit so and so." A few took this too far.

 

So, from my perspective I see enough in the videos and hear enough in the audiotapes to make me doubt; I also know from living though Watergate that all it really takes is one person in a position of power and a few who believe the means justifies the ends and are willing to do whatever is necessary to accomplish that goal. You just don't use third rate burglars - you use experts - a lesson learned from Nixon.

 

Far-fetched? Absolutely.

Impossible? I don't think so.

[jtfanclub]

[And you are right in that I probably did mix up the difference in the pools of metal found and a picture of a solidified piece - which is why I only touched on some of the ideas and suggested to anyone interested to simply research it himself.

 

Seems odd to me that even bringing up the idea that others question the official story brings out so much animosity.

 

Here is something you might want to look at, just to see what all the hullabaloo is about. It is a video of WTC 7 going down - there are obvious puffs of smokelike material coming from the sides before the building collapsed - and before you tell me this was from the floors interiors collapsing, watch the video. These puffs went up the building, not down. http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/Flash...west_corner.htm

 

There is also this interesting comparison video: http://www.911podcasts.com/files/video/Ita...teshow-WTC7.wmv

OK, I apologize, I figured your lack of response to the previous post combined with...anyhow, I'm sorry.

 

Ive been racking my brain on what the unidentified metal pools would be, especially since most melted things would be splattered into tiny droplets from the fall...I think it's saulder. Your average mainframe has enough saulder to melt into a blob the size of your fist, probably other things in there would have even more. It's designed to melt at a very low temperature, and it has a great affinity for itself...small amounts of it would tend to blob into good sized pools.

 

As far as the picture, that's dust. Take a vacuum cleaner bag, put it in a vertical pipe with holes along the sides. Now drop a rock into the pipe so that it hits the bag. You'll see dust come out of the holes, starting from the height of the top of the bag and going up very quickly. If the interior of the building collapsed, but the outside was fine (for the moment), you'd get the same effect: everything would fall to the bottom, and dust would come flying out from momentum, starting at the bottom, and going towards the top.

 

It certainly does look like demolitions, which do pretty much the same thing (they knock out the supports in the bottom, interior collapses quickly, exterior then falls inward slowly). But you don't get that effect from putting explosives at the top. If you were tying to blow up a building, why would you put the explosives on the top anyways?

[Winstonm]

[And you are right in that I probably did mix up the difference in the pools of metal found and a picture of a solidified piece - which is why I only touched on some of the ideas and suggested to anyone interested to simply research it himself.

 

Seems odd to me that even bringing up the idea that others question the official story brings out so much animosity. 

 

Here is something you might want to look at, just to see what all the hullabaloo is about.  It is a video of WTC 7 going down - there are obvious puffs of smokelike material coming from the sides before the building collapsed - and before you tell me this was from the floors interiors collapsing, watch the video.  These puffs went up the building, not down.  http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/Flash...west_corner.htm

 

There is also this interesting comparison video:  http://www.911podcasts.com/files/video/Ita...teshow-WTC7.wmv

OK, I apologize, I figured your lack of response to the previous post combined with...anyhow, I'm sorry.

 

Ive been racking my brain on what the unidentified metal pools would be, especially since most melted things would be splattered into tiny droplets from the fall...I think it's saulder. Your average mainframe has enough saulder to melt into a blob the size of your fist, probably other things in there would have even more. It's designed to melt at a very low temperature, and it has a great affinity for itself...small amounts of it would tend to blob into good sized pools.

 

As far as the picture, that's dust. Take a vacuum cleaner bag, put it in a vertical pipe with holes along the sides. Now drop a rock into the pipe so that it hits the bag. You'll see dust come out of the holes, starting from the height of the top of the bag and going up very quickly. If the interior of the building collapsed, but the outside was fine (for the moment), you'd get the same effect: everything would fall to the bottom, and dust would come flying out from momentum, starting at the bottom, and going towards the top.

 

It certainly does look like demolitions, which do pretty much the same thing (they knock out the supports in the bottom, interior collapses quickly, exterior then falls inward slowly). But you don't get that effect from putting explosives at the top. If you were tying to blow up a building, why would you put the explosives on the top anyways?

I don't know why explosives would be at the top.

 

No need to apologize, but thank anyway.

 

I think my biggest problem comes from my past: I was 12 when Jack Kennedy was killed. I was 18-22 range during Watergate, we didn't bomb Cambodia, and the Kent State massacre.

 

Suffice it to say I do not trust the government to act in my best interest or to tell the truth.

 

Now I want to know what happened.

 

I have one question now for you? Have you gone through any of the sites related to this and read an opposing version? If not, why not read through this site: www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html. It is posted by a BYU professor who knows more about metals/heat than I ever will. It doesn't take that long to read if you don't stop to watch the vidoes.

[jtfanclub]

I can't believe I've actually hit the pageback button twice on this damn keyboard. Lost the response twice 2/3 of the way through.

 

Quickly, then.

 

1. How was it hot weeks after the event? Certainly not from thermite, which would have burned out long before the buildings collapsed. It's designed to burn fast- that's one of the reasons they use it. A more likely cause is that the plane itself landed in a pile of burning iron. Burning iron becomes rust, rust and aluminum with a flash source (more burning iron) becomes thermite. And that plane would have taken a long time to burn.

 

How did molten iron appear on the outside of the building? Again, not from thermite. The columns were burned through, not the exterior. How would the thermite on the interior make molten iron on the exterior? On the other hand, the window frames were aluminum and lead, the glass silicon dioxide, the supports holding in the windows steel (and likely not directly attached to the big supports holding up the building). That's probably what was seen.

 

2. How did the steel get so hot? From the chimney effect, air being sucked upward through ventilation ducts. It's not hard to get the metal hot enough to burn from that. Anything that got hot enough to melt was from minor secondary fires, such as the aluminimum window frames burning.

 

Where did the sulfur come from? A ton of thermate at 2% sulfur has 40 pounds of sulfur. On the other hand, 10,000 gallons of JetA fuel, which is .3% sulfur, would have 210 pounds of sulfur. Any sulfur from the thermite would have ben dwarfed by the sulfur in the jet fuel (and other sources- the floor panels may have been gypsum, for example). He later points out that Building #7 had lots of diesel fuel in it, which explains the sulfur in there.

 

3. Who cares? It was a CIA building. Even if you found that #7 had been blown up, all that would show was that they had the building rigged to blow incase the enemy (Congress) came sniffing around. #7 collapsed because the impact of the taller buildings shook it apart. Why one building would collapse but not another isn't a question you can really answer, any more than why in an earthquake some buildings will collapse while other identical ones remain up.

 

4. No previous skyscraper collapses due to fires. Apparently, he believes in Xeno's Paradox- since no other skyscapers had fallen, therefore no skyscrapers can ever fall. Only one had had a jetliner crash into it prior to this, and it's a much more solidly constructed building. He later points out that explosives weren't enough to take down the building. Um, yeah. Don't you think that's an argument AGAINST explosives being used to take down the building?

 

Partly evaporated steel structures aren't explained by fire...but they are explained by friction, as somebody noted earlier. That only the ends of the girders were 'evaporated' while the center was pretty much untouched supports this idea.

 

5. 'Squib timing'. I wish this guy could make up his mind. Squib-timing implies that the building was blown up from the bottom up. Earlier, he claimed it was blown up in the middle, and then later he says it blew up from the top down. The very fact that he has to use mutually exclusive explanations for this stuff shows that his idea is faulty. Doesn't mean that all ideas are faulty, just his. Anyhow, this is the vaccuum cleaner bag thing I mentioned earlier.

 

6. Early drop of the antenna. Again, thermite doesn't explain this. If the columns had to all burn through simultaneously for this to happen, and they burned through at the middle or the bottom, the antenna wouldn't have fallen first. If it happened at the top, all of the columns burning through simultaneously, it would have sloughed off in some direction and fallen like a giant bottlecap.

 

So how about this? The antenna wasn't help up by all the columns, just the center one. The center one burned through first, both because it was at the center of the fire and it had more weight on it than the others. When it went down, the antenna fell. It also fits with a lot of the later things he mentions.

 

7. What you think of as the sound of explosions are just the rapid expansion of air after compression. You think there was any compression going on when the interior collapsed? As for the flashes, that was no doubt dust burning, either from friction or from coming in contact with electricity. Yes, Professor, "electrical explosions" wouldn't take down the building. These were at the lower floors, and dust explosions are more of a special effect than anything dangerous. Who ever said they were otherwise?

 

8. That same rapid expansion would blow dust and even girders out the windows, much faster than gravity would have any effect on the way down (the vaccuum cleaner bag trick). This is the same effect that you see in demolitions. It is *not* what you would see from explosives placed on every floor!

 

9. Does this guy even know what thermite is? It isn't an explosive. It doesn't create "shock and awe". And it sure as heck doesn't disintegrate concrete. In fact, no explosive explains what happened to the concrete. For that matter, this was over an hour after the initial fires...must have been the longest burning thermite in history. And what did they do, paint it on the walls? No we have thermite on the interior columns, the exterior steel, AND the concrete walls. Maybe they built the building out of thermite.

 

But how about this? The heat cause the concrete to break apart, becoming very fragile. When the columns snapped, they took the exterior steel supports with them around where they snapped. Without the support, the pressure caused the concrete to disintegrate. No explosives involved.

 

What happened to the angular momentum? No amount of explosives explains that one either- what, now they had explosives on the outside of the building to propel it in the right direction? How about, instead, the top of the building was still attached to most of the broken support columns, When it fell, if it angled too much the columns would bounce off the inside part of the exterior wall, thereby righting it. What other explanation can there be?

 

10. Gee, now we're to explosives in the basement. So now it was caused by a collapse from explosives at the floor where the plane it, a few floors below, at the top, on the first two floor, and the basement. All of which happened first.

 

Now he points out that only the greatest demolition experts would attempt to do an implosiion like this. Great, and yet his theory is that all of these demolition experts were somehow able to set up all of these explosives without anybody noticing or blabbing and able to factor in a crashing plane into account, and somehow all of these critical points weren't visible to the thousands of people inside. Again, his argument against the plane being the cause is actually a greater argument against explosives. So, no steel frame skyscraper has ever been hit by a plane, let alone collapsed from fire. So who's to say they wouldn't all act like this? We know doing it with explosives is almost impossible, you've shown that. We don't know if it's impossible or easy to do with fire. And this is supposed to convince me they used explosives?

 

11. This is just a repeat of the earlier stuff. "Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250ºC… Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250 ºC. ... Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600 ºC. (NIST, 2005, pp. 176-177; emphasis added."

 

So...the thermite melted the steel on the outside of the building, but never got above 600 degrees on the inside?

 

12. NIST contracted with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to conduct tests to obtain information on the fire endurance of trusses like those in the WTC towers… All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing.” (NIST, 2005, p. 140, emphasis added.)

 

Apparently, he thinks that that they lasted for 56 minutes and 1 hour and change instead of lasting for 'about two hours' means that there must have been explosives planted all over etc. Instead of it being, say, that substandard materials were used in the manufacture (God knows that would never happen in New England) or that in the years that it's been up that the structure had weakened. He's spent the first 10 points saying that it wouldn't have collapsed, now he says it collapsed quicker than it should have. So which is it?

 

The only conspiracy I see here is that the building probably wasn't built to spec. It was likely built with poorly made high-carbon steel that caught fire easily and was brittle and snapped faster than it should have. Probably didn't have the level of fireproofing it was supposed to either. The NIST could very well be hiding the information (point 13) to prevent huge lawsuits against the construction firms, who have good reason to keep the data hidden.

 

Now, that's the sort of conspiracy I find easy to believe. Doesn't take many people, no pre-planning required, nothing complex, no hard-to-find materials like thermite, don't need to be experts, and even ordinary people could be convinced to keep quiet on it without horse's heads showing up in their beds.

 

Claiming the WTC collapses were a CIA conspiracy is like saying global warming is a CIA conspiracy. It's just too big and complicated for a government that's inherently slow, lazy, and leaks like a sieve.

[EricK]

By the way, why would he have said "pull IT" if he were talking about firefighters. Why wouldn't he have said "pull them."

One plausible explanation: because he was referring to a team of firefighters (What should I do with my team? Pull it)

 

Another plausible explanation: He said the wrong word in the middle of a crisis.

 

What plausible explanation is there for the Conspiracy Theory? eg Who was he telling to "pull it"? Why would he need to tell anyone to "pull it" if it was already planned?

[DrTodd13]

By the way, why would he have said "pull IT" if he were talking about firefighters.  Why wouldn't he have said "pull them."

One plausible explanation: because he was referring to a team of firefighters (What should I do with my team? Pull it)

 

Another plausible explanation: He said the wrong word in the middle of a crisis.

 

What plausible explanation is there for the Conspiracy Theory? eg Who was he telling to "pull it"? Why would he need to tell anyone to "pull it" if it was already planned?

There are many plausible explanations so we are trying to look at all the facts to figure out which one is more likely to be true. Even if it were planned, somebody still has to give the go ahead to push the button. If it was a conspiracy then he certainly wouldn't admit to it on television. This was not an impromptu remark "in the middle of a crisis" that was caught on camera. It was sometime after the fact and he was reflecting on what had happened and the decisions he made that day and the pull it comment was a remark about a decision he had made that day. I think the quote was something like "so I made the decision to pull it." This sounds like he is saying they chose a controlled demolition of the building rather than risking a spontaneous collapse.

 

What I find interesting is that WTC 7 is the only steel-framed modern skyscraper in the history of world to have been allegedly collapsed by fire alone. You'd think many an investigation would be done by structural engineers as to how to prevent such a thing in the future but as far as I'm aware, there has been no official investigation into the cause of the WTC 7 collapse and the only informal investigation that was done found that fire was the cause but stated something to the effect that fire causing the collapse was a very improbable scenario. I've seen at least two pictures of steel framed buildings that have been gutten by fire and all that was left was the steel frame. Without the jet fuel in WTC 7, how could the fire have gotten hot enough to behave so differently from other high-rise steel-framed structure fires?

[Winstonm]

The only conspiracy I see here is that the building probably wasn't built to spec. It was likely built with poorly made high-carbon steel that caught fire easily and was brittle and snapped faster than it should have. Probably didn't have the level of fireproofing it was supposed to either. The NIST could very well be hiding the information (point 13) to prevent huge lawsuits against the construction firms, who have good reason to keep the data hidden.

 

Now, that's the sort of conspiracy I find easy to believe. Doesn't take many people, no pre-planning required, nothing complex, no hard-to-find materials like thermite, don't need to be experts, and even ordinary people could be convinced to keep quiet on it without horse's heads showing up in their beds.

 

This makes some sense - and it might also explain why most of the steel was quickly hauled off to China for recycling.

[jtfanclub]

Without the jet fuel in WTC 7, how could the fire have gotten hot enough to behave so differently from other high-rise steel-framed structure fires?

Because it had a great deal of diesel fuel in the basement, supposedly. It may have very well had other chemicals as well, possibly including thermite.

 

I still think it was ground shock that did most of the damage there, combined with the fire. They shared a foundation, so it would have been a hell of a shock. Combine that with the diesel burning, and....

[pbleighton]

IMO, the people who believe in conspiracy theories need to believe in them.

 

You will never convince them - there's always some hole in the obvious explanation. It doesn't matter if the theory is the Kennedy assasination, WTC, chlorination as a commie plot, UFOs, the plotting of the United Nations to take over the U.S., etc.

 

Logic and evidence isn't the point, I guess.

 

Peter

[Winstonm]

I was a very young Hippie(sort of) at that Chicago convention, you do not quite tell the full story. :rolleyes: but yes it was a police riot but not totally unprovoked at times.

 

It was silly to have a secret war in Cambodia rather than just tell the full truth with no apology as Regan often would. I guess it was in the nature of Nixon to act that way in many things.

I noticed you left out Kent State.