On the way back from Fahrenheith 9/11 yesterday, a friend seemed convinced that the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives, and that the jets might have been flown into the buildings by remote control. I tried Ocaam’s Razor. Is it more probable that a shadowy quasi-governmental organization rigged the aircraft so that they would be piloted remotely, and in such a manner that the aircrew would not have noticed it during their preflight inspections, planted explosives around the WTC buildings, installed “hijackers” as a cover story, and then deliberately ploughed aircraft into the buldings, and did a similar thing to one of the most secure buildings in the U.S; or was it more likely that a well-funded group of terrorists executed a superbly-planned operation? No dice. He’s still sure that it was a Big Plot.
He said that kerosene (jet fuel) has a low burning temperature, and that most of it was dispersed upon impact anyway. He said that there was no way it could melt the steel structure of the buildings. He said that the kerosene that did make it inside of the building burned up very quickly. I countered that most of the fuel did go into the building, and that if it “burned very quickly”, then it would burn hotter. I told him that the fare-resistant insulation was knocked off of the girders by the impact of the aircraft, leaving the steel unprotected. Nope. Kerosene would never burn that hot.
He pointed out that the buildings came straight down, “exactly like a planned demolition”. I told him that the girders and rivets, weakened by fire, would have caused the structure to fall in upon itself. (i.e., since the inside is collapsing, the debris would fall inward.) No, it looked exactly like a planned demolition; therefore, it was.
He said he has cites including a FEMA report that say it’s impossible for the jet crashes and ensuing fires to have brought down the buildings. He says that there are reports by physicists and engineers saying as much. He says he has a point-by-point criticism of the “burning jet fuel caused the collapse” theory. I asked for the cites, which he said he would send.
I am not a physicist, architect, engineer or scientist. How can I refute absolutely the claims he’s making?
I saw an excellent show on NOVA IIRC on the colapse of the WTC towers.
The teo buildings did not fail in exactly the same way. In one tower (I don’t recall which) the floor trusses and outside spandrels failed first this caused the outer portion of the tower to fail first and bring the central core down with it. The other tower, the central core failed first, bringing down the floor trusses and outer spandrels.
Here is the link to NOVA story good reading, but I’m not sure if it will penetrate tin-foil.
The jet fuel burned off very quickly, but there were large amounts of other flammables that were touched off by the fuel. Those fires (plus the insulation being knocked off) are what weakened the steel.
One of the designers of the WTC, on being informed of the crashes, quickly did some math and figured the towers were going down. He tried to notify authorities but didn’t really get thru to anyone who did anything. (Souce: Two part PBS Nova series on the WTC collapse.) If the *engineer[/] who designed the thing knew right away the planes & fires would bring them down, I don’t see how some random guy is going to have a reasonable argument against that.
Phone calls, esp. from the plane that crashed in PA, plus air traffic control tapes, make it clear that there were hijackers aboard the planes. Why have remote controls and hijackers, who in turn had taken flight lessons?
You can punch a hundred holes in this conspiracy theory without breaking a sweat.
Oh yeah: “If the fires were so intense, then why are there recordings of radio transmissions from firefighters who reached the 78th floor that say the fires were not that bad and that all they needed was a couple of hoses? Why did the recordings go missing for a long time? The wreckage of the buildings were carted off so that any evidence of an explosive could be examined.”
IIRC, the NYTimes stated that the guys who designed the WTC built it to withstand and accidental hit by a plane that existed AT THE TIME IT WAS BEING BUILT (apparently smaller than what they ended up getting hit with), plus they didn’t take into consideration jets with FULL tanks of gas. I wonder if they also considered a pilot trying to avoid a building rather than heading straight for it at top speed?
Seriously, this sounds like a job for Cecil. Who better than he to clear this up.
The NYTimes story was correct.
Once again, refer to the PBS documentary. The WTC was built to withstand impact with a Boeing 707. As they pointed out, the engineers didn’t take the jet fuel into consideration.
The impression I got was they designed for a direct hit. That’s what happened when a B-25 slammed into the Empire State Building in 1945.
NPR’s done a number of stories on the work done sifting through the debris of the WTC. If you listen to the stories, you’ll hear, not only how they combed through every piece of it (looking for evidence, human remains, etc.), but also the emotions in the voices of the people doing that job. If those folks are acting, they’re doing a better job than any Oscar winner.
Jesus, how could anybody believe that? Didn’t the fire in the subterranean levels keep burning for weeks? Wouldn’t somebody have noticed the thousands of trucks carrying the material away?
I think the special knowledge you need is psychiatry. It sounds to me your friend has simply suspended rational judgement, so engineering data isn’t gonna cut it.
My suggestion is to find out why this quy believes what he does. Does he follow some conspiracy “cult” leader? You need to identify and start to undermine the source of this crap.
There ain’t nothing that is going to help you with your friend.
But for what it’s worth, as I’ve said before and I’ll say again: I get involved in the aftermath of numerous “incidents” involving government investigators and so on. There’s not one investigation in the last fourteen years that I’ve seen that hasn’t involved evidence going missing, people accidentally interfering with crucial evidence, people interfering with evidence because they have different (often operational as opposed to investigative) priorities, people saying dumb things that every other witness and all the objective evidence shows cannot be true and so on and so forth.
The expression SNAFU is not just a joke, it is an accurate statement of the way the world is, especially after the (comparatively) orderly normal human world has suffered a major prang.
Anyone who is quick to attribute to a conspiracy what is explicable in terms of confusion and error is going to see conspiracy everywhere in this world.
Except of course the debris was carted away, else how would the area have been cleared? Numerous trucks and barges sttarted carrying the debris to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island fairly early on, where it was subsquently sorted for human remains and personal effects. A team of archaeologists handled the recovery of human remains; police officers and FBI agents were also on hand to look for any possibly relevant bits of evidence.
No different from any other crime investigation (apart from the scale of the task), but Johnny L.A.'s friend chooses to read more into it. Princhester’s right - there probably won’t be any way to change this guy’s mind.
the six Israeli nationals who were stopped by the NJ state police after the WTC disaster? They worked for a moving company, which was owned by and Israeli national (who turned out to be a Mossad operative). This was detailed on “60 Minutes” a few years ago…I have read nothing more about this.
There seems to be no further investigations of this rather odd incident.
You are not going to change a conspiracy nut through reason. You should know that by now.
Anyhow - I know the “remote control of jets” issue has been addressed previously in at least one of the many, many WTC threads here on the Dope. Basically, the technology isn’t there yet. And there would be no way to install, maintain, or use such technology without someone noticing - just too many people looking at stuff on airliners.
I still have people insist to me that the government does have “remote controls” installed on each and every passenger jet in the world.
I think it’s too much TV, too much hype about how advanced our technology is, and people who think Star Trek is science. I see it most in aviation and medicine because I am most involved in those areas, but I suspect it exists elsewhere - the “100 miles to a gallon cabeurator being suppressed by the auto industry” conspiracy theory, for instance, that I remember from when I was a kid. Seems like there are a lot of people out who are convinced we’re further along towards SF stuff than we really are.
It may have looked like controlled demolition from a distance, but the few people I’ve talked to who have actually been there make it very clear that, from the perspective of someone running for their lives to avoid being squashed by flying beams and girders, it was anything BUT that.
