I’m uncertain as to what would actually have worked in the WTC scenario. Or in a situation involving a Gulfstream private jet or a helicopter loaded with aviation fuel and other explosives.
Patriot missiles, IIRC, provide medium-range ground to air defense, which wouldn’t seem to work since the craft could attack from just above groundlevel. Stinger missiles may not have the instantaneous knock-down capability. And using, say, 88-millimeter anti-aircraft guns would inflict grievous collateral damage.
So in the event of another such situation, all big skyscrapers in the region will break out the ordnance and throw hot lead into the air, and who cares what smaller building the plane lands on?
By the time the plane is in the air over a metropolitan area, the damage is done. The best that can be done is to take recent events into account when designing new buildings.
The solution to suicide crashes doesn’t lie in arming buildings. It lies in evacuating the buildings, warning the tenants, and preventing the crashes, not necessarily in that order.
Patriot missiles were originally intended for use against planes, and were shoe-horned into missile defense, which is why they had such a poor success rate.
We can’t just shoot any plane that is acting oddly, since 99.9% of the oddly acting planes will be innocent.
If we KNOW that a plane has been hijacked and is headed for a building, the best bet would be to scramble fighters, not emplace AAA and SAMs on every skyscraper.
Or, we could build the skyscrapers tougher.
But the best suggestion is to not allow the suicide bombers to get control over the planes in the first place. And suicide bombers with knives are not going to be able to take any more planes, since now the passengers know they have to fight back.
Sure, landing on smaller buildings could be worse.
The WTC was designed to withstand the impact of a 707. Really. The Empire State Building has been hit by planes a couple times so when the WTC was designed they took into account that possibility. Even though the 757 and 767 are significantly heavier than the 707, both towers withstood the initial impact long enough that thousands escaped.
Granted, we still seem to have 5000+ dead - but those two buildings normally have 50,000 inhabitants apiece on an average day. Had they collapsed immediately the death toll could have been 100,000. That’s what, 95% of the people escaping?
Compare that to a jetliner falling on several smaller buildings, demolishing them on impact - that could result in a much higher cumulative death toll that what actually occured. Remember that in a fire or building collapse time=life. The don’t build “small” skyscrapers - say, 20-50 levels - to the same standards as the truly huge ones because they are so much less likely to be hit by airplanes. When they do get hit they will collapse sooner, if not immediately, giving people less time to escape.
According to today’s news reports–and despite 5,000+ deaths–several airports are still allowing cleaning and food crews onto airliners without first going through security. Considering that the recent hijackings may have been inside jobs, this is chilling.
I know this is probably a silly idea, but how about use smaller planes? I know we are obsessed with size, and smaller planes can still do a lot of damage, but the thought ran through my head.
I’m a basement junkie. I think we should build down instead of up. Its easier to cool in summer and heat in winter. How many ultra-secure buildings and secret lairs have been built 100 stories tall?? Building underground leaves more space for trees, farms, parks, and other such things that must be done above ground. Most people are not like myself and dont like being inside with no windows, this could lead to massive depression or more people being outside in thier spare time.
Yea its a somewhat tounge-in-cheek theory, but hey it might work.
The steel mooring cables will rip the wings off of any plane, they were very effective in WWII. I want to see hundreds of these floating over every major city. We can let artists paint them with interesting colors, and hang banners from em too.
Is it not possible to hit a plane with an explosive device large enough to greatly disintegrate the debris? Such that what pieces that remain have relatively little mass, and do little damage when they finally strike a building?
Or is this just a dream? And would you just be setting countless fires across the city?
The more time the occupants have to evacuate, the lower the death toll. Whoever’s in charge needs to order an evaculation promptly. In building new highrise buildings, a priority should be creating stairwells that hold out as long as possible against smoke, fumes, and fire.
But I think it will be hard for anyone to do this again. From now on, airline crews and passengers will be alert to the possibility that hijackers plan to use the plane as a bomb. They’ll remember, and emulate, the people who caused the 4th plane to crash in Pennsylvania.
I for one am in absolute awe of those folks. They are my most recent heroes (along with the firefighters and rescue workers at the other crashes of course).
If there is ever a “Pearl Harbour”-esque movie done on this, (God forbid they make entertainment out of it for at LEAST fifty years) I hope they do not forget those folks.
Ever been to L.A.? It’s wall-to-wall buildings from the coast to many miles inland. L.A. County has about 9 or 10 million people in it. (Incidentally, the WTC buildings had larger populations than many towns in America.) The jets turn from base to final about 10 miles out. At night their landing lights look like a steing of pearls in the sky. It would be difficult to land at LAX if there is a ban flights over metro areas.
They could come in over the ocean and land downwind, but airplanes are landed into the wind. Landing downwind would increase landing rolls and possibly pose a danger of jets overrunning the runway and plowing into Sepulveda Blvd. The airplanes could land lighter by reducing the amount of fuel available, but there is a minimum allowable amount they must carry. Carrying fewer passengers and cargo would lighten the aircraft a little, but carrying less than capacity is not an efficient use of the aircraft.
The falling debris problem has already been covered here. Another thing is that these jets fly at a few hundred knots. Even if you blow it to bits the heavier parts will still cause substantial damage as their inertia takes them forward. You 'd have to shoot them down well before they got to a poulated area, and that far out there might not be any indication of trouble.
But I think hijacked planes flying into buildings is not a large problem. It happened last week, but I think it is an anomaly. I don’t think we have to think about destroying planes full of innocent people.
Just do as SouprChckn suggests. (Except for the last one.)
Keep in mind that it’s getting harder and harder to fly over an area that’s not occuppied. To require planes to fly over non-metropolitan areas would be outrageously expensive (and with airports like JFK, San Diego, etc., flat out impossible).
Shooting down a plane heading towards a skyscraper is not really a viable option. By the time you’ve determined its target, the plane will be over the city. Until we have Star Trek-style phasers that vaporize the target, shooting the plane would only result in spreading burning debris over a very wide area. In last week’s case, that would have changed the area of devastation from a 10-block to a god-knows how large an area.