# 9/11 conspiracy theories **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2010, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817 "2010-04-12T08:36:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/21 "2010-04-12T14:58:04Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Conspiracy theorists think it will _matter_ if we get a 3 minute warning before nuclear apocalypse or a meteor strike, I suppose. That isn’t the point. Let me rephrase my post and see if you can get it this time. “Aha, “the facts”! The people who accept those from “official” sources, are the type of people who believed that painting your windows white or crouching beneath a desk, would help in the event of a nuclear attack.” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/22 "2010-04-12T15:09:05Z")
For one of the most thorough, easy to access accounts of the building collapse, see the [Popular Mechanics series of articles that they wrote on 9/11](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey) and the various ideas that were floating around ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/23 "2010-04-12T15:48:11Z")
My favorite, that several prominent people took seriously, was that “OK, the towers were terrorists, but #7 was demolished on purpose because ti fell too neat and too fast for a normal crumple.” First - either (a) someone planted explosives ahead of time, in which case nobody noticed all this stuff strategically palced at just the right points on every floor, or (b) someone who knows how to handle explosives calmly went from floor to floor planting this stuff with a burning and falling 100-floor tower across the street. Maybe, logically, it was the big tank of diesel fuel for the emergency generators caught fire from falling debris as the authorities say? Second - “Steel doesn’t melt until temperatures much much heigher than they could get in the WTC towers / Tower 7”; in 2 recent small building fires in my city, I can point to relaively unlaoded steel beams visibly deforemed as the resul of a normal fire in a small store. Steel turns to taffy well below its melting temperature. Because of the structure of the lobby, there was excesive weight on a few center beams; once they went, damaged by falling debris and weakened by fire, the whole building just folded. (Google the Windsor Tower in Madrid(?)). Third - “The fall was too neat”. The fires did exactly what the demolition experts always try to do - weaken the structure so it falls straight. In Fact, one of the towers starts to lean as it falls; it straightens out quickly, perhaps because the filure of one corner pulls the support out from the other sides, since they are cross-connected. In a controlled demolition, you see the explosions well before the building starts to go, all the way up and down the tower. Didn’t see or hear that in this case. Is it so hard to believe that hammering a floor of a building with a 15-story to 30-story weight will just make it crumble? Buildings are either welded or rivetted; rivets are great at holding static loads, but are not designed to withstand being hammered by the weight of 16 floors falling 10 feet or more. Even welded columns are not immune to being hammered like that. The structure of the main towers was that the exterior columns were connected across each floor, so instead of splitting open like a banana, it folded/snapped at each floor more like an accordian. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/24 "2010-04-12T15:48:21Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > “Aha, “the facts”! The people who accept those from “official” sources, are the type of people who believed that painting your windows white or crouching beneath a desk, would help in the event of a nuclear attack.” Not buying into conspiracy theories =/= trusting everything the government says. There’s a middle path between the way of the sheeple and the way of the conspiracy theorist. It’s called “using common sense”. ---
**Author:** ![Zyanthia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Zyanthia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyanthia)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/25 "2010-04-12T16:53:25Z")
Excuse me, **Northern Piper** , but is that the link you meant to post? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/26 "2010-04-12T16:58:35Z")
> [@Perciful](#): > > The only thing I find odd is the way the towers came down. Only a demolitions expert could have turned them to dust like that. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/27 "2010-04-12T16:59:17Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > That isn’t the point. Let me rephrase my post and see if you can get it this time. > > “Aha, “the facts”! The people who accept those from “official” sources, are the type of people who believed that painting your windows white or crouching beneath a desk, would help in the event of a nuclear attack.” And it certainly would, if you were far enough from the epicenter that your main concern was flying glass. I personally am wary of criticism of engineering reports when it comes from those who have shown themselves incapable of understanding simple Newtonian physics. I don’t mean that as an ad hominem attack, but one has to determine who is an authority and who isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/28 "2010-04-12T17:16:57Z")
My current favorite theory is … … wait for it … [A 1920’s STYLE DEATH RAY!!!](http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/) Srsly … you can’t make up stuff looney enough that someone won’t believe it. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/29 "2010-04-12T17:56:21Z")
> [@Zyanthia](#): > > Excuse me, **Northern Piper** , but is that the link you meant to post? :smack: No, it wasn’t. Thanks for catching it. Try here: [Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842). :smack: ---
**Author:** ![JerseyMarine2092](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@JerseyMarine2092](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerseyMarine2092)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/30 "2010-04-12T18:06:30Z")
> [@Eutychus](#): > > My current favorite theory is … > … wait for it … > icles/DEW/"]A 1920’s STYLE DEATH RAY!!! > > Srsly … you can’t make up stuff looney enough that someone won’t believe it. This is my absolute, bar none most favoritiest conspiracy evar! I found it years ago, and lost the link. Thank you sir. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/31 "2010-04-12T18:15:16Z")
The thing is, Judy Wood was a favorite of the 9/11 conspiracy theory crowd for a good while. She has a PhD in mechanical engineering and did some calculations showing why the towers would not be able to collapse as they did by just a gravity-driven collapse. Those of us on the rational side of the debate pointed out that her calculations were bullshit and specifically why, but to the Truthers who don’t know physics very well, they saw only that she has a PhD and agreed with them. We could see that she was pretty crazy, but the topper was when she declared that the towers had to have been destroyed by some giant directed energy beam from space. Of course, the Truthers then simply declared her to be “disinfo” and forgot all about how they had been in love with her shortly before that. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/32 "2010-04-12T23:57:16Z")
[My favorite conspiracy theory is still that the US Postal Service did 9/11 using magnetic C4.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=476254) David-Wynn:Miller lays out his reasoning here: > [@](#): > > What creates a magnetic pulse? C-4 plastic explosive. Who has C-4? The military. Who controls the military? The post office. I think we have a winner. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/33 "2010-04-13T00:06:39Z")
The part where he explained the punctuation in his name made my head asplode. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bith_Shuffle)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/34 "2010-04-13T00:13:37Z")
My view is that there never was a World Trade Center or Pentagon. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/35 "2010-04-13T00:19:00Z")
One of my favorite 9-11 conspiracy claims was that the presence of iron oxide in the wreckage proved that thermite had been used. Because iron oxide, aka rust is such an odd thing to find in the wreckage of a steel framed building. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/36 "2010-04-13T01:11:32Z")
> [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](#): > > My view is that there never was a World Trade Center or Pentagon. That’s an extreme point of view. [This](http://xkcd.com/690/) makes much more sense. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/37 "2010-04-13T02:59:46Z")
Most of the “Questions” about the WTC/Pentagon attacks have been answered in the following–often long, frequently acrimonious–threads in Great Debates. [Is the official 911 story a conspiracy theory?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=258871) [Loose Change video: 9/11 conspiracy](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=357264) [9/11 Conspiracy Theories!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=364515) [9/11 - Loose Change](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=369641) [The _REALLY_ crazy conspiracy theory: WTC buildings downed by controlled demolition](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=422793) [The WTC Twin Towers Were **Pulverized** on 9/11](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=422969) (This one opens with a question similar to the one asked in the OP of this thread, although it is posted in very large fonts with lots of color.) [New NIST Report On WTC 7 - Change Anybody’s Mind?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=480542) [9/11 wreckage](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=502056) [Give me your 9/11 conspiracy theories! And/or their debunking](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=518232) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/38 "2010-04-13T03:03:58Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > That isn’t the point. Let me rephrase my post and see if you can get it this time. > > “Aha, “the facts”! The people who accept those from “official” sources, are the type of people who believed that painting your windows white or crouching beneath a desk, would help in the event of a nuclear attack.” ivan, this is General Questions. If you have a desperate need to offer up your “_all governments are evil and must be doubted even when their explanation includes the most facts and makes the most sense_” epistemological theory, then open a new thread in The BBQ Pit or (_sigh_) Great Debates. Stop interrupting this thread, please. [/Modding] ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/39 "2010-04-13T03:32:57Z")
If you want a wonderful paper demolishing the 9/11 troofer’s arguments, I recommend Ryan Mackey’s paper, [On Debunking 9/11 Debunking](http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/ryanmackey), a response to Dr David Ray Griffin’s 9/11 nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![koufax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@koufax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koufax)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/40 "2010-04-13T13:40:46Z")
I agree most of the conspiracy theories are crazy, but can someone explain to me what is the cause of the explosion these guys hear right in the beginning of this video? [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n-nT-luFIw) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817.md?page=3)