There’s a video I posted a while back (maybe I’ll look for it, if I care later), where an expert on controlled demolitions made the observation that the windows on the opposite sides of the buildings surrounding WTC1/2/7 would have been blown out if explosives had been used to level a building. Since that wasn’t the case, explosives weren’t used to demolish the buildings.
Here is a video of a controlled demolition.
Note the length of time for things to happen.
Note the noise produced.
Does anyone really think the towers were brought down that way?
Also note that the entire building collapses at once – the bottom starts moving downward at the same time as the top. This is very different from the WTC where the bottom of the towers stayed rock steady until the debris from above fell onto it.
So how is it that the nation that put men on the Moon can’t explain in detail how an airliner weighing less than 200 tons could supposedly destroy in building weighing more than 400,000 tons in less than 2 hours. So in almost 9 years the BRILLIANT EXPERTS can’t even specify the tons of steel on every level.
psik
The initial crash severed a bunch of supports. The fire caused the floors to sag, putting lateral stress on the supports that remained. Eventually a number of outer supports near the crash site failed, causing the upper part of the building to begin toppling over. This created a cascading failure of the remaining supports near the crash site. The upper part of the building (now slightly rotated) dropped straight down onto the lower part of the structure, causing it to collapse one floor at a time. This continued until the wave of collapsing floors reached the ground.
Why is this so hard to understand?
No, YOU can’t specify the tons of steel on every level.
Go look it up. The plans are available. It’s not our job to do your homework.
You realize these are two different statements, right? RIGHT?
And, you’ve been asked before, and I propose that people write you off and ignore you until you answer (even though I know that won’t happen): What, exactly, would you do with those numbers, if you had them?
Especially since you never took a single course in architecture or structural engineering.
Look, I know that not everyone on this board is a Liberal Arts major. I know there are some physicist and engineers out there.
I am not asking for information about the WTC; I am looking for information about explosives, civil engineering, and physical chemistry. Information completely independent of one specific event, that can be applied to that event
I am not asking for logical refutation of the WTC-CT arguments in reference to a specific event; I am looking for some basic numbers, such as 'Ice will not form at 50C at atmospheric pressures that can exist on earth." Numbers that can apply to any event at any location on this planet.
See? I do not know this stuff. This is the kind of information I am looking for.
But would the volume of the explosive be unnoticeable? Everyone says it would have taken several days of preparation and lots of cutting and hugh hunks of materials …
Is there a chemical explosive powerful enough that its volume and the preparation would not have bee noticed?
But Sparky, we don’t need to convince you.
We don’t want evidence that relates to one event.
[And no argument that depends on common sense will fly. My friends and family long ago convinced me that common sense is not.]
Right. So I do not want to argue that point. We have to approach the problem from a point that ignores these purely logical arguments. Hell, we can argue that the planes were the triggers for the Unknown Explosive. Forget the planes; They have.
What I am trying to find, without re-inventing the wheel (i.e. doing any actual paper research myself), is some basic numbers that contradict the 911 CT’s assumptions as presented here.
Sigh. I don’t know how to make my requests any more clear.
I am not asking you to convince me; I’ve made up my mind.
I am asking for a few numbers some of the experts here might have, so I can say, with some degree of accuracy, ‘What you are suggesting would require an explosive two orders of magnitude more powerful than any known explosive that could be shaped with a precision three orders of magnitude more precise than possible with any known explosive, given the actual structure of the buildings.’
So, to prove the necessary explosive do not exist, we have to make some assumptions, and accept some assumptions that will be offered as arguments.
I came up with a list of questions that reflect vague ideas that some people with no more than moderate scientific education might have. I’m hoping that someone here can help me find the answers.
That leaves me speechless.
Just … speechless.
Nothing that involves human motivation can be relied upon to make sense. So little that I experience makes sense, but it must be possible because it does occur.
Yeah, we get it.
You’re just asking some questions.
People who will not respond to common sense won’t respond to physics either. If they have to, they’ll handwave any such argument away, with some magic or another. You’re on a fool’s errand. There’s no point saying “Disallow the basic arguments against X; make the argument with your hand tied behind your back in this particular way”.
If you think what you experience regarding human motivation doesn’t make sense, you’re applying the wrong notion of “sense”. But most definitely there are legitimate basic generalizations we can make about human behavior, and we make them all the time in analyzing history.
[quote=“Valgard, post:778, topic:547182”]
j66, if I read your questions right you’re asking whether it is possible that there’s some kind of explosive that would bring down a building the size of WTC1/2, …
[/QUOTE=Valgard;12747425]
Yes.
No.
Well, not quite; I am just trying to simply the situation to the basic requirement, independent of the details of the WTC.
I want to leave out the sound of the blast because so many people just don’t get the concept; it’s not pixie dust, it’s just focusing on the effective arguments.
And we need to avoid arguments that focus on the practices inherent to professional demolition - using wires to ensure the explosion happen at the same time, safety, cost effectiveness - because these would not apply to a terrorist bombing.
As for detection, well, let’s just assume an explosive material composed entirely of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphates; the next step would be arguing if such an explosive is possible.
However, you contend that a greater volume of explosive is required for an ‘uncontrolled’ explosion. That’s the kind of information we need a demolitions expert to confirm. (I believe you do not say you are one?)
So, how much explosive could be hidden?
Could it be shaped to break the interior connection of the floor supports without compromising the exterior connections?
Could the connection between the floor support and the exterior structural support be strong enough to pull the exterior support inward?
This may say more about you than it does about human nature.
And I think that’s why you’ll be frustrated–I don’t think it’s possible to do that.
Everything I’ve read and seen about controlled demolitions indicates that each project is vastly different. That’s why it takes so long; the people who do it professionally, even with decades of experience (lots of the big names are generational, even) the smart guys with the hardhats have to walk every inch of the building, look at every structural member, do their math magic and come up with a plan of action.
Buildings the size of the WTC would be unprecedented for an implosion–nothing even remotely that tall has been done before. Plus the fact that the buildings were constructed in a rather unique way (I’ve never heard of a controlled demolition of a tube-within-a-tube structure.) At the very least, the hat trusses alone would probably take some figuring out.
So in order to really consider what it would take, we’d have to look at the WTC itself. And once we do that, then why not take into account all of the observed phenomenon–the core remaining standing, the building’s destruction starting high and propagating downward, the very observable fires and the interior bowing of the perimeter columns, etc.? That’s perhaps the biggest misunderstanding of the collapse. It took some time to figure out that the floor trusses actually didn’t separate from either the inner core or the perimeter*. It was the very fact that they stayed connected that doomed the buildings by pulling the outer columns out of true.
A really quick and dirty answer for the “how much explosives” question is that the amount used in the '93 bombing would have, according to experts including the WTC’s own structural engineer, brought the building down if the truck had been closer to the columns. I cited the weight of that bomb earlier in the thread, and even that relatively ‘small’ amount was clearly audible to New Yorkers.
*Prior to the buildings’ collapses, that is.
To answer this, let me tell you how they do things in a conventional demolition.
First they remove everything out of the building, then they cut away all the plaster walls, etc. so that all you have are the load bearing elements.
Then they start cutting, physically, the structural parts as much as they can to a) reduce the amount of explosives needed (more explosives would mean even louder sounds) and b) well, there is no ‘b’, really.
Then they place the charges, which are shaped to ‘cut’ the columns very quickly when ignited. Depending of the blasting company they then run some detcord out of it, copper bands are placed around the charges, and they build a wood box around the charge, and then wrap that box in carpeting. Some other precautions might also be taken if the project is long to prevent any environmental aging of the explosives. None of these elements disappears after a blasting: the box will bust up but not burn, and the carpeting will singe but not burn.
The charges have yards and yards, if not miles of detcord placed towards the detonator. This is the way it is done. Don’t let any truther even suggest that ‘remote control detonation’ is a possibility, they are drooling idiots who watch too many movies. The fact is radio detonation is something blasting companies bleach white at, the chance for stray signals is too great. They won’t even try radio detonation in the desert, and truthers think setting it up radio detonation in NYC, which probably has more radio traffic than any other place in the world (except maybe Tokyo).
Once the charges are ignited, again nothing goes away, including all that detcord. The copper bands get the most exposure to the blast (besides the columns) and actually rips apart, undergoing a color change in the process. The box is broken apart and the carpet breaks off as well. All of this stuff can be found littering a blast site.
As for the column? Well, it was exposed to essentially a high velocity jet of plasma from the charge. If you look at a cut column at a blasting site, you can see where they cut the column with tools, then a smooth, almost purple-colored continuation of the cut where the blast from the charge hit it. I could teach you to spot these features in 2 seconds by showing you one.
This last feature is crucial because even if you invoke magic bunny super black op pony explosive powder as some suggest the result on the column will still be the same.
So to have a ‘special’ truthers style demolition you:
Do not remove the lathing, or only remove part of it and somehow nobody notices.
Do not initially cut the column (thus need more or more powerful explosives, which will be louder)
Do not wrap the charges in any way, cutting down on efficiency
Do not run detcord, but instead use magic pixie radio detonators
and finally
Somehow get a column to be cut by explosives without having it look like it was cut by explosives.
Does this give you an idea of what were are talking about here, j66?
This appears to be trolling.
First, the statements do not even make sense: there is no direct correlation between the size of an object that can damage another and the size of the damaged object. (I have a saw weighing less than a pound that has felled trees weighing tons.)
Second, the weight of the steel is known, and the fact that you cannot be bothered to look up the information is not a valid argument.
Now, you may actually be unable to understand these concepts, however they have been explained to you on multiple occasions and simply reposting the same silly nonsense over and over to lure in more posters to attempt to explain them so that you can dismiss those explanations again is not actually engaging in honest debate.
This is the last time you will post these same two questions.
[ /Moderating ]
If I were a nefarious government agent bent on conducting a massive false flag operation, what I would do would be to copy the modus operandi of the group I want to implicate in my attack and just gussy it up a bit - a bit more extravagant than past attacks by that group.
So, if I’m wanting to fake an Al Qaeda attack on the WTC, and I want to use ground-based explosives, what would I do? Simple. I’d get numerous trucks loaded with fuel/fertilizer explosives and, after consulting people with the appropriate engineering expertise, place them such that they’d do enough damage at the base to bring the whole shebang right down.
I might fake suicide airplane hijackers who’d fly into the buildings, because frankly that’s like something out of some action thriller novel and it would shock the hell out of everyone. But if I wanted ground-based explosives as a back-up plan in case the planes didn’t bring the buildings down I’d again use the truck bombs. If you’re trying to convince people that those bastard terrorists did it and not Uncle Sam, you want to be consistent in your methodology. Controlled demolition-style explosives aren’t in the terrorists’ repertoire, so I’d avoid using them.
Postulating a government willing and able to pull off this sort of conspiracy and then having them use such a ridiculous plan is pretty much self-contradictory. Pulling such a thing off would be very hard, and the people who did it would have to be extremely bright, methodical, and thorough. And such bright, methodical, and thorough people would use a more straightforward plan than flying planes into buildings secretly rigged with demolition explosives. Too many things can go wrong. They’d keep it as simple as possible. One 53’ trailer loaded to the gills with fuel and fertilizer, backed down a loading ramp somewhere next to some critical support columns. Kaboom.
But you’re putting the burden of proof on the wrong side in this one case for some reason. You can’t live your life with this kind of requirement, why are you applying it for the idea of explosives and the WTC?
If there is no evidence for something, and the idea itself doesn’t even make sense, then the correct approach is to tentatively accept that it’s not true, at least until some positive evidence shows up.
Can you prove that it’s not possible that aliens from other star systems are abducting humans for anal probing? I don’t think it would be possible to prove it can’t happen, but sane people still reject it because there’s no evidence and it makes no fuckin’ sense.
By the way, some history on the towers and the idea of thermite: everyone acknowledges that there were no sounds like demolition explosives just before the collapses, but the Truthers still thought that the collapses just “looked like” controlled demolitions to them. How to reconcile this? Steven Jones brought up the idea of thermite, which doesn’t make a loud sound, because it doesn’t explode! Thermite just burns. But when it burns, it simply falls straight down - how could someone get it to cut a vertical beam? So Steven brought up “nanothermite” which burns so fast that it’s a weak explosive (the reaction progresses through the material at somewhat faster than the speed of sound). But now he’s back to the original problem - if the theory requires things to get blasted, that necessarily makes a big loud noise.
Well, I can imagine a scenario in which someone smuggles in enough explosive to topple a WTC tower - just scale up the 1993 attack, with ten large vans filled with explosives parked in the underground garage right next to the various support structures (or at least as close as the layout of the garage will allow). Rig to detonate simultaneously and, yeah, I can picture one of the towers either collapsing or being so badly damaged that it must be condemned.
The notion of sneaking the explosives into the building proper and attaching them unnoticed to the structure to cause detonation across several floors, though… now you’re in magic pixie land.
No. People don’t act randomly. Yes, we are emotional, irrational. But that isn’t random. Emotions are weird, yes, but they follow patterns. People aren’t going to do something without a motivation, or if the anti-motivations are stronger. The conspiracy theory (the ones involving explosives) has thousands of people (the riggers, the higher ups who knew about the plan, the witnesses paid to shut up, etc.) acting with no motivation (unless you speculate that the planes just happened to come while an unrelated plot to bomb the towers was in effect, something so crazy I’ve never seen a truther assert it) and plenty of anti-motivation (all the deaths on their hands). Why would anyone, much less thousands of people, go through with this?
Unless you are going to argue that it is equally probable that I would shoot you in the face as eat breakfast, you are wrong.