# Give me your 9/11 conspiracy theories! And/or their debunking **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041 "2009-05-20T03:24:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 41
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/801 "2009-06-25T20:33:56Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > I certainly appreciate **Valgard’s** detailed response above, but I’m still curious to know what we would have seen had the core been sabotaged a third of the way down, allowing the weight above to ‘lurch’, rather than slowly - well, not really slowly! - collapse. > > Am I to take it then that if it was possible to gradually drop increasing weight on a structurally sound building, eventually the entire thing would ‘crush down’, and the extra material would not just topple over the sides as the debris built up? Is there a formula for how to work out this ‘collapse point’? It’s almost certainly not going to slowly crush itself into a pile. The problem is that if the force is too large then the floor below collapses instantly. If the force is too small the floor below stays intact. Since things fall at 9.8 meters/sec^2, there’s no way for falling objects to slowly impact things below, they tend to impact quickly. Either the collapse will snowball and the whole thing comes down, or it stops and the building stays up. If the supports anywhere get weakened enough to start bending, they are almost certainly going to keep bending until they fail. The transition between “barely able to stay up” and “catastrophic failure” is very quick. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/802 "2009-06-25T20:41:30Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Am I to take it then that if it was possible to gradually drop increasing weight on a structurally sound building, eventually the entire thing would ‘crush down’, and the extra material would not just topple over the sides as the debris built up? That’s pretty much what happened [here](http://www.acfd9.com/BuildingCollapseMarch1973-03large_small.jpg) in 1973. The middle section underwent a progressive collapse due to supports for newly-poured concrete in the upper floors being removed too soon. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/803 "2009-06-25T20:48:55Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > I certainly appreciate **Valgard’s** detailed response above, but I’m still curious to know what we would have seen had the core been sabotaged a third of the way down, allowing the weight above to ‘lurch’, rather than slowly - well, not really slowly! - collapse. > > Am I to take it then that if it was possible to gradually drop increasing weight on a structurally sound building, eventually the entire thing would ‘crush down’, and the extra material would not just topple over the sides as the debris built up? Is there a formula for how to work out this ‘collapse point’? Happy to help. As to the first you’re basically asking if it would be possible to sabotage the WTC towers (let’s set aside the actual attacks as “sabotage”, I mean do something covert that nobody picked up on) in such a way to produce the exact same results that we saw from the planes smacking into them. Sure - you tell us what you want the collapse to look like and we can figure out a way to make it happen. However this would be damn near impossible to do without everyone knowing about it. Keep in mind what actually caused the collapse - massive damage to the structural system (knocking out all those beams and columns and slabs) plus a gigantic fire; however many tons of jet fuel it was plus all that office debris burning. Have you ever been in an office building when they’re doing construction work? It’s noisy as hell - we had a new staircase installed between two floors in my building and I could hear it several floors away, and they apologized to ten floors in advance. Compared to chopping up the actual core of the building that was dead silence. And setting all those fires? It’s not enough to set a wastebasket on fire, you’ve got to have a massive conflagration and you need to make sure that the steel gets hot which could involve ripping down wall and ceiling cover (IIRC one of the problems was that the fireproofing on the steel didn’t adhere well, the impact of the planes caused a lot of it to break off). You’re talking about an enormous amount of work. As to the second question if you kept adding extra weight on, eventually stuff will start to break. Without knowing what loads you put where it’s a little hard to say “Here’s exactly what it would look like”. It’s sort of like asking “What would a car look like if it was in an accident?” There’s no “equation” or “formula” to answer that kind of question. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/804 "2009-06-25T21:04:07Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Say an ordinary office fire had gotten out of control on the higher floors; how much longer would either tower have lasted under those circumstances? Obviously something like that must have been considered when the towers were being built. I will bet that the towers would have been designed to survive whatever the upper limit of an “ordinary office fire” is and so if everything worked as it should the actual structural damage would be relatively light. It’d be insane for any architect to try and get a 100 story building approved otherwise. For office buildings there’s all sorts of stuff in place: -Fireproofing (sheetrock, coating on the structural steel, etc). -Sprinkler systems. -Smoke and flame containment - fire doors and whatnot so it can’t get into the stairwells and elevator shafts. -Overpressure - tall buildings will use some kind of variant of the four-floor method where you evacuate the two floors above and the floor below the burning floor. You run the fans or whatever to keep those floors at a higher pressure than the burning one to help prevent stuff from spreading out of the fire. The floor below serves as a rallying point for the firefighters. -Firefighters. Now compare this to what happened - like **JohnT** said, you had the fireproofing knocked off the structural steel, the fire started with 21 tons of jet fuel going off at once and the firefighters had a tougher time getting to the floors. I’ll add in that the sprinkler systems and water pipes were probably cut in multiple locations and there was massive damage to the building so it’s not like you could contain the fire to one little area. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/805 "2009-06-25T23:03:27Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Well, if you want some numbers and estimates, here goes: > > [This site](http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html) says 1.8 million tons of debris was removed from the WTC area. To keep things simple, we’ll assume that: > > a. The debris removed was solely that of the WTC buildings and the materials within, > b. Both buildings were equal in weight, and > c. That every floor was equal in weight to the others. > > So… 900,000 tons (1.8 billion pounds) per building. > 110 stories gives you 16.36 million pounds per floor. > > So you had 400 million pounds of South Tower on top of support beams which, while not “melting” are growing softer the longer the fire rages. You had 162 million pounds of North Tower on top of equally-weakening support beams. > > Note that the steel doesn’t have to melt, nowhere near close: it just has to get soft enough to lose the structual integrity needed to _ **SUPPORT 160-400 MILLION POUNDS!!!** _\* > > I’ve never been able to understand why this concept is difficult for people to grasp. You have 400 million pounds. > > **My argument is now solid.** 😃 **ROFLMAO** 😃 Your argument was BS from the start. People who BELIEVE the Official Conspiracy Theory don’t bother getting their facts straight from the beginning. Estimates of total building mass have always been from 400,000 to 500,000 tons. So that is 800,000,000 to a billion pounds. So the estimates you are giving us for the mass above the impact zones are **COMPLETELY WRONG!** I have already said the Frank Greening PhD. was totally wrong for assuming that every level had the same mass. SKY SCRAPER **MUST** BE BOTTOM HEAVY! The World Trade Center was not 110 stories tall it was 116 stories. They dug down to BEDROCK and there were SIX basement levels. Because skyscrapers are bottom heavy and get stronger toward the bottom that is why the entire concept of the top 10% BY VOLUME crushing the rest in less than 18 seconds is ridiculous. #1. How do you know all of that debris specified by that site was just in WTC 1& 2? How much of that debris was from WTC 3, 4, 5 and 6? > [@](#): > > The dust was present everywhere around Ground Zero, but settled in thicker accumulations in the downwind directions south and east of the complex. The dust settled to a depth of 3 inches in locations as far as six blocks from the World Trade Center. > **[9-11 Research: World Trade Center Dust](https://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/dust.html)** > > Characterization of World Trade Center dust,samples,powder,asbestos What about the weight of the dust from pulverized concrete that was blown to hell and gone? You weight estimates based on debris are hilarious. psik ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/806 "2009-06-25T23:38:01Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > 😃 **ROFLMAO** 😃 > > Your argument was BS from the start. People who BELIEVE the Official Conspiracy Theory don’t bother getting their facts straight from the beginning. > > Estimates of total building mass have always been from 400,000 to 500,000 tons. So that is 800,000,000 to a billion pounds. So the estimates you are giving us for the mass above the impact zones are **COMPLETELY WRONG!** > > I have already said the Frank Greening PhD. was totally wrong for assuming that every level had the same mass. SKY SCRAPER **MUST** BE BOTTOM HEAVY! The World Trade Center was not 110 stories tall it was 116 stories. They dug down to BEDROCK and there were SIX basement levels. Because skyscrapers are bottom heavy and get stronger toward the bottom that is why the entire concept of the top 10% BY VOLUME crushing the rest in less than 18 seconds is ridiculous. > > #1. How do you know all of that debris specified by that site was just in WTC 1& 2? > > How much of that debris was from WTC 3, 4, 5 and 6? > [9-11 Research: World Trade Center Dust](http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/dust.html) > > What about the weight of the dust from pulverized concrete that was blown to hell and gone? You weight estimates based on debris are hilarious. > > psik You are really like the physicist that assumed that cows were spheres to solve a problem of them not producing enough milk. 🙂 As 500,000 to 600,000 tons is probably closer to the mark, as accepted by you, then the explanation from this professor is valid: [http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM](http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM) > [@](#): > > Various sites give slightly different results but the following figures seem to be generally accepted. > > ``` > * Steel used in the WTC: 200,000 tons (I will use metric tons, not short tons. A metric ton is 1000 kg). > * Volume of steel (at 7900 kg/cubic meter): 25,300 cubic meters. > > * Concrete used: 425,000 cubic yards concrete = 325,000 cubic meters > * Mass of concrete (at 2400 kg/cubic meter): 780 million kg or 780,000 metric tons > > * Dimensions: 415 and 417 meters high by 63 meters square > * The "bathtub" - the sunken basement of the buildings, is 60 feet (18 meters) deep. > > ``` > > I will tend to use numbers on the high side since those make the best case for conspiracy theories. > > Some Derived Numbers > > ``` > * Volume of one tower: 1.65 million cubic meters > * Steel in one tower: 100,000 tons = 12,700 cubic meters > * Concrete in one tower: 390,000 tons = 163,000 cubic meters > * The concrete in the towers weighed about four times as much as the steel and occupied over twelve times as much volume. > * Actually, a lot of the concrete in the World Trade Center was in the base. The floors were about 8 cm thick and supported by steel sheets and a truss system, so the actual amount in the towers was quite a bit less. > * Mass of one tower: most people use 500,000 tons, a few use 600,000. The mass of concrete and steel above comes to 490,000 tons and doesn't count elevators, plumbing, utilities, windows and so on. 600,000 is probably closer to the mark, especially if we count internal walls and furnishings. > * Bulk density of a tower: If we assume 500,000 tons, 303 kg/cubic meter. If we assume 600,000, 363 kg/cubic meter. The bulk density is about one third that of water. Seal the holes and put them in water, and they would float. > * Volume of building materials in a tower: 163,000 cubic meters of concrete, plus 12,700 cubic meters of steel = 175,700 cubic meters. Add windows, elevators, and interior fittings and it's probably around 200,000 cubic meters per tower. > * If the volume of building materials was 200,000 cubic meters and the total volume of a tower was 1.65 million cubic meters, then building materials occupied 12% of the volume of the tower. 88% of the tower was air. That's what buildings are for - to enclose the largest open space with the least material. > * At peak occupancy there were 25,000 people in the towers or 12,500 per tower. Assuming 70 kg for an average weight, the people in each tower weighed 875,000 kilograms or 875 tons. Since people are about as dense as water (1000 kg per cubic meter), the volume of the occupants in each tower was 875 cubic meters. > * A grisly statistic but a necessary one. About 10% of the total occupants of the towers were killed on 9-11. Their combined weight would have been about 175,000 kilograms and their combined volume would have been 175 cubic meters. So searchers were looking for 175 cubic meters of remains in 400,000 cubic meters of debris. Typically 7% of the mass of a human body is bone, so the total bone mass in the ruins was 12,000 kilograms out of a billion kilograms of rubble. > * The harsh reality is that remains of many of the victims of 9-11 will never be found. Tiny bone fragments will be turning up on rooftops, in crevices in pavement, and other nooks and crannies for decades if not centuries. Rudi Giuliani has come under fire from New York firefighters for ending the search for remains. FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches said “We have the remains of dead heroes at the garbage dump because of Giuliani and his administration and they’re still there today and they won’t remove them.” (Whatever esteem the NYFD won on 9-11 has been pretty much squandered by its conduct since then, or maybe I should say the conduct of its corrupt brass.) Given that many bone fragments were pulverized and picked up by workers' shoes and clothing and vehicle tires, there are probably 9-11 bone fragments in New Zealand by now. > On the one hand, Michael Moore's Sicko deals with the medical problems of 9-11 workers. On the other hand we have people who wanted the site excavated like an archeological dig to locate remains or look for evidence of a plot. Just imagine the health problems we'd have had if we'd spent years clearing the site. > One final note to the relatives of 9-11 victims and every other disaster where questions remain unanswered: you have a right to what can reasonably be done. You do not have a right to the wholly unreasonable like sifting every square inch of lower Manhattan. And you do not have the right to what cannot be done. If our best efforts fail to find remains or the cause of a disaster, then they cannot be found. > > ``` > [@](#): > > The first problem here is that dust is not equivalent to solid material. More than half of the volume of any powdered solid is empty space, especially immediately after it settles. But the analyses above show that about half of the dust was actually fibers of various sorts and fully 10% was organic fibers derived mostly from paper. And the photos of the dust samples show very fluffy dust. So the density is probably not the 2.4 grams per cubic centimeter of bulk concrete but much less. > > Second, the dust wasn’t an inch thick over a square mile. Photos show dust an inch or so deep in the immediate vicinity of the towers, although higher accumulations occurred. If we model the dust as a broad cone rather than a disk, its volume is only one third that of the disk. Between the low density of the dust, the fact that most of the dust landed close to the towers, and the fact that half of the dust was materials other than concrete, the volume of concrete represented in the airborne dust is maybe 10% of the volume of the settled dust itself. This is the dust off site. Of course, the dust on the collapse site itself is from the building collapse. > > So, in place of estimating that the towers could make a disk an inch thick and a mile in diameter, we have to reduce the volume of the dust by a factor of 3 to model the dust pile as a cone. We reduce that by a factor of at least 2 and probably a lot more to account for the porous nature of dust, and by another factor of 2 to account for the fact that half the dust is not concrete. So we have to reduce the estimates of the concrete dust volume by at least a factor of 12. So instead of a million tons of concrete dust we have 80,000 or less. > > If the dust is a cone 5 cm thick (.05 meters) at the towers and a radius of one kilometer, the volume of the dust pile is .05 x pi x 1000 x 1000/3 = 52,000 cubic meters. That’s only a sixth of the volume of the concrete in the towers. If half of that volume is empty space (I’m being generous), and half of what’s left is other stuff, we have 13,000 cubic meters of concrete or 4% of the concrete in the towers. This is so poorly constrained it won’t convince any conspiracy buff, but it shows that we don’t need to pulverize the whole building to get the observed dust. > > There’s a potentially valuable source of data on dust. Following 9/11, large vacuum trucks sucked up dust from the area and disposed of it. Somewhere there are dispatch records that can be used to get a more accurate estimate of the dust. But the trucks could haul 15 tons, and there were up to 16 of them working for several weeks. If they could make five runs a day (I’d bet on more like one or two) for 30 days, that’s 15 x 16 x 5 x 30 = 36,000 tons. Again, this is too loose to convince any conspiracy buff, but it’s only 11% of the total concrete in the towers, and a large portion of the dust wasn’t concrete. > > A lot of people confuse optical density with amount of dust. The fact that the dust cloud was opaque means only that light didn’t penetrate it. The clouds that hung above the site weren’t much denser than air so the total volume of dust in them was not large. Typical clouds in the sky contain a few grams of material per cubic meter. If we assume the 9-11 cloud had 50 grams per cubic meter - ten times more than even thick water droplet clouds, and the dust cloud occupied a cubic kilometer, far more than its actual volume, we have a billion cubic meters times 50 grams per cubic meters, or 50 billion grams, 50 million kilograms, or 50,000 tons of dust, paltry compared to the million ton mass of the towers. > > So while the four lines of evidence above are pretty loosely constrained, it’s interesting that they all independently converge on a few tens of thousands of tons of dust. Any way you slice it, there was just not that much dust. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/807 "2009-06-25T23:40:32Z")
**psikeyhackr** , perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering the same question I’ve asked you several times before? [QUOTE=Valgard] So I understand that you **believe** that information is somehow critical but **why** do you think it is? What is the basis for your belief if it’s not education or experience in the subject? [/QUOTE] You’re what, about 55-57 years old? And you went to an engineering school? Surely you’ve had some kind of learning or experience in those decades that backs up your claims? Or are you just guessing? And as I’ve pointed out to you previously, skyscrapers do **not** have to be either heavier or stronger at the bottom. Since you’re telling other people to “get their facts straight from the beginning”. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/808 "2009-06-25T23:48:51Z")
:rolleyes: You noticed how I mentioned the word “assumptions”, didn’t you? You kept asking for reasons why the towers would go down, I gave you a reason. Regardless of the figures (which, again, I admitted was based upon total debris, which I then assumed (for the sake of argument) came from both towers), the logic still stands: 10,000,000 pounds or 160,000,000 pounds, you had a lot of weight crashing on a suddenly unstable structure at the rate of 9.8k/s. [This site](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html) says the weight was 500,000 tons, or 1 billion pounds. So, since you need to do so, let’s lowball the figure and assume that 2% of the structure’s weight was above the crash site on the north tower (9% of the tower was above the crash site, but we’ll assume it only comprised 2% of the total weight), you’re still talking about 20,000,000 pounds impacting floor 98. After removing the roof and stabilizing bars, how many buildings do _you_ think could withstand 20,000,000 pounds being dropped on it? Btw, the “110 stories” cite came from [http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World\_Trade\_Center.html](http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html) , and [World Trade Center - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center) , and [World Trade Center - World's Tallest Towers](http://www.skyscraper.org/TALLEST_TOWERS/t_wtc.htm) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/809 "2009-06-25T23:55:58Z")
Btw, there really is nothing to “believe”. We saw the plane hit. We saw the fire rage for an hour, hour and a half. We saw the buildings fall. 2+2 always equal 4, regardless of where you stand in _this_ universe. You’re the one who is arguing from belief. Surely you see that, don’tcha? ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/810 "2009-06-26T02:50:14Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > Because skyscrapers are bottom heavy and get stronger toward the bottom that is why the entire concept of the top 10% BY VOLUME crushing the rest in less than 18 seconds is ridiculous. Tell you what, let’s apply some very basic math, physics and engineering to this. First of all the thing to think about when considering loads is not the volume of stuff but the mass. Next you have to consider how the load on one floor changes when the floors above it fall down onto it, as opposed to just resting there in their normal static state. As I said before, there’s no engineering reason that the lower floors HAVE to be stronger than the upper floors (as long as each floor can hold up AT LEAST what’s above it that’s the bare minimum, you could certainly build all floors the same or even make the upper floors stronger than the lower ones) but let’s take it as a given that that’s how they built it for economic reasons (with a primarily steel-framed building it may make sense, whereas with reinforced concrete a lot of the cost is in the forms so you try and keep them uniform). Let’s say that the 90th floor is where the plane hits. Now we throw a catastrophic failure into the works and the 90th floor loses enough strength (members destroyed by the plane crash, others bent out of shape which lessens their capacity, load redistribution from failed sections of the structure which overloads adjacent supports, weakening of the steel due to the heat) so that it fails and those 20 floors drop down (we’ve just kicked the legs out from under the stack). Think about what happens if you drop a weight some distance and try to stop it quickly. You could for example probably pick up a 100 pound kid, right? If that kid jumped off a 10 foot tall garage roof could you catch him and prevent him from hitting the ground? Much harder and as you appreciate basic high-school physics you can do the math just as well as me to see why it takes a lot more force to stop a fast moving object in a short distance than it takes to hold it up against 1G. Roughly speaking if you let something accelerate at 1G over some distance D and then you try and stop it in D/10, you’re going to need to apply an average deceleration of about 10G. Simple physics. The shorter the distance you try and stop it in, the larger the deceleration you need to apply. Grab a pencil and work on d=1/2_a_t^2 and d=v(ave)\*t if you want to check me. So going back to the building, 20 floors drops about 10 feet or so and smacks into the 89th floor. The 89th floor was designed to hold the 21 floors above it, plus a safety factor. Safety factors aren’t as simple as people think (my minor focus was probabilistic methods in civil engineering and I’ve derived some of the LRFD numbers used in the building codes) but let’s just say that the 89th floor was strong enough to hold up twice the weight resting on it - so that’s 42 floors worth of stuff. How quickly does that chunk of building slow down? I used 1 foot, just to pick something in the right ballpark - it certainly can’t be much more because that’s thicker than the floor/ceiling slabs anyhow; if it takes longer than that to stop the roof just caved in. If that mass of stuff stops in 1 foot it applied a force of around 10 times its own weight to the 89th floor - so that’s about 210 floors worth of weight as an impact load, in a fraction of a second. Well that’s a problem because 89 was never designed to hold anywhere near that kind of load. So what happens to 89? It gets crushed and now we’ve got 22 floors worth of stuff dropping onto the 88th floor. This will keep happening all the way down. The fact that it was only the top 10% or 20% of the structure that started the collapse isn’t the limiting factor, and neither is the fact that the 1st floor was quite capable of holding the 109 floors above it. It’s the impact of a floor suddenly dropping onto the floor below that overloads what each floor was designed to hold. So you look at the lowest floor and say “How could 10% of the building cause collapse in the level that can hold up 100% of the building?” It’s because nearly 100% of the building falls onto that level in a manner that multiplies its effective weight by a large factor which outstrips whatever strength the lowest level had. No fancy concepts here, no hand-waving, no obscure engineering formulas. Now things could have turned out differently if that falling mass had sloughed off to the sides instead of accumulating as it went down but that’s obviously not what happened - despite all the debris and dust you see flying around as the towers collapsed the bulk of it went pretty much straight down and that’s your collapse mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/811 "2009-06-26T04:00:22Z")
Great responses to the first part of my question! But what about the second part? > [@](#): > > Was the declaration of war carried out through the media? I can’t find the official US government communique to the Taliban telegraphing their demands, nor can I find the reciprocal Taliban response. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/812 "2009-06-26T04:07:01Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Great responses to the first part of my question! > > But what about the second part? Is this what you’re looking for? > **[CNN.com - Bush delivers ultimatum - September 21, 2001](https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/20/ret.afghan.bush/index.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/813 "2009-06-26T04:38:04Z")
> [@Valgard](#): > > Is this what you’re looking for? > > [CNN.com - Bush delivers ultimatum - September 21, 2001](http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/20/ret.afghan.bush/index.html) Sort of. I like to see new perspectives on this moment in history, so it is a nice cite. Still, it is a CNN report, and not necessarily a government-to-government communication. What do you think? Am I splitting hairs here? Does the POTUS on TV count as an official document? Is ‘4th estate diplomacy’ good enough for you? Or should there be a more ‘official’ channel in matters of war and peace? Is there documentation of it? I’m trying to quash my continuing suspicion that detaining OBL wasn’t the main objective, and that attacking Afghanistan regardless was a stronger motive. If grabbing OBL was really the main thing, a few months of wrangling vs. 8 years of war doesn’t add up. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/814 "2009-06-26T04:44:42Z")
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive] But what about the second part? [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > Was the declaration of war carried out through the media? I can’t find the official US government communique to the Taliban telegraphing their demands, nor can I find the reciprocal Taliban response. What are you looking for exactly? The US didn’t declare war, no. I’m mystified why you think this is important…afaik the US hasn’t declared war on anyone since WWII. And I don’t think any other country has either since then. Certainly the US offered up ultimatums and declared our intent to begin military operations…you’ve already been shown several of these communiques from media sources (the formal notes were not available afaik, being government documents that were delivered to that Taliban). As for the Taliban’s response, again, what are you looking for that you haven’t been provided? The Taliban didn’t declare formal war either, they simply turned down the ultimatum from Bush and the US government. They might also have delivered an intent to begin military operations, not that their approval was required. I’m puzzled why what you have been shown is not sufficient, to be honest. What about this are you not understanding? It was pretty straight forward and is, afaik, not controversial in the least. -XT ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/815 "2009-06-26T05:09:39Z")
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive] What do you think? Am I splitting hairs here? [/QUOTE] Yes, I think you are. As I said, I’m puzzled why you think it’s important. The US didn’t have to do or say anything, after all. The only approval or notice we needed were all internal…the President wanted Congressional approval and support. That was purely political and purely internal. Having obtained that (or even not having obtained that…a President doesn’t NEED it in order to launch attacks on other countries. Nearly every President has authorized some use of force without Congressional approval after all), Bush was free to begin hostilities whenever he chose to (within the capabilities of the military of course). He pretty much declared his intent to attack after a certain date and (IIRC) something like a month later the US began military operations. That’s really about it. Nothing to see behind the curtain. > [@](#): > > Does the POTUS on TV count as an official document? Is ‘4th estate diplomacy’ good enough for you? Nearly everything you’ve been shown indicates that at least rudimentary communications were happening between the US and the Taliban on this subject. Probably through a third party, since I doubt direct communications were possible. The fact no one has shown you the scanned official communications really indicates nothing…unless you have some kind of indications that Bush Administration is making up the entire story (and that the Congress went along with it). DO you have any basis for believing this was the case? > [@](#): > > Is there documentation of it? Certainly there is…it has simply not been scanned into a form readable on the internet AFAIK. Or, perhaps it has been and is on some obscure Government web site somewhere. What do you think it proves if there isn’t an electronic version of the documentation? Let me put it this way…do you have any evidence of outrage on the Taliban’s part claiming the US was being deceptive and hadn’t communicated their intent to begin military operations? Any evidence of the Taliban saying they hasn’t actually been formally asked to turn over Bin Laden? If so, then why don’t you present your evidence so we can look at it. AFAIK this isn’t even in dispute…except by you. > [@](#): > > I’m trying to quash my continuing suspicion that detaining OBL wasn’t the main objective, and that attacking Afghanistan regardless was a stronger motive. If it hasn’t been quashed by now with everything you have been presented in this thread then, frankly, it’s un-quashable. Like folks who believe the earth is flat no matter what evidence is presented, sometimes there simply isn’t enough proof or logic available to satisfy someone. If Occam doesn’t even work for you, then I fear you will simply have to keep your suspicions. > [@](#): > > If grabbing OBL was really the main thing, a few months of wrangling vs. 8 years of war doesn’t add up. It seems to add up just fine to me. Maybe it’s your math that is faulty? BTW, even if Bin Laden WAS the ‘main thing’ (and simplifying things down that far really is kind of silly, no?), afaik we haven’t caught him yet. Perhaps I missed it? -XT ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/816 "2009-06-26T14:35:25Z")
According to the above link about “the Taliban ultimatum”, it took less than 10 days for investigations to reach the conclusion that it was okay to start shouting the odds about “handing bin Laden over”. Did the USA really have that few enemies that it could be threatening other nations, at that point, especially bearing in mind that the FBI still hasn’t got enough evidence to officially declare a warrant for UBL’s arrest? Or so I’ve heard - I’m prepared to be corrected. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/817 "2009-06-26T15:44:36Z")
[US Department of State, Rewards for Justice program](http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=Bin_Laden&language=english): > [@](#): > > Wanted > Usama bin Ladin > Up to $25 Million Reward > > Date of Birth : 1957 > Place of Birth : Saudi Arabia > Height : 6’4" - 6’6"(193 - 198 cm) > Weight : 160 lbs (71 kg) > Hair : Brown > Eyes : Brown > Complexion : Olive > Sex : Male > Nationality : Saudi Arabian > Characteristics : Full beard, mustache; walks with cane. > Status : Fugitive > Aliases : Usama bin Muhammad bin Ladin, Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, the Director > > Usama bin Ladin is wanted in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and for the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/818 "2009-06-27T00:10:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Valgard: > First of all the thing to think about when considering loads is not the volume of stuff but the mass. Next you have to consider how the load on one floor changes when the floors above it fall down onto it, as opposed to just resting there in their normal static state. > > As I said before, there’s no engineering reason that the lower floors HAVE to be stronger than the upper floors (as long as each floor can hold up AT LEAST what’s above it that’s the bare minimum, you could certainly build all floors the same or even make the upper floors stronger than the lower ones) but let’s take it as a given that that’s how they built it for economic reasons (with a primarily steel-framed building it may make sense, whereas with reinforced concrete a lot of the cost is in the forms so you try and keep them uniform). First of all let us distinguish between FLOORS and LEVELS. Because of the way the towers were constructed when some people say FLOORS they mean those square donut floor slabs that were connected to the core on the inner edge and the perimeter columns on the outer edge. When I say level I mean all of the material within a 12 foot height including one floor slab and 12 feet of core columns and the beams connecting the core columns and 12 feet of the perimeter wall panels. Now as you go down the the core columns and the perimeter columns HAD TO GET STRONGER. So the levels got stronger and heavier even though the FLOORS remained the same. The reason I said top 10% by volume because the building had to become less dense toward the top. My point is the we don’t have the data specifying that in detail. This website shows the the cross sectional areas of the core columns. It is created by Lon Waters who I have exchanged emails with. He does not have info on the beams in the core or details on the exterior wall panels. > **[All Pages - Wtcmodel](http://wtcmodel.wikidot.com/system:list-all-pages)** psik ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/819 "2009-06-27T00:16:53Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You are really like the physicist that assumed that cows were spheres to solve a problem of them not producing enough milk. 🙂 > > As 500,000 to 600,000 tons is probably closer to the mark, as accepted by you, then the explanation from this professor is valid: > > [http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM](http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM) **ROFL** I have already sent him an email of my collapse video more than a month ago. NO RESPONSE. psik ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041/820 "2009-06-27T00:30:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You are really like the physicist that assumed that cows were spheres to solve a problem of them not producing enough milk. 🙂 > > As 500,000 to 600,000 tons is probably closer to the mark, as accepted by you, then the explanation from this professor is valid: > > [http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM](http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics1.HTM) If you look at the column cross sections on this site: > **[All Pages - Wtcmodel](http://wtcmodel.wikidot.com/system:list-all-pages)** you will notice that the columns got a lot thicker toward the bottom.. Your brilliant professor says nothing about that. It should be obvious by the very nature of skyscraperS. The further you get from the top the greater the total weight that has to be supported. That means putting in more steel which means more mass would have to be bent, dislocated and ACCELERATED for the entire structure to come down in less than 18 seconds. Ye Olde Conservation of Momentum is a serious problem. So why can’t the nation that put men on the Moon give everyone some simple data on a couple of buildings designed before the Moon landing? psik PS - The 5 minute edit limit on this site is a pain in the neck. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041.md?page=40) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-your-9-11-conspiracy-theories-and-or-their-debunking/497041.md?page=42)