# Please explain this 9-11 BBC article a "Truther" sent me. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 1, 2018, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947 "2018-08-01T21:04:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/61 "2018-08-03T16:07:25Z")
> [@EarlGrayHot](#): > > Wow. Just…wow. I’m perfectly willing to entertain a good conspiracy theory but this one-that 9/11 was an inside job by our own government-just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. There is no evidence AT ALL that it didn’t happen the way we’ve been told. None. Even if it **was** an inside job by our own government, the simplest and safest way to carry out an attack that looked like a small group of Muslim fanatics had taken over four planes and crashed (or attempted to crash) them into buildings would be to secretly recruit and fund a small group of Muslim fanatics and help them take over four planes and crash them into buildings. The number of people involved (not counting the hijackers) could probably be as little as a dozen. Conversely, setting up explosives in well-trafficked public buildings, timing the explosives and aiming the planes at just the right points in the building, involving the military, FAA, police, firefighters, the BBC and in generally thousands upon thousands of people in some Rube Goldbergesque scheme - these would have increased the chance of failure or exposure to near-certain levels for no reason whatsoever. In short, one of the main reasons to discount the conspiracy theories is that they’re all really fucking stupid. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/62 "2018-08-03T20:56:06Z")
> [@bardos](#): > > Common fact: Office fires melt steel. No they don’t; but what all the conspiracy nuts miss is that fires heat steel; and heated steel loses it’s strength long long before it reaches the melting point. Taffy is not a good building material for support. In the few years after 9-11 I remember 2 minor fires in my area of the city where most of the building had burned, but one steel beam was still visible. In both cases, these were moderate 1 or 2 storey buildings, no more than the normal amount of heat - but the surviving beam in each had a visible sag - at least one or two feet in a 20-foot or so span, despite the only weight being the beam itself. Now imagine a post supporting a 10 or 30 stories high above. Soften a few of these, and the support is no longer there; once it starts to move - it will rp out any rivets, pull beams out of place, bend other supports… a cascade. This is what we see with the WTC towers - they give on one side, then on all sides, and the momentum pancakes the floors underneath. I saw an analysis of the 7WTC building once - basically, the weak point was a giant 2-storey lobby with a wide open span on the middle of the south side. Photos after the main towers fell show a giant deep gouge lined up with that lobby. This is consistent with the video of the building collapsing - fire makes the beams less strong, the lobby area fails first, and the whole building sort of sags a bit in the center and falls down straight due to failure near the ground floor. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/63 "2018-08-03T22:29:49Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > There was someone years ago who claimed that they were actors trained not to react to the sound of the explosions, but exactly how did they train _the baby_ to do that? Yeah right. A bunch of actors who would never talk. I read a “stuff they won’t tell you book” from 2000 or very early 2001. The last chapter was a big one about how the government was crazy to think that Osama bin Laden was any kind of threat. I wonder if some of Trutherism is from people who won’t admit they were wrong. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/64 "2018-08-03T23:48:22Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Yeah right. A bunch of actors who would never talk. Better still, a bunch of actors who agreed to take roles that would prevent them from ever taking any other acting role again, ever. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/65 "2018-08-04T01:05:12Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > " the building’s wouldn’t have fell down like that without explosives" And he knows that … how? Part of the driver for 9/11 conspiracy theories is that people have no experience of comparable events so they incorrectly extrapolate things from everyday intuition – e.g.- the twin towers were tall free standing structures, so when something runs into them and knocks them over they should fall over, but instead, they came straight down! :eek: These are misconceptions of the flat-earth variety ("if the earth was really round, it wouldn’t look flat, but it does!). Even scientific greats like Arthur Eddington were subject to it (“the math tells us that stellar collapse above a certain mass leads to the formation of a black hole singularity, but I can’t imagine such a thing happening so it can’t be true”). But scientific rigor has always triumphed over uninformed “intuition”. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2018, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/66 "2018-08-04T01:39:24Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Part of the driver for 9/11 conspiracy theories is that people have no experience of comparable events so they incorrectly extrapolate things from everyday intuition – e.g.- the twin towers were tall free standing structures, so when something runs into them and knocks them over they should fall over, but instead, they came straight down! :eek: People who are not structural engineers think that skyscrapers are like trees, and should fall over like that. But sadly even some structural engineers are quoted by the Truthers. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2018, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/67 "2018-08-04T03:32:02Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > The theories I’ve heard said that a pretext was needed to do what Bush REALLY wanted, which was go to war with Iraq. More destruction, more pretext. As if either Bush ever needed a pretext for war. What I’ve heard a lot is JAQing off, which is Just Asking Questions. The trick is, **there is no coherent underlying ideology** , just endless nitpicking of things which they, personally, don’t understand or think are suspicious for some undefinable reason. They fire off question after question, never accepting any answers, with the unstated premise that _something_ is going on but never committing to any _specific_ narrative. Since they never stay in one place, they can’t be pinned down, and since they never answer anything, only ask, you can’t address any of their underlying idiocy without “dodging the question” never mind that the question is so stupid it can’t be answered but must be un-asked. (If they’re a bit more clever, this is fire-and-motion: Keep the opponent disoriented by peppering them with a dozen questions which implicitly assume a false premise, and while they’re untangling themselves, ask another dozen and accuse them of being evasive because they haven’t answered your _first_ dozen in a way which validates your unstated premise. If they confront you with that premise, go all wounded gazelle, accuse them of being horrible people who accuse others of awful things, and ask more stupid questions. The point is to keep injecting the unstated premise (“Jews are bad”, “Blacks are stupid”, things that you can’t state outright anymore without people immediately pegging you as beneath contempt) in a way which keeps _the other group_ on the defensive, and makes _outsiders_ think _you’re_ the one who has their facts together. Because all of this is performing for people who are outside the fake “debate” and who might be persuaded by a good act.) They’re dogmatically opposed to anything they see as mainstream, and dogmatically attached to the idea that they’re skeptics. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2018, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/68 "2018-08-05T16:36:50Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Even if it **was** an inside job by our own government, the simplest and safest way to carry out an attack that looked like a small group of Muslim fanatics had taken over four planes and crashed (or attempted to crash) them into buildings would be to secretly recruit and fund a small group of Muslim fanatics and help them take over four planes and crash them into buildings. The number of people involved (not counting the hijackers) could probably be as little as a dozen. > > Conversely, setting up explosives in well-trafficked public buildings, timing the explosives and aiming the planes at just the right points in the building, involving the military, FAA, police, firefighters, the BBC and in generally thousands upon thousands of people in some Rube Goldbergesque scheme - these would have increased the chance of failure or exposure to near-certain levels for no reason whatsoever. > > In short, one of the main reasons to discount the conspiracy theories is that they’re all really fucking stupid. You make a good point, but one of the problems with promoting the more reasonable version of the 9/11 CT is that it requires acceptance by the Truthers that, subsequent to the impacts of the planes with the Towers, everything else we saw was consistent with the laws of physics, and building engineering. However, they’ll never accept that, because for the vast majority of them, they got into the CTs in the first place because the collapse of WTC7 and the Twin Towers “just didn’t look right”. If they ever accept that the buildings could have fallen the way they did without further use of explosives or thermite or whatever, then they have to accept that their initial reasons for being suspicious were wrong. And admitting they were wrong about _anything_ is anathema to the Truther mindset. Over the years we’re seen Truthers literally defending typos in their posts as being “what they meant to say”\*, because the couldn’t admit to even that trivial level of error. \*At the old JREF forum, we had one guy claim that “avoid it like the pla **q** ue” was a common Scottish expression, because he wouldn’t admit he mis-spelled “pla **g** ue”. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/69 "2018-08-05T17:04:06Z")
Since people keep posting here, he makes a big deal out of it being the air traffic control guy’s first day on the job. I’m like; “Yeah… The whole reason why they orchestrated this whole conspiracy on 9-11 revolved on when this guy started his new job.” Then he went into something about the building’s insurance or something. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/70 "2018-08-06T00:34:54Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > Since people keep posting here, he makes a big deal out of it being the air traffic control guy’s first day on the job. > > I’m like; “Yeah… The whole reason why they orchestrated this whole conspiracy on 9-11 revolved on when this guy started his new job.” > > Then he went into something about the building’s insurance or something. That’s a pretty classic response. Point out an obvious flaw in one argument, and they whip out another, completely unrelated, topic without addressing your point. Now, what will happen is, at some point in the future, he’ll again mention the air traffic controller, just as if you’d never discussed it with him before. It’s called a “fringe reset”, and is one of the main reasons why talking to these guys is so exhausting. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2018, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/71 "2018-08-06T02:54:48Z")
“JAQing off.” I like that. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947/72 "2018-08-06T15:22:18Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I saw an analysis of the 7WTC building once - basically, the weak point was a giant 2-storey lobby with a wide open span on the middle of the south side. Yeah, WTC7 was actually built over an existing electrical substation, so there was some weirdness in the lower floor supports. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-this-9-11-bbc-article-a-truther-sent-me/818947.md?page=3)