The *REALLY* crazy conspiracy theory: WTC buildings downed by controlled demolition

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Monty]
mswas: Not only did they distance themselves from that prof, they essentially fired him. IIRC, he resigned before the administration could take him through the entire dismissal process.
[/QUOTE]

Well that thoroughly discredits BYU then, as everyone knows, Silverstein had demolition charges set off in the building!

I thought for a while that it would actually make sense to have a way to set off a controlled demolition in buildings above a certain size in case there was a chance of them toppling, so from that perspective it made sense. Someone who claimed to work in the demolition field said that the explosives wouldn’t keep in that situation.

[VinylTurnip]

[QUOTE=mswas]
Ok, so that eliminates the vast majority of people on this planet from having any credibility.
[/QUOTE]

Works for me.

[Larry_Borgia]

I don’t see what Jones’ religion has to do with anything. There are idiots of all stripes in the 9/11 CT community, including some atheists I’m sure.

[DanBlather]

[QUOTE=Monty]
Nope. It means that he probably believes that the Angel Moroni directed Joseph Smith Jr. to gold plates, not stone tables, in the Hill Cumorah, and that Smith translated them by divine help using what he termed Urim and Thumim.
[/QUOTE]
OK, I stand corrected; that doesn’t sound nutty at all.

[DanBlather]

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
I don’t see what Jones’ religion has to do with anything. There are idiots of all stripes in the 9/11 CT community, including some atheists I’m sure.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry I was the first one to mention he was religious (aside from the OP).

[AndrewL]

[QUOTE=mswas]
I thought for a while that it would actually make sense to have a way to set off a controlled demolition in buildings above a certain size in case there was a chance of them toppling, so from that perspective it made sense. Someone who claimed to work in the demolition field said that the explosives wouldn’t keep in that situation.
[/QUOTE]

Correct. Plastic explosives have a working shelf life of only a few years, so they can’t be built into a structure when it’s made for possible later self-destruction.

[RickJay]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
The question is not of whether the jet set the building on fire, or at least, whether it set fires in the building. (None of WTC bildings ever became towering infernos.) The question is whether the fire would become hot enough to melt steel and collapse the floors. The answer would seem to be a resounding no.
[/QUOTE]

Everything about the conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked in this and other threads, but I find this comment so irritating I just have to point out the reality here:

THE STEEL STRUCTURE DID NOT HAVE TO MELT TO CAUSE THE BUILDING TO COLLAPSE! IT ONLY HAD TO MAKE THE STEEL WEAK ENOUGH TO BEND!

Anyone who thinks steel DOESN’T become weak as it heats up… well, such a person obviously has never in their lives been in a factory that works with steel. Steel weakens considerably when heated. Ever seen a forklift? You’ll notice the forks are bent peices of steel, often very thick indeed, and usually of pretty high grade stuff. I’ve seen them bent, right there on the factory floor; they bend them by heating the steel to about 800 degrees, and then they lose most of their strength and are easily bent.

Indeed, steel at temperatures becomes so prone to weakness at 600-800 degrees that later in the process, after the forks are heat treated, they have to straighten the two sides of the fork because they warp just sitting on the rack inside the oven.

There is simply nothing remarkable about steel failing when it heats up. If it didn’t do that, it’d be awfully hard to make things out of it.

[Lemur866]

The thing that really annoys me is the people who say, “It looked just like a controlled demolition! So it must have BEEN a controlled demolition!”

Except, how many videos of uncontrolled demolition of very large buildings have people seen? I’ve seen one, the destruction of the WTC towers. And…well, that’s about it. Every other video has been of a controlled demolition. And why is that? Because buildings that spontaneously demolish themselves are pretty rare, and it’s also pretty rare for them to do so at a convenient time. With a controlled demolition you set up the video cameras in advance.

Very large buildings tend to collapse into their own footprint because the forces that hold buildings together don’t scale linearly. I’ve seen a two story house that was knocked over by a backhoe (on purpose), and it tipped over. But if that house was 20 stories high it wouldn’t tip over. The forces holding the house together increase as the cross-sectional area of the supports. The weight of the building (that is, the force exerted on the building by gravity) increases with the volume of the building. So a house twice as tall and wide and deep needs supports 8 times as thick.

A steel girder seems like an immovable object to a human being. No way one of those could bend, right? The rivets holding girders together are massively strong. But consider that you have thousands of tons of weight in a skyscraper. Such a building is just on the verge of possibility. Sure, they are built with a safety factor, stronger than needed to support themselves. But pour tons of jet fuel, light it on fire, crack lots of structural supports, and set the office furniture and paper and human beings inside the building on fire, and the steel supports weaken. Once they weaken past a certain critical level, the weight of the building above the weakened supports crushes them. And once those supports start to bend and break, it’s finished. You get tons of material falling at 32 feet per second per second. And the building collapses literally like a house of cards, because the forces holding the building up are not much stronger proportionally than the forces that hold up a house of cards.

[Valgard]

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
The thing that really annoys me is the people who say, “It looked just like a controlled demolition! So it must have BEEN a controlled demolition!”

Except, how many videos of uncontrolled demolition of very large buildings have people seen? I’ve seen one, the destruction of the WTC towers. And…well, that’s about it. Every other video has been of a controlled demolition. And why is that? Because buildings that spontaneously demolish themselves are pretty rare, and it’s also pretty rare for them to do so at a convenient time. With a controlled demolition you set up the video cameras in advance.

Very large buildings tend to collapse into their own footprint because the forces that hold buildings together don’t scale linearly. I’ve seen a two story house that was knocked over by a backhoe (on purpose), and it tipped over. But if that house was 20 stories high it wouldn’t tip over. The forces holding the house together increase as the cross-sectional area of the supports. The weight of the building (that is, the force exerted on the building by gravity) increases with the volume of the building. So a house twice as tall and wide and deep needs supports 8 times as thick.

A steel girder seems like an immovable object to a human being. No way one of those could bend, right? The rivets holding girders together are massively strong. But consider that you have thousands of tons of weight in a skyscraper. Such a building is just on the verge of possibility. Sure, they are built with a safety factor, stronger than needed to support themselves. But pour tons of jet fuel, light it on fire, crack lots of structural supports, and set the office furniture and paper and human beings inside the building on fire, and the steel supports weaken. Once they weaken past a certain critical level, the weight of the building above the weakened supports crushes them. And once those supports start to bend and break, it’s finished. You get tons of material falling at 32 feet per second per second. And the building collapses literally like a house of cards, because the forces holding the building up are not much stronger proportionally than the forces that hold up a house of cards.
[/QUOTE]

Well said. Not to mention the fact that buildings are mostly empty space. And they are not designed to hold themselves together when tipped over at an angle. And there’s the P-delta effect which explains why columns can fail when subjected to a little deflection. And on, and on, and on…

Begbert2, I have my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree in structural engineering from one of the premier civil engineering departments in the world. I know a bit about how buildings stand up and how they fall down. I also know a tad about controlled demolitions and thermite. None of the ideas I’ve seen posted by the conspiracy folks related to those topics hold any water as far as I am concerned. If, after reading the previous threads that other posters have provided links to, you still find some rational issues raised by the conspiracy folks that haven’t been thoroughly addressed, please post them so we can take a look.

[Anne_Neville]

[QUOTE=Miller]
No piece of software ever works right on the first pass! I mean, have you ever even used a Microsoft product? They can’t get a word processor to work right reliably, you expect someone to be able to model the millions of different factors and forces working on something as complex as a burning skyscraper falling apart, and get it right on the first go?
[/QUOTE]

I’m pretty sure that anyone I’ve met who has had any experience with writing software would die of shock if it somehow did work just as it was supposed to on the first try.

[tomndebb]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Chronos, jet fuel does not make a good explosive, especially not in WTC building 7, which was not hit by a plane. And there is photographic evidence for the presence of at least orange-hot steel; unearthed sever days (weeks) later.
[/QUOTE]
Just to pile on, (with info, not abuse), I addressed, at length, the issue of the “molten” steel (a term begbert2 did NOT insist upon) in the excessively long and contentious thread to which Larry Borgia linked earlier:
Evidence (and specific lack of evidence) that contradicts the “molten” claims.
Molten steel unnecessary for collapse.
Lack of evidence for “molten” steel.
Attempt by a conspiracy supporter to claim there was testimony about “molten” steel
Deconstruction of the claims of purported witnesses to “molten” steel.

ETA: While not a foundryman, (although I learned a lot from my Dad who was a foundryman), I have a fair amount of experience dealing with molten steel from the summer that I worked as a laborer in a foundry.

[delphica]

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
How could they do this without somebody noticing them?
[/QUOTE]

Indeed, and not even the people. WTC-2 housed a Port Authority station, and the Port Authority has a fairly large K-9 unit, mostly dogs that detect explosives (and some narcotics). If a person or persons unknown brought in enough explosives to take the building down, how could the dogs have entered the building routinely while on duty with their handlers and not set off alarms? At least one K-9 lab came to work that morning, and was in the building prior to the planes striking. If I may repeat, the office was inside WTC-2.

Obviously, this is not the strongest argument against explosives (as opposed to actual engineering arguments), but I add it merely as one more thing to consider.

[XT]

I’m impressed…its been a LONG time since we had the gubberment conspiricy about the WTC being a ‘controlled demolition’ gig.

Here’s the thing (since all the good points have already been taken )…I can believe the OP (sort of) when s/he says they didn’t find anything from a search (though when I do a search I can find several old threads talking about this subject). However, after someone helpfully provided said old link which basically goes through everything claimed here in excruciating detail (save for the LDS angle)…well, whats the point of going on further? All of the points in the OP have ALREADY been addressed…and this OP, like those wacky past conspiracy buffs STILL haven’t addressed any of them! Sheesh…

Anyway, carry on…lets just hope THIS thread dies a well deserved death after a page or two, and that we have another year or two before the next breathless OP informs us that indeed the WTC buildings were downed by a controlled demolition…

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

Look, we’ll never settle this with the meager intellectual resources of the Teeming Millions. It’s time to call in the Hardly Boys!

[Mr.Miskatonic]

[QUOTE=begbert2]

Jones cites, among other things:

• photographic evidence of the speed and symmetry of the collapses (which were nearly free-fall velocity, implying that the supporting beams had been severed allowing intervening material to fall unimpeded)
  [/QUOTE]

To date, no expert in demolitions or structural engineer has said the two towers collapse resembles a demolition project. As for the ‘fell at close to free-fall speed’ (not true), well, just how did you expect the building to collapse?

• the visible presence in videos of ‘squb’ smoke-puffs immidiately prior to and on floors below the actual collapse, which appear to be the detrius that the explosive charges are ejecting from the side of the building;

Squibs which are almost entirely happening after the collapse has started. Note also that squibs are inconsistant with Jones’ thermite theory.

• and the presence of molten metal which can be determined by its color to be far, far hotter than the maximum temperature of the fire, but instead seems consistent with the use of military-grade thermite.

Actually its not consistant at all. Plus some of his evidence…isn’t. Here is an example of the ‘molten steel’ evidence.

Has anyone here heard of this theory? What do you think? Is this professor nuts?

'fraid he is. Nice enough person, but this theory is whacked. Hey, you asked.

Personally I find his arguments darned convincing, and highly damning of the current US Government (though he himself remains as impartial as humanly possible).

I find his arguements very silly. For example: To date he has declared a pile of concrete to be a piece of ‘cooled molten steel’, despite the rebar and paper sticking out of it. Plus the stuff in the link above. Add to that the fact that you really cannot get thermite to burn horizontally. There’s plenty of other things wrong with his ‘theory’, but that should give you a start.

[Intravenus_De_Milo]

[QUOTE=DanBlather]
The key to all of this is WTC 7. Crashing two planes full of people into WTC 1 and 2, another into the Pentagon, and the aborted effort to crash a fourth into the White House or US Capitol would not have been enough in itself to bring the US population to a fever. WTC 7 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “No, not WTC 7!” cried America as their beloved structure crashed to the ground. So many memories were associated with WTC 7; that proud little structure, the “little building that could”, whose proud facade belied it’s short stature in the shadow of WTC 1 and 2’s bullying presence.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I have always thought that the question was not, “was WTC 7 purposely demolished?” but rather, “why the hell would anyone WANT to demolish WTC 7?”

[Mr.Miskatonic]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Actually most collapsing highrise steel-frame buidings fall over, it seems. Something about the internal steel frame, I believe. It seems that excepting the WTC buildings, no steel-frame building has ever collapsed due to fire.

[/QUOTE]

Plenty of steel framed buildings have collapsed due to fire, just none of them high-rises (which are uncommon buildings). Look up the Kader Toy Factory, the Steel portion of the Madrid Windsor Hotel, and an English Toilet Paper Factory

Also the WTC7 footage (which building was, it should be noted, not hit by a plane and had no jet fuel) does indeed look like a standard demolition.

The only damage to the building was one of its bottom corners was tagged by falling rubble from one of the main towers, and some internal fires. Bhe building does not collapse in the direction of the damaged corner; it goes straight down, onto its foundation.
[/QUOTE]

This is wrong in many ways. There was severe damage from the Tower debris, the fires were intense and burned unfought for SEVEN HOURS. As for its collapse mechanism, I would advise you look up NIST preliminary WTC7 report.

The collapse of WTC7 was no surprise to the firefighters and recue crew in the area. There are multiple quotes of them noting its lack of structural integrity.

In the WTC7 building, the puffs of smoke start on a lower floor and proceed upward, rather in defiance to the normal direction of collapsing rubble.

Or, maybe not!

The question is not of whether the jet set the building on fire, or at least, whether it set fires in the building. (None of WTC bildings ever became towering infernos.)

Excuse me? People were jumping from your ‘not a towering inferno’.

The fires were very large and engulf many floors. The only reason they may not resemble a ‘Towering Inferno’ is due to the fact that these were very large buildings.

The question is whether the fire would become hot enough to melt steel and collapse the floors. The answer would seem to be a resounding no.

Melting steel is not needed.

It seems that the US goverment tried running simulations of the effect of fire on recreations of WTC floors, in an attempt to make them collapse. They were unable to do so, even if they bult the models without any fireproofing and turned the heat up.

Wrong. The tests were done not to simulate the fires. Read the NIST report. The tests were done for other reasons. NOT WTC FIRE SIMULATION!

So they turned to computer simulations, which apparently still didn’t collapse, until they tweaked the settings a little.

Not true.

[Mosier]

Well, I’m convinced. The military and government conspiracy blew up the trade center towers because…why again? Oh who cares anyway. You don’t need a motive for a conspiracy theory anymore. Not when you have the internet and a BYU professor!

[BobLibDem]

The squibs stuff isn’t evidence of explosives. Think of the tower as a giant syringe, as the floors above pancake they’re going to push the air and dust along with it through whatever openings may exist down below.

If explosives were the cause, why bother with the planes? Why not simply wait until the building is full and then set them off? Sorry, no conspiracy here, other than the terrorists. Even they kind of blew it, had they chosen flights an hour later the buildings would have been full, plus they should have aimed lower in the buildings which would have trapped more people. For being so “sophisticated” they sure screwed up.

[Beware_of_Doug]

[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Also, from here
"A Jewish Prophet by the name of Lehi was commanded of God to lead his family out of Jerusalem in 600 BC. It tells of this people living in Central and North America , of their cities, and of their temples.
[/QUOTE]
Does it mention their valley in Pennsylvania?