Also, the WTC came straight down because the structure failed around the 80-somthing floor, not at the base. Each collapsing floor pancaking onto the one below. Had the base or lower floors been damaged asymetrically, it is not inconceivable that the tower would have toppled somwhat like a tree. It would still have broken up on the way down, though. The only diference would be that the destruction would be more directional.
This is a bit off topic, but if the original question is, “how to convince my dumb friend that he’s dumb?” maybe it can help.
See, the tough part for the sane is that it seems like lots and lots of conspiracy theories spring up from major events. They’re all just completely nut-job stories. But, some seem to stick around. Are they any more valid than other ones? No. They all just begin with some wacko with a web page or a pulpit spouting a crank theory. There are some that are just a little stickier when you try to scrape them off your shoe.
E.g. I don’t know about the history of JFK theories, but I suspect that the “manhole shooter” and the “overpass shooter” and the “grassy knoll shooter” probably all bubbled up out of the cesspool at about the same time. But, the first two were much much easier to demonstrate as moronic so they kind of lost the race. It doesn’t mean there was any more validity to “grassy knoll” to start with. It just means it was more difficult to disprove. And eventually, all the nut-jobs are on the same page because the weaker ideas die, and they all start to glom onto the one that is a little more difficult for the rational to shoot down.
You’ll see the same with 9/11. I think we’re still in the infancy of the conspiracy theories. Someone will dream up some cockamamy idea that can’t be immediately refuted (like “where’s the wreckage?”) and next thing you know it’s like “moths to the flame.” Whereas before, you had a thousand voices screaming a thousand stupid theories, now you have a thousand voices all screaming the same stupid theory. It doesn’t make it valid. It just got the big 'mo.
So, for now, there are still ideas that it was the CIA, or Bushco, or remote controlled planes and most of these will fall by the wayside for being just too damn dumb. But the ones that actually take a little more critical thinking to refute will linger, and sadly, grow.
I guess it’s just an application of the adage, “throw some shit at the wall and see what sticks.”
You know what’s funniest about the OP. Presumably, if Bush blew up the WTC, it was to get the public behind him for an invasion of Iraq – I guess that would be a conspiracy theorist take on the motive. So, they were smart enough to remotely fly planes into buildings and get tons of explosives into the building but too stupid to actually put Iraqis on the airplanes instead of Saudis.
It’s unbelievable the amount of crap that dribbles out of some people’s brains.
Johnny L.A.,
Two things you’ve mentioned are much harder to debunk than others.
Since 1999, I have been working with a Los Angeles engineering firm that has a great deal of experience in and knowledge of two of the main subjects in the OP. One is “high-rise structural integrity” and the other is the Global Hawk program.
The structural engineers associated with my firm believe that the World Trade Center collapses were the product of controlled demolition. And although he would later retract his statement (on September 21, 2001), a colleague named Van Romero, on seeing the collapses, made a damning claim, notably published in the Albuquerque Journal: “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.”
Further, he said that only a small amount of explosives – possibly in as few as two sites per building – would be necessary to take down the towers. As a terrorism expert, a demolition professional and a regular government witness, Romero’s last statement on September 11, 2001, is the hardest to retract:
“One of the things terrorist events are noted for is a diversionary attack and secondary device.”
On September 11, in Romero’s mind, commercial jets were insufficient to destroy the buildings. But ten days after the attacks, Romero had taken a lot of heat – professionally and personally – for his public statements. He acquiesced and changed his story only after he had been assured that, due to heightened security concerns in the weeks leading up to September 11, the buildings had been fully sniffed for explosives prior to the attacks.
The second item I’d like to mention is that, contrary to the opinions of many, Global Hawk is (and has been for some time) ready for deployment in commercial airlines. In fact, in the mid-1990s, early Global Hawk technology had been successfully tested by Teledyne Ryan in the airborne maneuvers of C-130 aircraft.
Finally, we know that, even though the Global Hawk of September, 2001, was by no means perfect, the technology had by that time matured enough for DARPA to commission UCAVs (in the form of Fighter Jets) from defense competitors Northrop Grumman and Boeing. As of November, 2002, the Northrop fighter, Pegasus, had been proven. This unmanned fighter jet will likely go into production by 2010.
I regret that my comments have the potential to muddy the waters between you and your friend. Hopefully you two will come to a reasonable arrangement.
Yours truly,
El Cid Viscoso
True that. Some people need to create imaginative (and they ARE quite imaginative) scenarios in order to justify what they FEEL. In this case, a lot of folks FEEL that the Bush administration is somehow directly responsible for 9/11. For some reason - maybe they just want a Catch-All whipping boy to blame the world’s ills on - they need to have “Bad Thing X” be caused by “Bad Guy Y”.
It’s the same mentality that causes some more nutcase Fundies to blame 9/11 on homosexuals, for example.
Why is this? Well, I personally theorize that it’s just an attempt to validate “Feelings”. “I feel that so-and-so is responsible, so THIS is how!” Essentially, they come across a notion that perfectly fits with how they WANT things to go. And since they REALLY REALLY WANT it to happen, then by-golly, they’re gonna clap their hands and chant, “I DO believe in fairies!”
But why, why? Does it stem from insecurity? Perhaps a driving need to be one of the “special” people, one of the ones that “truly sees how the world is”? Has nonconformity been coopted by fanciful delusion to such a great extent? Mercy me.
The really scary part is just how readily stuff like this can happen. People that can, out of one side of their mouth, claim that the Moon landings were a hoax, while at the same time talk about how, say, the Challenger disaster was pulled off by Palestinians (or what-have-you).
And it’s not just with conspiracy theories… people like this will make every single decision based on what they really want to believe.
What I don’t get is why someone would find it easier to believe that all the procedures & personnel were successfully orchestrated, in complete secrecy and without suspicion, to knock down 2 huge buildings and put a massive (and ultimately meaningless unless you were the contractor who won the reconstruction bid) hole in another; when another possibility is that someone fucked up. OK, 20 people.
At least it’s easier to argue that those 20 people were in on the plot to ignore the attack and allow the devastation to occur.
Thanks for the comments so far.
One thing, though: Not to play ModCadet™, but I hope we can avoid name-calling.
To those who said the buildings can’t fall any other way than straight down: I don’t think my friend believes that they should have toppled like trees. I think what he meant was that the upper storeys should have toppled sideways at the point of impact. I explained that they had to fall in upon the core because the steel joists were weakened by the fire. Thus, they had to fall toward the centre. He said that the burning jet fuel would not have been enough to weaken the steel. I told him that he’s wrong, but he wouldn’t believe me.
El Cid Viscoso provides quotes by a (presumably) qualified source that says demo charges must have been used. It would not surprise me if my friend read these quotes and is using them as the basis of his argument. I told him that he cites “scientists and engineers” who suggest explosives were used, but I could provide as many cites from other experts who say they were not.
My friend also said that there had been an earlier fire one of the WTCs that “burned for days”. He said that office furnishings burn hotter than jet fuel, and that if they didn’t bring the building down then the jet fuel wouldn’t either. Again, I cited what I’ve read and watched; but he said his experts had already refuted my experts.
Global Hawk. I don’t know anything about it. However, I do know that remotely controlled aircraft have been around for decades. Many of them are used as target drones. When I was at Edwards AFB, they had a program called HiMAT (Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology) that was piloted from the ground. I don’t dispute that someone could outfit airliners for remote operation. But it’s unvelievable that it could be done to four commercial aircraft that are checked out by numerous people on a frequent basis. He said that “special maintenance crews” were brought in to service the aircraft before the attacks. I can’t disprove that. But one would think that the “regular crews” would have noticed and said something. And of course, the pilots or co-pilots missed any extra equipment during the preflights.
Still waiting to see his evidence.
Response: 100-ton jetliner + 400 mph impact + burning fuel /= A few couches up in flames.
Mrs. Lizardo here, just happened to see what Emilio had been surfing. The FEMA report on the collapse of the WTC towers was conducted by a team of well-regarded structural engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The NOVA special that’s been referenced was based on the findings of this report. Full contents can be viewed at FEMAs web site. Additional details about the study can be searching for “World Trade Center” at www.asce.org. Conspiracy theories and the sheer tragedy aside, the experts concluded that the towers held on for as long as they could, but the intensity and duration of the jet-fuel fires ultimately caused the collapse.
I’m not sure how the conspiracy theorist answers the question about why the Pentagon wasn’t destroyed. Structural engineers from ASCE also conducted a building performance report on the Pentagon.
Kudos to folks that actually wade through the massive amounts of data in these reports.
Conspiracy theories are often hatched in the wake of tragedies because people are simply unable to comprehend what has happened and why it happened. People feel powerless, and the more complex the theory is, the more excusable their sense of powerless is. Who can fight, or even find, a cabal? In particular, people living in the Western world have difficulty with massive structures failing. No one was surprised when entire villages of mud huts were wiped out in the latest earthquakes in Turkey, but somehow, infrastructure made of steel, concrete and MIT-trained minds isn’t supposed to fall down.
IIRC, the top portion of the first tower to collapse (the one hit closer to the center) was not perfectly upright when it fell. You could see the top portion of the building, still mostly in tact, leaning noticeably to one side while it fell upon the rest of the building below it. When the second tower collapsed, it was also clear that a significant amount of debris was flying out from each side of the building. This is also what caused all the damage to the surrounding buildings, including a 50+ story building that also collapsed (perhaps your friend is conveniently forgetting this tiny detail?). A controlled demolition would have fallen mostly inward, minimizing the collateral damage.
Granted, a truly professional implosion would be impossible to set up without anyone else in the building noticing. So, the job must have been done in a limited space in each tower, which I would expect to have been the point where each building buckled, which also happened to be where the planes hit. If planted explosives caused the collapse, how did the airplanes just happen to hit where the explosives were planted? How did the explosives manage to survive the impact and fire for 30-60 minutes before finally going off and causing the collapse?
The fact that the jet fuel would set all that other stuff on fire has been dealt with, so I’ll just consider that a given.
Given that, HOW MUCH of the WTC was on fire for days? Was the fire engulfing several floors at once? Was there a commercial jet-sized hole in the building at the time? Any specific information about this fire?
D
The jet impacts did three things:
- They shook a lot of insulation off of the beams.
- They started a lot of stuff on fire.
- The broke up a lot of floor supports.
That that part 1 cannot be ignored. A regular fire would not do part 1 at all.
The Nova programs go into more detail on the role part 3 played.
Oh yeah, there’s one family who are the experts on controlled demolitions. If it absolutely, positively has to be blown up, these are the folks to call. Somehow, given their large, respectable clientele, I just can’t buy them being willing to load the WTC with charges.
See if your friend can give the year that fire supposedly burned for days. I searched, but no such thing happened that I found. Plenty of fires, but all put out within hours. I could always have missed it.
That’s one of the things I pointed out. He still didn’t believe that the fire was hot enough to melt steel. I told him that it didn’t have melt it; just weaken it. He still wouldn’t buy it.
I’ll ask him. Right now, I’m waiting for him to present the evidence he says he has.
He did mention the FEMA report. He claimed that that report said the fires weren’t hot enough to cause the collapse. My dial-up connection isn’t up to downloading the whole set of documents, but I did read the Executive Summary. I didn’t see where it waid the fires were not sufficient to cause the collapse. What I did see was that the fires were sufficient to weaken the steel enough so that they failed.
Structural engineer by training here. I don’t want to take the time to dig through my LRFD steel design handbook so here’s a wee little linkie, this took all of ten seconds to find:
Steel buildings with all of their structure intact can collapse from a fire weakening the metal, much less a building with massive structural damage from a big jet hitting it at 500-600mph. Using that chart as an example and simplifying a lot, structural steel loses about 30% strength at 500C which isn’t that hot (heck, steel loses a noticeable amount of strength from sustained exposure to temps typical of BURNING PAPER). Now imagine that you’ve got a fireball of exploding jet fuel, igniting everything flammable inside and you can see where the steel might just get a tad weaker.
Somehow I doubt this will convince your friend. I remember one “explosives expert” who said that the Bali bombings could only have been caused by a small atomic weapon because conventional explosives can’t shatter concrete. He even had “real math” to back up this idiotic claim. Sigh.
Was it 93 that a truck bomb went off in one of the towers? I would have expected the darn thing to fall over like a tree. Nothing much happened to the building; which indicates a bomb or two wouldn’t have done it in 01.
IANAE but I learned a bit in fire academy
Closest comparison I could find was the One meridian plaza fire February 23, 1991 , burned for 19 hours
http://www.iklimnet.com/hotelfires/meridienplaza.html
All interior firefighting efforts were halted after almost 11 hours of uninterrupted fire in the building. Consultation with a structural engineer and structural damage observed by units operating in the building led to the belief that there was a possibility of a pancake structural collapse of the fire damaged floors.
…
After the fire, there was evident significant structural damage to horizontal steel members and floor sections on most of the fire damaged floors. Beams and girders sagged and twisted – some as much as three feet --under severe fire exposures, and fissures developed in the reinforced concrete floor assemblies in many places. Despite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage
…
There is plenty of heat in a non-jet fuel and airliner impact enhanced fire to soften steel framework. Airflow in this type of environment is complex to say the least but it can be easily imagined that things like breached elevator shafts and wiring trunks could easily turn into chimneys and creating forced air furnace type situations from the superheated air looking for an upward escape route.
It sounds like the expert that El Cid cited completely recanted his statement. Just a guy who spoke too quickly, but not some crack-pot with a Ph.D. like you find backing other theories.
I’m guessing that what happened was Dr. Romero probably told a paper (too quickly) that the collapses looked a lot like controlled collapses using explosives, which they do. This is easily explained by the posts of SilentButDeftly, mssmith, and lemur.
He then either thought about it a little (uh. . .how did explosives survive the crashes. How did we not see explosions?) or was convinced by colleagues, and completely retracted his statements.
However, if you google him, you’ll find that all the conspiracy sites have hooked onto to that initial claim, and they theorize that he has distanced himself from it out of fear for his life.
A bomb in a truck in the basement is not the same as a strategicly placed shaped explosive on a structural member.
Still, the idea that bombs were planted in the WTC is beyond silly based on the evidence.
In addition to all;
The proper demolition of a building is a science. The proper explosives must be attached to the proper supports at the right intervals and timed to work together to bring the structure down. Notches are cut into the structural supports near the charges to ensure that the building collapses in on itself.
A random placement of charges in closets, stairwells, etc, would not cause the buildings to collapse as they did. You would need an enormous amount of charge to bring down the WTC if the charges were placed randomly about. An amount that would have been detected on every video taken as large flashes and explosions.
Since the buildings pancaked from about where the planes struck, it seems that the explosives would have had to been placed on the same floors where the damage occured. How would the planes have been able to hit the exact floors that were pre-loaded with explosives?
Or, how would the explosives teams know what floors the planes would strike?
If they were able to pull it off, how were the explosives not pre-detonated, dislodged, or rendered inactive by the damage the planes caused?
This theory is ridiculous at best.
Here’s the real crux. Planting explosives, then crashing planes into the towers, THEN setting off the explosions MAKES NO SENSE!
Why in God’s name would terrorists, or the Bush Administration, or Mossad, or the Illuminati, or the Anti-Castro Cubans, or the Reptoids do such a thing?
If they could plant explosives in the towers, why not just blow up the towers and forget the whole hijacking angle? If you want to frame Islamic terrorists, just plant white vans nearby with left-over explosives and copies of the Koran in the glove box. It just makes no sense to plant the explosives, and then try to pull off a risky secondary cover mission of the plane hijackings. Wouldn’t there be far far easier ways to pull off a cover story? After all, we have the example of the first World Trade Center bombings, it surely wouldn’t be difficult to use vans packed with explosives as your cover story.
If you want to commit terrorism, and have the resources to plant explosives throughout the WTC, AND to hijack multiple jetliners (whether through conventional hijackings or remote control or orbital mind control lasers, or whatever), wouldn’t it make more sense to use the bombs to blow up the WTC, and use the hijacked planes to crash into other things, like the White House, or Congress, or the FBI headquarters (if the CIA was behind it) or Langley (if the FBI was behind it)?
That’s what makes no sense, the idea that two methods–each capable of causing massive damage–were used simultaneously. Why not just plant your explosives and set them off whenever you felt like it?