Rune Nordsman - 07 June 2006 03:22 AM

Let me try to sum it up for you.  What controlled demolition does is knock out the structure from underneath, so that it falls in on itself.

Yes.  You knock out the support structure at ground level, and the building falls down.  If you knock the central support structure only, then you can get it to fall inwards on itself.  So it involves working in the basement area (which wasn’t on fire in the WTC 7, so they could have worked there without trouble).  Nor does it require huge amounts of preparations; demolitions experts just like to take the time to be sure of getting the most effective bang for the least cost.  But you could just do it by stuffing an excessive amount of explosives in the right places.

Watch Loose Change—there is a nice shot of the collapse in real time.

That would be helpful if I actually had “Loose Change”, whatever it may be.  Could it be one of the videos listed on this page that you used to base your times on?

The steel at the WTC was certified to sustain temperatures exceeding 2000 and up to 3000 (in a closed vessel)—this is the only way to achieve heat at this temperature—an open air flame such as at the WTC will not reach this temperature.  Jet fuel does not burn at this temperature.

For one thing, the buildings were old, and the steel would have gone through decades of stress since it was tested.  Also, what “steel” are you referring to?  The beams, or the rivets and bolts?  Or even the elevator doors?  And the temperatures that steel can sustain differs between being in a closed vessel or supporting thousands of tons of steel and concrete.  As I’ve already said:

Accipiter - 07 June 2006 01:26 AM

after checking around a bit, it looks like various types of steel will soften noticeably or turn brittle at temperatures ranging from just 500

As to your WTC question—shouldn’t you be asking why in the world someone would be wiring a 47 story building to implode because it had 2 small fires in it?

This has already been covered on the other 9/11 topic here:

Accipiter - 22 May 2006 10:36 PM

Here’s what Silverstein apparently said:  “I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

After the building was already on fire, they decided to go in, place explosives, and knock it down (they had something like eight hours in which to do so, since the building didn’t finally fall until late afternoon).  They openly talked about it and planned it, which means that it had nothing to do with any sort of a conspiracy.  Also, if it was only on fire, why would they decide to pull it down?  If the fire wasn’t enough to do major structural damage to the building, then it would make more sense to just leave the building there and repair what would be mainly cosmetic damage.  But they decided to pull it, which meant that they thought that the fire alone was enough to destroy the building, and so they wanted to destroy it before the fire did so that it would fall in a less dangerous way.  So really, what Silverstein is saying is that 1) the fires alone were enough to make the buildings fall, and 2) the fall of the building had nothing to do with any sort of government conspiracy.

Obviously, there is no way the buildings fell without thermite charges that severed the floors beneath in a carefully, precisely controlled demolition.

First:  how would the people get in to the buildings and put in lots of explosives and wiring without the people who work there noticing?  Also, since you’re claiming that it fell without any resistance, this would require them rigging every single support column with explosives.  Don’t you think that would be a bit noticeable, not to mention time-consuming?

Second:  thermite is rather flammable, as you might imagine.  It would have burned at once in the big fuel fire.  So if thermite was used, it would have been used at once, and the buildings would have fallen immediately (it would have melted completely through the steel beams, rather than just softening bits of metal here or there).  But the buildings didn’t fall at once.

Third:  Of course there are ways that the buildings could have fallen without carefully-placed thermite charges.  For example, the supports on the floors where the fires were gave way, and the weight of the floors above crashing onto those below smashed the successive floors’ supports.  It has happened before to other buildings, when their support structure didn’t hold up to the weight anymore for whatever reason (consider the L’Ambiance Plaza in Connecticut, and a 21-storey building in LA in 1985, and a building at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia in 1973, and Ronan Point Flats in London in 1968, and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. . .it’s called progressive collapse).  All it takes is for the supports to be weakened. . .such as when the rivets and bolts holding them in place get softened.

Another poster asked if there wasn’t any other way for buildings to fall—well, of course there are—but, we’re talking about the official explanation here—

Hold on, you just said:  “Obviously, there is no way the buildings fell without thermite charges that severed the floors beneath in a carefully, precisely controlled demolition.”

and keep in mind that never in the history of modern architecture before or since 911 has a building collapsed due to fire

Um, you might want to re-evaluate that comment a bit.

Do you have any links to articles showing steel-framed buildings collapsing due to fires? This is a big claim in the Truth Movement. Fires in PA and Madrid burned for 18 and 24 hrs, twisted and sagging cross beams, no collapse in PA, almost the whole structure in Madrid survived the intense 24 hour fire. How can you accept the WTC could’ve gone poof into dust clouds in about an hour?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spain_fire_2005.html
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Loose Nuke - 07 June 2006 07:33 AM

Do you have any links to articles showing steel-framed buildings collapsing due to fires? This is a big claim in the Truth Movement. Fires in PA and Madrid burned for 18 and 24 hrs, twisted and sagging cross beams, no collapse in PA, almost the whole structure in Madrid survived the intense 24 hour fire. How can you accept the WTC could’ve gone poof into dust clouds in about an hour?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spain_fire_2005.html
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Hmm. . .major fires in large skyscrapers aren’t all that common, since most fires start from small sources, and so the building’s fire equipment can handle it or keep it small until the firemen arrive.  Also, they don’t usually have the added effect of a large airplane plowing into the building.  You could probably find lots of examples of large buildings falling down due to fire after the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, but I’m not sure that many of them would be steel buildings.

When the Windsor Building in Madrid caught fire, it was enough to collapse six floors, warp steel beams, and reach over 800

Interestingly, the design of the (fictional) WTC really only lends itself to two failure modes. Unlike most skyscrapers, which have multiple support points distributed throughout the structure, the WTC was built with a central supporting core and a stiffening outer skeleton. Destruction of the skeleton would leave the core unstable and the building would topple; desctruction of the core would cause the building to fall inwards and collapse down on itself. In an uncontrolled collapse, you would expect some of both to occur depending on the distribution of the damage.

In fact the two towers collapsed differently, the south tower exhibited both the above failure modes, while the north tower demonstrated only the second. From this alone we might conclude that the north tower experienced more core damage from the impact, which is in fact the case (flight 11 hit the north tower centrally and head on, flight 175 hit the south tower off-centre and at an away angle).

No fact I have read, nor image I have seen, is inconsistent with what my knowledge of static and dynamics tells me are the probable consequences of the impacts of 9/11, given their magnitude and the design of the building.

So congratulations to the model-making lackies of the Rich and Powerful Elite for doing such a good job, if I didn’t know better I’d almost believe that it actually happened!

That’s why I never questioned the story, until last year when I heard about video, checked it out and became suspicious. Since then, I’ve looked into it; every aspect of the 9/11 story does not make sense and points to an inside job. But first, in response to your very valid questions and concerns- search skyscraper fires; there have been a number of fires, no core structure collapses, and the damage at the Windsor is the worst. In earthquakes steel-framed buildings have fallen over, but not collapsed. Here’s a link to the Madrid skyscraper http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Madrid_skyscraper_devastated_by_fire ; this burned 24 hrs and was huge and hot enough to engulf the building; the top 14 outer floors of this 32 story building collapsed, but the central columns have not. The ones in the WTC were massive; the steel in them was 4” thick at the base tapering to 1/4” at top yet broke into 30’ or less sections and shot outward at hundreds of miles per hour while all the concrete around them disintegrated into a dust cloud that within seconds had inflated to 3 times the width of the building. After 56” and 1’42”. The building’s designer expressed surprise at their collapse. Experienced people who expressed dissent have been paid off and intmidated- Van Romero, demolitions expert, changed his opinion that it was controlled demolition and now has a large budget. Kevin Ryan, UL engineer who said the steel had been certified for much hotter fires for hours longer before weakening, was fired and is speaking out. The government’s own reports conclude the plane damage did not contribute significantly to the collapse- they don’t claim the planes took out a lot of columns- the buildings were shredding the planes at the same time; it is blamed on fires aided by the knocking off of insulation by the plane crash. They also say most of the jet fuel burned off quickly, but started fires of paper, desks, carpet etc. The fires were not so severe that surivivors couldn’t walk to the edge of the crashed floors- there are pictures. Firemen are on tape reaching the area and saying the fires were containable. Molten steel was found in the basements of all 3 towers. The S tower was hit second, yet collapsed first; all floors were engineered to hold 5 times their load- it doesn’t matter that there was more building on top because the plane hit lower. No one has ever suggested the buildings were getting unsafe because of their age, but people were talking about the need to get rid of those buildings because they were obsolete, and the cost involved would’ve been huge because of the asbestos. All tests by scientists with models have failed to duplicate the results; they haven’t tried controlled demolition. The Bush Administration ordered the EPA to declare the air safe 3 days later; now, thousands more will die as a direct result. A federal judge recently refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the EPA and had very harsh words for them.
Pictures are worth 1000 words
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/collapses.html

Besides the unaccepability of the official accounts of the building collapses, we need to investigate the people involved for the coverup. In addition, the following problems need to be accounted for, and the people who told the lies and took the actions to compromise and violate normal intelligence, immigration, air defense and secret service procedures need to be held accountable:

Coincidence Theorist’s Guide to 9/11
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html

The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050523112738404

The Complete 9/11 Timeline
http://cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

The Mardrid building you reference is not a ‘core and shell’ building; its structure, and hence its response, will be different.

Accipiter—you’re wearing me out, but I applaud your tenacity

by stuffing an excessive amount of explosives in the right places
—why would one do this when the fire department could’ve easily put these fires out?
Does it really make sense to you to destroy a building because 2 floors had small fires?

Watch Loose Change—there is a nice shot of the collapse in real time.
That would be helpful if I actually had

How a murder is committed does not change the fact that it was.  Thousand of people died.  That’s the bottom line.  How it was accomplished is of little solace to those victims left behind and whose dreaming nights and days will forever be violated by imagined images.

As far as I’m concerned, that means that these towers are still falling and will continue to fall…....

I find the official explanation ridiculous and the evidence of controlled demolition compelling, as do tens of millions of other Americans, and hundreds of millions around the world. Watching video and looking at the pictures is all it takes for many to realize same. However, there are hundreds of other problems, contradictions, red flags, outright lies and holes. What about these:

Coincidence Theorist

Rune Nordsman - 07 June 2006 05:18 PM

let’s say that the rivets and bolts gave way, let’s say the floors gave way, let’s say that the columns pulled in—having conceded all of that—you again come to resistance—let’s say the buildings took 20 seconds to fall(which they clearly did not)—this would mean that every floor fell, impacted the floor beneath it, pulverized it to dust—each floor in 1/4 of a second

As has already been pointed out, the freefall time of a structure 400 metres high is roughly 9 seconds. The approximate fall time of the WTC was around 10 (an accurate time isn’t possible as the base of the structure was completely obscured by the time the top reached that point); the difference of a second or two is likely the result of inelastic collisions between the floors. The floor design of the WTC was directed to light, distributed loads, the dynamic resistance of the floor supports to the falling mass would have been very small.