Professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC

[SeaCat]

I'm not sure what I said that gave the impression I thought melting was neccessary. I was trying to say, the commonly held perception it was was erroneous and that you only had to apply enough heat to make the steel begin to deform to have the structure fail.

My mistake,
You did indeed say that as have Cant and myself.

Cat

 

[Colleen Thomas]

My mistake,
You did indeed say that as have Cant and myself.

Cat

I envy your wife. A man who can admit a mistake is gold

 

[SeaCat]

I envy your wife. A man who can admit a mistake is gold

Hey if I make a mistake I learn from it. Too bad so many others don't.

Now as for this thread. If the aircraft had been carrying enough explosives to cause the type of destruction imagined by this professor, they would have either blown a huge ass hole in the side of the building and/or caused the top to topple off. As for planted explosives, yes it could have possibly been done, but even so the possibility of the aircraft striking the precise floors to cause this is astronmical. (Not to mention we would have seen the tell tale signs of the cutting charges going off in the video footage. It's almost impossible to hide those type of explosions.)

Cat

 

[cantdog]

Hey if I make a mistake I learn from it. Too bad so many others don't.

Now as for this thread. If the aircraft had been carrying enough explosives to cause the type of destruction imagined by this professor, they would have either blown a huge ass hole in the side of the building and/or caused the top to topple off. As for planted explosives, yes it could have possibly been done, but even so the possibility of the aircraft striking the precise floors to cause this is astronmical. (Not to mention we would have seen the tell tale signs of the cutting charges going off in the video footage. It's almost impossible to hide those type of explosions.)

Cat

As I understand it, the impetus for this idea is the way the buildings came down, right straight down the way 'imploded' ones do, when people set out to demolish them.

There are lots of sites on the web with one version or another of this theory. To implode a building you do indeed have to set the charges, very precisely, and set them off in a strict order, besides. The professor, even, doesn't assume there was anything random about the charges. He sees them as planted, deliberately, to bring the structures down. He does not say so in this article, but elsewhere on the web, among other such theorists, the controlling triggers (one uses computers to trigger the charges, in a demolition of this kind) were supposedly in the command post thing that the Mayor's office had in building seven. Then they pulled building seven, and there was a great rush to remove and destroy as much metal as possible, before anyone could investigate, blah, blah blah.

Other buildings, even other skyscrapers, have been struck by aircraft before, and they remained standing. Other skyscrapers have sustained fires, for much longer periods of time, and they remained standing. In fact, none of them with fires ever came down like this. edited to add: Except building seven of the WTC complex.

What makes the difference is, none of those fires began with an impact like this. Fireproofing is all very well, but the impact had to have compromised it. Failure of the fireproofing would then allow the metal to weaken, if there were enough fire. All that fuel would certainly give you enough fire. The weakening could cause one floor to collapse, the floors above with all their mass would then drop.

That would be enough of a big damn crunch to collapse another floor, and so on right down the whole building. The firemen and other witnesses reported an explosion, but the first of those collapses would make a good deal of sudden noise.

 

[SeaCat]

As I understand it, the impetus for this idea is the way the buildings came down, right straight down the way 'imploded' ones do, when people set out to demolish them.

There are lots of sites on the web with one version or another of this theory. To implode a building you do indeed have to set the charges, very precisely, and set them off in a strict order, besides. The professor, even, doesn't assume there was anything random about the charges. He sees them as planted, deliberately, to bring the structures down. He does not say so in this article, but elsewhere on the web, among other such theorists, the controlling triggers (one uses computers to trigger the charges, in a demolition of this kind) were supposedly in the command post thing that the Mayor's office had in building seven. Then they pulled building seven, and there was a great rush to remove and destroy as much metal as possible, before anyone could investigate, blah, blah blah.

Other buildings, even other skyscrapers, have been struck by aircraft before, and they remained standing. Other skyscrapers have sustained fires, for much longer periods of time, and they remained standing. In fact, none of them with fires ever came down like this. edited to add: Except building seven of the WTC complex.

What makes the difference is, none of those fires began with an impact like this. Fireproofing is all very well, but the impact had to have compromised it. Failure of the fireproofing would then allow the metal to weaken, if there were enough fire. All that fuel would certainly give you enough fire. The weakening could cause one floor to collapse, the floors above with all their mass would then drop.

That would be enough of a big damn crunch to collapse another floor, and so on right down the whole building. The firemen and other witnesses reported an explosion, but the first of those collapses would make a good deal of sudden noise.

In other words, you have just said the same thing I did. (If you look at the videos of the collapse, there is nothing to show the detonation of implosion charges.)

Cant, I'm with you on this one, we're just saying the same things in a different way, as is Colleen. (We have the same training, we just voice it in a different way.)

Cat

 

[cantdog]

Yep. And Joe laid out the same scenario.

The descriptions look and sound different. Different minds seldom have the same texture. But we agree on every point, I think.

 

[Xelebes]

Cabt, thanks for posting, maybe you know something abou tthis?

I read somewhere, that new designes in earthuake prone zones had the floors built with a sort of cantalever design. With thick blocks of fairly dense concrete on alternating ends. the idea was this would leave dead space between the floors if they failed. It sounded reasonable, but besie the one article I never saw anything else abou tit.

The tree design. Basically it uses the principle of noting the slightly flexing spine of a tree, which is known for not being easily to knock over in an earthquake sans tsunami, allowing the building to sway a bit more than having to crumple as it would with four spines.

 

[cantdog]

Can you show us a picture or something? I did a bit of googling around, and never found anything like what Colleen was referring to.

 

[Xelebes]

Can you show us a picture or something? I did a bit of googling around, and never found anything like what Colleen was referring to.

I'll see what I can do. All I know is that there was a building in Vancouver that was designed in this manner.

 

[Somme]

The towers were undermined by voles.

aka 'devoleution'....<nods earnestly>

 

[CharleyH]

The only thing I know about invading other countires is this:

1) you can't do it without a popular backing

2) you can't have a popular backing without a catalyst.

 

[Pure]

Catalyst

Yes a catalyst secures popular backing. But does that mean it was directly engineered? Vast conspiracy etc.

As in the Pearl Harbor case, if you're in a dangerous situation, simply doing nothing, or doing nothing special, is going to give the other side a succession of opportunities.

The catalyst comes expeditiously, but it was not directly engineered.

Let me put a further twist to this, Charley. The Iraq war was planned and has to do with geopolitics and oil and lining certain folks pockets.

Far from attacking the source of terror, it does nothing to prevent domestic terror, and takes away the folks who might respond (the Guard). Further no other serious measures seem to be in place. (As shown by people's success in smuggling fake guns and grenades onto planes.) The US coastline is unguarded in many places, as is the US Mexican border.

So one can assume that another act is coming down the pike, and--since nothing preventive is being done-- that that is consistent with some folks' agenda.

===
Added: Today's NYTimes has a story somewhat supporting my position (that there is unpreparedness); perhaps even more than 'somewhat' since the report mentioned is a bipartisan and diplomatically worded criticism:

9/11 Panel Calls U.S. Response 'Disappointing'

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: December 5, 2005

The 9/11 Commission released its final report today, outlining an array of shortcomings in the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and calling overall progress "disappointing."


"We are safer, but we are not yet safe," said Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the commission charged with finding ways to prevent another terrorist attack and to investigate past intelligence failures. "That's simply not acceptable."

The commission, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, criticized the continued lack of intelligence sharing between government agencies; the lack of progress in curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to establish a uniform standard for treating detainees; and the distribution of Department of Homeland Security money based on politics rather than on potential risk.

In a statement, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the progress report issued by the commissioners today, showed that the Bush administration and Congress were "dangerously neglecting the defensive war on terror we should be fighting here at home."

"The report is a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," Mr. Schumer said.