Tall buildings do not topple like trees.

[longship]

When the structural integrity of a building fails it *cannot* and will not topple like a tree. Just about the *only* way it can fall is to collapse into its own footprint.

Try this experiment. Stack up some children's blocks on a table. Shake the table and observe how they fall. The stack never falls like a tree. Instead, the blocks fall down into a pile near the stack's orginal foot print. (You have to consider the lateral force of the shaking.)

A tall building is most stable in its upright position. It is carefully engineered for each floor to rest on the floor below it. Gravity keeps the building together as much as anything. The building was not designed to be able to withstand sheer forces (sideways) beyond a certain limit. Wind speeds, and here in California earthquakes, are the types of sheer forces architects must account for. A sheer force beyond a specific limit inherent in the building's design would result in catastrophic failure. But the building could never topple like a tree because the building would break apart before it could do that.

In the three collapsed buildings at the WTC this is precisely what happened. You can even see in the WTC 1 collapse how the top floors lean over at the beginning of the collapse. This failure in one corner of the building caused the weight of the upper floors to rest on the already weakened floors in the impact area. The additional stress at that point would precipitate catastrophic failure in the internal structural elements. Reinforced concrete pillors would disintegrate (which is exactly how such failures happen). As the floors from above fall down on the floor below it, the support elements on that floor disintegrate causing that floor in turn to collapse on the floor below it.

This happens very, very fast, even in a freefall timeframe because the energy stored in each already stressed support element is released explosively. Anybody who has ever done stress research in an engineering lab has seen this. It is violent and instantaneous. Once the collapse begins, there's no stopping it. The ever accumulating weight of the upper floors as the collapse proceeds makes the stress on each successive floor higher. Gravity takes over and the integrity of the structure becomes effectively *zero*. The result is a collapse which occurs in a free fall time frame.

No explosives are necessary. All you need is an wide-bodied airliner flying at better than 500 knots to slam into the building to sever support structures, start fires, and wait for the inevitable to happen. An alternative scenerio is to have two 110 story buildings collapse nearby casting tons of debris through the air at high speeds into the structure, weakening it and starting fires.


WTC 7 prior to collapse. Note severe damage from high speed debris.

A short building wouldn't be subject to the same kind of failures because it is likely that it would be more stable and be engineered to accept more lateral stresses without collapse. By virtue of their lack of height, it is unlikely that such stresses would ever accumulate enough for them to collapse.

This is why tall buildings *cannot* topple like trees.

[pox americana]

1. That picture looks fake.

And a steel-frame highrise is a lot more like a tree than like a stack of blocks.

Thanks for playing, though. :hi:

[longship]

3. Says who?

How do the steel frames hold the building together? The stress of the weight of the floors above a given point is transmitted through the floors below it to the ground by a system of structures. It is a carefully designed balance of gravity and stress. The building is designed to exist in this environment, not one where the stresses are horizontal. It's designed to hold together in a verticle gravitational field and *only* a verticle gravitational field.

The only structures that maintain integrity from lateral stresses are those required to hold the building together during high winds, earthquakes, etc. These are sheer forces, twisting forces, etc. which are significantly smaller than the gravitational force holding the building to the ground. The WTC was even designed to take an airline impact. (They considered the WW II era collision of a bomber with the Empire State Building as a starting model.)

If a building began to topple (like WTC 1 did when it collapsed) the lateral stresses would break the building apart. It would then collapse straight down from the point of break up. Watch the WTC 1 collapse and you can see this exact thing happen.

Anybody who claims that a tall building should topple like a tree doesn't know what they are talking about.

Tall buildings fall down, not over.

On edit: Pic is FAKE? No, but thanks for playing. It was taken from a police helo.

[pox americana]

4. I'm sure there's a grain of sense in there somewhere

but I can't find it. ;)

[longship]

5. No, just a lot of hard science.

I'll bet that ignorance is a bitch for you. I'm sorry for you.

[pox americana]

6. I think the term you're looking for is pseudoscience.

Faith-based physics, in other words.

[longship]

7. MIHOPpers.

This is how MIHOPpers act. Their arguments are invariably from the following categories:

Non-sequitors.
Post hoc ergo proptor hoc.
Argument from ignorance.
Argument from incredulity.
Straw men.

When they are challenged or questioned they attack the questioner, or they make ad hominem attacks. They have to do this because their beliefs are based on ideology and delusions, not facts. I've dealt with people just like them for years, the creationists--evolution deniers. Both MIHOPpers and creationists have the same exact characteristics, the same arguments, the same lack of education. (One must presume the latter from a lack of cohesive and logical argument on their part.) They are incapable of carrying on an intelligent dialog. Or, so it would seem.

Oh, and one more thing. They like to troll on the Internet.

pox americana--Screw yourself.

[pox americana]

8. Wake me up when you find some facts.

Nothing like a long nap. :)

[clovis29]

63. Thankyouthankyouthankyou

I have been searching in vain for "Post hoc ergo proptor hoc."

I kept getting "post factos" but I knew that it was "post hoc something."

It is a very important logical fallacy that many people fall into.

[petgoat]

64. "Post hoc ergo proptor hoc."

Right. For example: "After planes flew into the towers, the towers
fell into their footprints in a mass a puverized concrete and shredded
steel, and therefore the planes brought the towers down."

That kind of logical fallacy.

[AZCat]

65. There is, fortunately, more that links...

these two events (the planes flying into the towers and the towers collapsing) than temporal proximity.



On Edit: typo.

[spooked911]

67. But not much, really.

NIST certainly hasnot given a convincing case that the plane damage or fires were enough to cause global collapse.

[LARED]

68. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

A Post Hoc is a fallacy with the following form:

A occurs before B.
Therefore A is the cause of B.


Lets see we have two scenarios

Bombs were planted in the WTC and were there to ensure the impacts collapsed the towers.

Therefore the collapse of the towers were caused by bombs and the possibly the impacts

or

Large commercial aircraft impacted the buildings at a high rate of speed, causing extensive fires and damage to the structure.

Therefore the collapse was caused by the impacts.

Lets follow this up with some additional details.

1. We know aircraft impacted the building, caused fires, extensive structural damage.

2. There is no material evidence for bombs whatsoever.

3. There has not been a conclusive finding on exactly how the impacts cause a global collapse.

4. There has not been a conclusive finding on exactly how a global collapse would be implemented or look like if bombs were used.

5. There is no evidence bombs were required to ensure the collapse

6. There is no evidence a collapse was the goal of the attackers.


Part of the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy requires that there be insufficient evidence to actually warrant such a claim, so I would conclude that the bomb scenario is a post hoc logical fallacy while the plane caused global collapse strongly infers that the impacts caused the collapse and is not a logical fallacy. It might be false, but it is logical to conclude it is not. Whereas it is not logical to conclude bombs were used.

[Rich Hunt]

26. thanks

I really hadn't seen a picture of the WTC7 before collapse. It looks as if a huge chunk of the bottom of the building is missing. Is that what I'm seeing?

[TomClash]

60. The photo does look fake

and that does not look like the southwest corner of 7. 7 is next to 140 West street which was closer to 1 WTC than 7. Why didn't 140 West collapse?

[ROH]

2. Why didn't WTC7 topple towards the SW, the part that shows damage in...

the picture you have shown?

[longship]

10. Watch the WTC 1 collapse

If you watch the WTC 1 collapse, it begins by the top several floors, above the impact zone, tilting over towards one side. That's when the floors just below the impact zone begin to give way. From the film it is apparent that the floor sections in that zone collapsed on one side. The additional stress on the floors below that made them collapse, too, and the catastrophe was on it's way. The top section during that time stopped it's lean and proceeds to fall straight down with the rest of the building as the floors pancaked on one another. The end effect was that the building collapsed into its own footprint (or more or less so since the entire area for a block or two had significant flying debris from the collapse.) The whole process begins slowly but picks up speed very quickly as the whole building's integrity fails catastropically.

The damaged area to the corner of WTC 7 in the photo is about a third of the way up the building. I suspect that a similar thing happened in WTC 7 as happened in WTC 1. I have not seen a clear shot of WTC 7 collapse from that viewpoint and I suspect such a film does not exist given the hazards in that area after the two big towers collapsed. The shot in the pic was taken by a police coptor.

It's possible that the WTC 7 collapse took debris more towards that damaged corner than away from it, but since we have no film to show that, one would have to have looked at the debris field after the collapse. I'm sure that they did that. But there's no way to answer your question without that knowledge. The one sequence of the WTC 7 collapse I've seen was from the opposite viewpoint. I sure looks like it collapses mostly straight down. That's what the physics says should happen.

[hack89]

23. Read this .

start with page 31 then go back to the begining.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf

[JHB]

33. Also check pp. 14 and 19...

...if you're going to pay special attention to 31.

14 is a list of debris damage due to WTC1

19 is a scematic of damaged sections of the building. As you'd suspect, the side facing the WTC plaza took much heavier damage than the other sides did, despite claims circulated about "little significant damage".

[pauldp]

9. You mean like this?

&s=x11
or this?
&s=x11
or this?
&s=x11
or this?
&s=x11
or are these just anomalies?

[longship]

11. No, these are good examples.

But these are examples of 8-10 story buildings undergoing catastrophic failure. Yes, they do fall over, some of them like a tree. But the relative strength of a 10 story building is significantly more than a 47 story building or a 110 story building.

For the taller building a whole different type of design is used. The early skyscrapers used a stepped design where the base of the building is big and the building becomes smaller as height is increased. Modern skyscrapers do it a different way, and the WTC 1 and 2 did it in a brand new way, for its time. For the modern tall building, strength comes from structure instead of bulk. The idea is to pass the stress down to the foot of the building through structure. This gives the building more interior space. In the WTC 1 and 2, it was the unification of the outer shell combined with a rigid inner core. These were knit together by the floor panels. If any of those elements failed, the entire structure would likely fail, as we now know.

Tall buildings cannot fall over because they do not have the lateral strength to fall over. They would break apart before they could topple.

[pauldp]

12. this one is at least 16 stories

&s=x11

1/3 the height of WTC7. At what point do they stop toppling like a tree?

[longship]

13. Yes, and notice one thing about this pic.

The integrity of the building in this pic is quite a bit less than those of the shorter buildings in the other pics. In other words, in falling over the building has broken apart, more than in the shorter buildings. Extend that to a building which is not only three times the height, but also has different structural components which are necessary in very tall buildings.

The result is that the taller building *cannot* fall over without totally collapsing. Above a certain height, a building is no longer able to maintain its structural integrity when stressed laterally with sufficient force to topple it. The taller the building the less likely it is able to maintain its form when it fails.

Both the WTC 1 and 2 towers depended on the integrity of their outer walls, the inner core, *and* the floors between them. When any one of those elements failed, the collapse of the tower was a foregone conclusion. I'm not as familiar with WTC 7, but at 47 stories it would clearly not be stable if were to experience stresses high enough to "topple" it. It would fall apart... *down*. That's what happened.

[HamdenRice]

15. Both of you make good points, but ...

you are not really addressing Pauldp's point.

You are absolutely correct when you say that you would expect a tall building to collapse into its footprint because of gravity after a catastrophic failure.

But the pictures pauldp posted shows what happens when the failure is not symmetrical. In other words, if one side of the building fails and the other side doesn't then the failure on one side causes the building to at least in part topple to one side. The collapse of the south tower was a perfect example of this. Unlike the plane crash into north tower, the plane that hit south tower went in diagonally and came out the adjacent, rather than opposite side. When the south tower collapse, the upper portion toppled over before the entire structure failed and it collapsed mostly into its own footprint. But the upper portion of the south tower fell significantly to the south west.

Controlled demolition uses carefully timed explosives to cause all stuctural supports to fail simultaneously causing your correctly hypothesized collapse by gravity directly down into the buildings own footprint.

wtc7 is anomalous because it suffered relatively minor asymmetrical damage (compared to other catastrophically damaged buildings like 6 and the hotel), and yet collapsed entirely into its own footprint.

[longship]

17. There was widespread damage to WTC 7

You missed the point of my post(s). This is a very tall building. The only way it could collapse is into its own footprint. This, in spite of your special pleading that it should have leaned over or collapse asymmetrically. The damage to WTC 1 was also asymmetrical and it also collapsed straight down. Once the building failed at any level, the rest of the building would fall *down* and break apart.

WTC 7 collapse is not anomalous.

I am very uncomfortable with the conjecture that a team of demo experts planted explosions in a building in which thousands of every day people worked without being noticed by somebody. The conjecture falls on its face on so many bases.

With all the damage and fires it is unlikely that such carefully planted demo charges would survive the conflagration. Under the conditions in WTC 7 on 9/11 and 9/12 it is likely that the collapse would no longer be "controlled". You end up being right back where you started. So even if you presume demo charges, you have an uncontrolled collapse of a building into its own footprint. Under these conditions Occam's razor demands that you eliminate the demo charges as being unnecessary. There is zero evidence for their existence beyond some wide-eyed conjecture and a lot of special pleading.

Sorry, my friend, I do not buy it. This is all explainable without demolition.

It's just "inconceivable".

[Kevin Fenton]

18. The real reason

First of all, tall buildings can fall sideways - you just have to place explosives asymetrically at the base:

This was actually what the 1993 WTC bombers were trying to do.

"I am very uncomfortable with the conjecture that a team of demo experts planted explosions in a building in which thousands of every day people worked without being noticed by somebody."
That's the real reason you don't believe the WTC was brought down by explosives, isn't it?

But how could the authorities be sure that there wouldn't be a repeat of the 1993 bombing (the bombers promised several times they would try again) and that the bombers would not be successful this time?

[longship]

19. Not a valid comparison.

Are you really arguing that a smokestack is the same thing as a large 47 story building???? A smokestack can fall like a tree because it *is* like a tree! And very unlike a 47 story building.

Concerning the conjecture that terrorists bombed WTC 7, I imagine that if there was information to pin WTC 7 on terrorists that it would serve this administration very well. This is just another conjecture without any basis. When one investigates something you don't start with a conjecture and search for facts to support it. That's mistake number one for some of the MIHOP crowd.

I see little to support the MIHOP conjectures. And even you have to admit that some of them are pretty far out. E.G., holographic airliners, missiles instead of airliners, etc.

Granted, I am a skeptic. In some cases skepticism serves one very well. The fact is that I do not know precisely why WTC 7 fell. I can only look at the facts we have and trust that the independent research is probably near the mark. It certainly fits with what I know of physics and engineering (where I have a degree). The MIHOP conjectures do *not* fit with what I know. Many of the conjectures are counter to facts. Therefore I must dismiss them as interesting but false.

My problems with the "controlled demolition" conjecture is threefold.

1. No one was observed setting explosives. This, in a building that had thousands of people in it. If the conjecture is true there would be much activity to plant explosive throughout the building.

2. In a controlled collapse the building is weakened by removing or disabling certain important support structures. This certainly would be observed by the thousands of people who worked in WTC 7.

3. This is the most important reason. Controlled demolition is not necessary. The damage to the building by the nearby collapse of the two towers is documented. To posit a controlled demolition is to deny the damage we know happened. Furthermore, many who are making these claims are dishonest. I see many use pictures of the other side of the building (away from the towers) as their evidence that the building was lightly damaged. In these matters I must apply Occam's Razor. "Controlled demolition" is an unnecessary multiplication of entities.

That's just my way. Others may have differing opinions. But that doesn't make these conjectures correct, especially when they are counter to so many known facts.

BTW, thanks for the good conversation. Many MIHOPpers do not practice common decency in these discussions. I applaud your rational arguments.

[Kevin Fenton]

20. Comparison, etc.

"Are you really arguing that a smokestack is the same thing as a large 47 story building????"
In this sense yes. If you place explosives asymetrically at the bottom of a 47-storey building you can make it go over on its side. That's all I mean.

"Concerning the conjecture that terrorists bombed WTC 7, I imagine that if there was information to pin WTC 7 on terrorists that it would serve this administration very well. This is just another conjecture without any basis. When one investigates something you don't start with a conjecture and search for facts to support it. That's mistake number one for some of the MIHOP crowd."
I'm not suggesting terrorists bombed WTC 7. I'm suggesting it was bombed. I don't know by who. If the FDNY decided it was too risky to fight the fire and OKed the demolition after their experience that day, that's fine by me. I just think they should say.

"I see little to support the MIHOP conjectures. And even you have to admit that some of them are pretty far out. E.G., holographic airliners, missiles instead of airliners, etc."
I'm not a MIHOPer, not a LIHOPer. I don't believe in holograms, missiles or anything like that.

"I can only look at the facts we have and trust that the independent research is probably near the mark."
To what independent research are you referring?

(1) "No one was observed setting explosives. This, in a building that had thousands of people in it. If the conjecture is true there would be much activity to plant explosive throughout the building."
There was a major refit after the 1993 bombing. Lots of the core columns were accessible from the elevator shafts. Most of the "squibs" come out of mechanical floors. There were dozens of maintenance men in the towers every day, who would notice a couple more?

(2) "In a controlled collapse the building is weakened by removing or disabling certain important support structures. This certainly would be observed by the thousands of people who worked in WTC 7."
If they had not been evacuated several hours before the controlled collapse, I'm sure they would have noticed it. However, they were all at home (or wherever) at the time of the collapse, so they didn't notice the removing or disabling of certain important support structures.

(3) "This is the most important reason. Controlled demolition is not necessary. The damage to the building by the nearby collapse of the two towers is documented. To posit a controlled demolition is to deny the damage we know happened."
It is wrong to argue that, "The buildings were damaged, so they collapsed." The buildings could obviously sustain (and had sustained in the past) a certain amount of damage without collapsing. The damage to any of the three buildings is not enough to make them collapse - what can we see? Between 20 and 35 perimeter columns gone (out of a total of 236) and some fires on the outside of the floors? There's no evidence to support the claim lots of core columns were severed by the planes. There's no evidence to support the claim that the fires weakened the core columns enough to make the building collapse. There's no evidence to support the claim that fireproofing was stripped from 140,000 square feet of the towers and 82 of the 94 core columns (this is what NIST claims in its report). Indeed, all these three claims are highly improbable - how can the fireproofing have been stripped from the south side of the WTC 1? How can United 175, which disintegrated on impacting the perimeter wall, have severed 10 core columns? How can the rubble that hit WTC 7 have stripped it of its fireproofing? The three buildings were obviously weakened by the impacts and fire, but I can't see that it's anywhere near enough to make them collapse.

[longship]

22. Wow. Lots of info here.

If you try to topple a big building like that smokestack it will collapse into its own footprint. There may be an asymmetrical debris pile, but it will not fall over.

Concerning the fire dept demolition, that's the most reasonable conjecture I've heard. I could buy into that one. I'm not sure it is necessary.

There was research on the collapses conducted by academics. I can't remember by whom, but it was reported in depth on PBS and Nat'l Geographic channels. Maybe you saw those? I'm sure that they will repeat them.

What people are calling "squibs" could easily be support members failing catastrophically. I've seen this happen in the lab. It releases a whole lotta energy in a split second. In any collapse you will see precisely this kind of thing. There is absolutely no reason to presume that they are "squibs" since this kind of activity is an expected occurance in a collapse like this.

I have no answer to your maintenance people facts. But that also doesn't imply that explosives were planted. We still have no evidence that explosives existed. So the logical conclusion is that their existence is highly speculative.

If the collapse was deliberate, I can agree that they could have done this on 9/11 and 9/12 before hand. But I see two problems with this. First, there's no reason why they wouldn't have announced this ahead of time. Maybe they did and in the chaos it got missed. Or, maybe in the chaos they forgot to announce it. Second, the workers in the area were pretty frantically still trying to find survivors in the tower collapses. I don't think anybody had resources to devote to engineer the collapse of WTC 7. The media *did* say that WTC 7 was in danger of collapse.

The fact that WTC 7 collapsed is a good indication that it was severely damaged. The engineers on the site were even predicting it. Are you saying that these people are also in on some kind of conspiracy? After all, these were firemen, independant engineers, and people who just happened to appear on the scene to help out. Many experts appeared out of no where to help out. I cannot accept that they were magically swept up into a conspiracy to lie about something like this. This, above all, is what strains credulity beyond reason.

As for the collapses of the other two buildings, you should watch either the PBS or Nat'l Geo specials on this topic. The collapse is very clearly described, in detail. It answers many of the very questions you are asking.

Are you aware of the energy dissipated by an over 500 knot collision of a large airliner with a building? Just the mechanical energy alone is huge. Add the ignition of tons of jet fuel and you've got yourself one helluva shock wave, well able to crush reinforced concrete. Calculate the energy of a collision of a loaded and fully fueled jet liner of the type that collided. Take mass (kg), square the velocity (meters/sec), multiply them together and divide by two. That's the energy. Trust me, it's huge. Then, add a fudge factor for the ignition of an appropriately sized mixture of atomized kerosene and air. Believe me, you've got yourself one helluva explosion.

The collapse of two 110 story buildings also releases a huge amount of energy. The ground nearby must have shook like a major earthquake. The shock wave would be supersonic as would be significant debris. Buildings would be simultaneously ripped open and internal structures crushed. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near the area. Almost everybody who was died.

People who claim that these actions weren't enough to collapse a building just don't understand the level of catastrophe that this was. They "misunderestimate" the energy released by both the collisions and the tower collapse. The Oklahoma City bomb was small peanuts compared to this.

[Kevin Fenton]

25. National Geographic, etc.

"If you try to topple a big building like that smokestack it will collapse into its own footprint. There may be an asymmetrical debris pile, but it will not fall over."
The Twin Towers did not collapse into their own footprint - there was significant debris outside the footprint. 7 did collapse neatly into its own footprint. Surely, you can see there's a difference here. The "collapse like a tree" issue is fairly irrelevant for the Twin Towers, because they weren't hit at the bottom.

"Concerning the fire dept demolition, that's the most reasonable conjecture I've heard. I could buy into that one. I'm not sure it is necessary."
The building's owner, Larry Silverstein, 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."
http://www.wtc7.net/pullit.html

"There was research on the collapses conducted by academics. I can't remember by whom, but it was reported in depth on PBS and Nat'l Geographic channels. Maybe you saw those? I'm sure that they will repeat them."
Perhaps one of the programmes you're referring to is this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html
I wouldn't really call it research, he's just offering his opinion.
He makes a few mistakes, for example he says "fire covered the whole floor within a few seconds." It didn't, the photos and videos show this clearly. In fact, fire never covered any whole floor of the South Tower.

"What people are calling "squibs" could easily be support members failing catastrophically."
They couldn't, because they are too far from the collapse zone (or in one case above it). This is a picture of a "squib" during the collapse:


Here's a picture of a "squib" resulting from an explosion:

Similar, aren't they?

(1) "First, there's no reason why they wouldn't have announced this ahead of time."
It was illegal, so they didn't announce it.
(2) "I don't think anybody had resources to devote to engineer the collapse of WTC 7. The media *did* say that WTC 7 was in danger of collapse."
WTC 7 was demolished precisely because people thought there was a danger of collapse. If there hadn't been a perceived (in my view this perception was incorrect, but I can see why they might not have been thinking straight) danger of collapse, then they wouldn't have demolished it. It had to be done then because there was a perceived danger of collapse and a "natural" collapse could have done lots of damage.

"The fact that WTC 7 collapsed is a good indication that it was severely damaged."
It's not. I can turn that around: the fact that the damage wasn't enough is a good indication that the building was brought down with explosives.
"The engineers on the site were even predicting it."
They had seen the Twin Towers fall due to damage they were then unable to quantify, so they figured it would be best to err on the side of caution and say WTC 7 might collapse.
"Are you saying that these people are also in on some kind of conspiracy?"
No, they're mistaken. The building collapsed, they didn't see the squibs, they didn't think much about it. No big deal.
"After all, these were firemen, independant engineers, and people who just happened to appear on the scene to help out."
Lots of the firemen thought there were bombs in the Twin Towers. Ground zero was a big area, it would hardly be difficult for a group of people to go into the empty WTC 7 unnoticed, plant the explosives and leave.

"Are you aware of the energy dissipated by an over 500 knot collision of a large airliner with a building?"
Neither plane was travelling at 500 knots.
"Just the mechanical energy alone is huge."
The towers swayed less on impact that they usually did in the wind.
"Add the ignition of tons of jet fuel and you've got yourself one helluva shock wave, well able to crush reinforced concrete."
What reinforced concrete?
"Calculate the energy of a collision of a loaded and fully fueled jet liner of the type that collided."
The fuel tanks were over half empty.
"Take mass (kg), square the velocity (meters/sec), multiply them together and divide by two. That's the energy. Trust me, it's huge."
How could I put this? most of the energy was absorbed by the perimeter wall, there just wasn't that much "left" when the plane (or half the plane) got to the core. It's not enough to sever lots of core columns.
"Then, add a fudge factor for the ignition of an appropriately sized mixture of atomized kerosene and air. Believe me, you've got yourself one helluva explosion."
Some of the jet fuel (almost a third in the case of the South Tower) exploded outside the towers and this part did not damage them. The jet fuel explosion couldn't sever the core columns - it wasn't fast enough.

"The ground nearby must have shook like a major earthquake."
Link to article discussing seismic spikes:
http://www.911review.com/errors/wtc/seismic.html
"The shock wave would be supersonic as would be significant debris. Buildings would be simultaneously ripped open and internal structures crushed."
Yet only one building outside the WTC block collapsed - WTC 7.
"You wouldn't want to be anywhere near the area. Almost everybody who was died."
Actually, they didn't. Some people actually inside the towers survived the collapse.

[killtown]

21. Um, what if the demo team

Um what if the demo team came in at nights? A lot fewer than "thousands" of people would have even noticed them.

I talked to someone who worked at the WTC. They said they see construction people so much that they don't even really notice them after a while.

Just because you can't fathom how a demo team could pull it off doesn't mean it can't happen.

BTW, the WTC 7 came perfectly straight down and imploded in it's center. If it's SW corner's damage was a big contributer of the 7's collapse, you would have seen the SW side of the building drop first.

What you saw was the entire building fall down in perfect symmetry with the middle going down first which in indicative of it's middle supports being compromised first, then it's remaining supports all being compromised at the same time (ie an implosion). Fire doesn't do that.

[hack89]

24. The middle did not collapse first..

take a look at page 31 - it clearly show the eastern most quarter falling first. Further more, it is clear that if it was controlled demo it was a non-standard method - why cleave off one end of the building with a single verticle line of explosives and then let the rest of the building fall in a haphazard manner. You would have to show me that this particular method is a common one for controlled demolition.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf

[killtown]

27. East? I thought it was the SW?

First off, it's only the east penthouse that sinks on the eastern side and then the west penthouse sinks before the entire buildings drops at the same time. The insides of the building sink first before the outside which is indicative of a controlled demo.

Second, why did the east side collapse first instead of the heavily damaged SW corner? Shouldn't the 7 started to fall towards it's SW corner?

All the firemen and rescuers around the 7 were told it was going to come down by their superiors. Remember, it was a superior that Silverstein gave the "pull it" order too.

Plus, what's the odds fire dropped a building in it's own footprint when it take demo crews great precision to do that? If buildings automatically drop in their own footprints, why don't demo crews just set some fires and save some money?

[hack89]

28. Did you read the NIST report?

1. It clearly shows a vertical failure under the east penthouse before a global collapse - what about that vertical line of "squibs" that so many on this board swear they see.

2. The report clearly describes a potential mechanism for the east side collapsing first - I eagerly await your technical comments on how this is impossible. As to why the SW corner did not fall first, well lets think about it - all that damage would serve to redistribute the weight of the building to the remaining support columns. Apply enough heat to an overloaded column and it will collapse. The point is that particular overloaded column could be anywhere in the building. Also keep in mind the unique cantilevered design of the building that the report highlights so well.

The reason the fire fighters were told it would collapse is because they had been monitoring a bulge for hours:

Deputy Chief Peter Hayden:

but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayd ...

Fire did not drop the building straight down - weight and gravity did. Regardless of what initiated the collapse once it started to fall there was only one way it could fall. Your comment about demo crews using fires instead of explosives is ridiculous - what city is going to set a large building on fire deliberately with the risk of the fire spreading, environmental damage plus closing down several city blocks for days?

[killtown]

31. Monitored the bulges in their pants???

Yes, I read the government's side of the story.

they demo'd the internal east-side of 7 first, then demo'd the center all the way over to the west, then they demo'd all the outside bottom supports and then the whole thing came down. you demo the internal part of a building first so it creates a vacuum to help bring it down and since the insides are demo'd first, the outside starts to fall inward and that's how it neatly falls on it's own footprint.



It's also common to demo a certain side first depending on the structure and depending on where and how they want it to fall.

If the SW side contributed to it's collapse, the building would have leaned in that direction when it fell. Not neccessarily toppled over in that direct, but definitely leaned towards it.

Oh yeah, the "bulge". Show me one pic of this "bulge" they were "monitoring".

Objects fall in the path of least resistance.

My fire comments highlights the absurdity of your "building's do not topple over like trees, oh wait, someone just showed me pics of buildings fallen over like trees, so now I'll change that to 'tall building's' do not fall over like trees" comment. If "tall" buildings only fall straight down, then why do demo crews use so much time, effort, and money to make a tall building do what you say it will naturally do when it collapses?

[spooked911]

43. Indeed. Anyone wanna tackle that?

"If "tall" buildings only fall straight down, then why do demo crews use so much time, effort, and money to make a tall building do what you say it will naturally do when it collapses?"

[hack89]

45. How else do you initiate the collapse in a safe and timely manner?

You are confused as to the role of the explosives. My point is no matter how initiated, once the collapse starts there was only one way to fall.


They also have liability issues that require a high degree care.

[spooked911]

46. So, you could randomly start fires and expect the building to collapse

like that?

I don't quite get you're point.

Obviously, you use explosives to start the collapse, but you seem to imply that they can be placed quite randomly, and set off in a random sequence-- or even that you could just let fires rage throughout the building and then it will collapse.

I categorically reject the idea that there is only one way for a building to fall.

Let's say you're standing on a chair. There are small explosives set on the two front legs and they are detonated, removing the support of the front legs. Are you telling me that you will fall straight down?

And don't give me a line that a giant skyscraper will act differently. This is basic physics.

If you blow out the supporting columns on just one side of a building, it WILL topple over. NOT collapse straight down.

[hack89]

48. It will it topple over..

until the columns disintegrate then it would fall straight down. Those 47 story vertical columns would turn into 50 separate pieces of metal each falling independently of each other.

No it can't be random - for example if the WTC1 and 2 were hit higher up or if they were not hit by a plane then they would not have collapsed.It was was a combination of fire, damage and weight.

Buildings can fall different ways - we are talking about the WTC7 and what you see is explained perfectly by the failure of a main vertical support on the lower floors under the east penthouse. If another support have failed first it could have collapsed in a different manner, if for example, the failure occurred on a higher floor. But in this case, a column supporting a lot of weight failed and all that weight went straight down.

A chair is a homogeneous structure more analogous to a brick or cement building than a steel frame building. Now answer this for me: what if that chair was supporting a weight that was greater than the rear two legs could support. Wouldn't they collapse as soon as the front legs were removed? Wouldn't that chair topple momentarily before it collapsed straight down? Think about it.

[spooked911]

54. Oh for pete's sake. Let's try a different example.

Let's say flight 175 somehow managed to hit WTC2 right at ground level. And it hit again more to one side.

Remember how the top thirty stories of WTC2 started to tip over before the whole building collapsed? Now, imagine the whole 110 stories of WTC2 tipping like that.

Are you still telling me the building would collapse straight down?

As for this:
"Now answer this for me: what if that chair was supporting a weight that was greater than the rear two legs could support. Wouldn't they collapse as soon as the front legs were removed? Wouldn't that chair topple momentarily before it collapsed straight down? Think about it."

The simplest way for that chair to fall would be to tip over, without the rear legs collapsing-- if we assume the load on the chair was balnced evenly on all four legs. That is simple mechanics. Once the chair starts tipping, there is no reason for it to stop tipping and then collapse straight down.

[Rich Hunt]

51. erm

...a skyscraper weighs a hell of a lot more and is constructed differently.

You might fall over the back of the chair, I am assuming that the seat of the chair would fall straight down. But the 'construction' is completely different.

[Tim Howells]

32. Brilliant!! Thank you.

I was hoping that someone would post some
actual data on this thread. I'm sure that
the coverup artists will continue to ramble
on incoherently. I saw a wonderful presentation
by Jim Hoffman, and he showed a series of
pictures of building collapses due to structural
failure and then a series of controlled demolition.
No question what happened on September 11. It was
controlled demoltion, however horrible that may
be to contemplate. Thanks again.

Tim Howells

[Kevin Fenton]

14. Reinforced concrete pillars?

"You can even see in the WTC 1 collapse how the top floors lean over at the beginning of the collapse."
Link please.

"This failure in one corner of the building"
Corner? Are you sure it was the corner?

"Reinforced concrete pillors would disintegrate"
I suppose that, if the WTC had had any "reinforced concrete pillors" then they might have disintgrated. However, the consensus is that it did not, so why are you claiming it has?

"All you need is an wide-bodied airliner flying at better than 500 knots to slam into the building to sever support structures,"
But MIT, which analysed the planes' speed, said that neither of them were flying that fast. Link:
http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/PDFfiles/Chapter%20III%20Aircraft%20speed.pdf
The planes' severed about 30 perimeter columns in each tower - only about 11% of the total number of columns (there were 283 columns in each tower). Given that the structure was highly redundant, half of one side of the perimeter wall wouldn't make any difference to it. So why did they fall down?

[HughBeaumont]

16. Doesn't look like it's damaged enough to pull the steel core down.

There's no visible core after the collapse. If fire were the sole cause of this building to collapse and not explosion, wouldn't the thing either topple or break off in pieces, leaving some of the burnt hulk behind? There should have been some CORE left behind - that's my issue. There's no damned core and the top of the building is intact the whole way down. Fire alone doesn't disintegrate a core; you'd have to get it abysmally hot for it to do so.

[Henny Penny]

29. Hillarious!

No need for anyone to emply those damned expensive demolition experts like Kingstar then....

[rman]

30. Sure that's why controlled demolition requires so much effort.

Why don't those demo teams just damage a corner of the building and watch the whole thing collapse into it's own footprint?
Why the days of preparation and careful placing of 100's of demo charges?

[nebula]

34. The surprising thing about the way the towers fell...

is not that they fell straight down, but the fact that they fell straight down so quickly. If indeed the floors had pancaked on top of one another as the official version tells us, the floors of the towers would have taken much longer to reach the earth due to the resistance encountered and time it takes for each floor to pancake one at a time on top of each other, creating a chain reaction.

But in reality, that isn't what happened. A simple time test using a stopwatch proves the pancake theory to be a crock.

The elapsed time of the buildings' total collapse is much more consistent to that of a controlled demolition, as all floors were in simultaneous freefall (consistent with a controlled demolition), not pancaking one at a time like dominoes!

This is one of the main ideas and explanation put forth by the BYU professor Steven Jones, and it makes complete sense. In other words, the official version is complete BS!


Prof. Jones' explanation in layterms is a must-read:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=447625

[piobair]

35. free fall

Your analysis of the relative time it took for the towers to fall vs CD doesn't hold up. In CD, charges are placed to blow out supporting structural members and then gravity is allowed to do the rest. Once the collapse starts, for whatever reason you choose, the time it takes for the collapse to be completed is dependent on gravity. Also, CD charges are usually placed near the bottom of the structure to allow the most weight to come to bear. Any analysis of the tower collapse shows them starting to collapse where the planes impacted.

[Kevin Fenton]

36. CD

"Once the collapse starts, for whatever reason you choose, the time it takes for the collapse to be completed is dependent on gravity."
No it isn't. In CD it is dependent on gravity. In a "natural" collapse it is dependent on gravity and resistance from lower floors.

"Also, CD charges are usually placed near the bottom of the structure to allow the most weight to come to bear."
There is no actual reason why the bombers could not have set off the higher charges first. Have you considered the possibility that they might have been cunning enough to try to disguise their crime?

"Any analysis of the tower collapse shows them starting to collapse where the planes impacted."
But NIST claims the south side of the North Tower collapsed first, not the north side, where the plane impacted.

[spooked911]

37. This is nonsense. Tall buildings can topple over like a tree with the

right type of damage.

I have a picture I have been meaning to scan and post here of some Chinese demolition, where they leveled a neighborhood of highrises. Almost every tower fell down on its side. It's quite funny actually, to see these towers lying on their side-- but it shows you're are simply wrong.

In fact, if WTC7 was truly damaged like that, it would fall towards that damaged side-- because that is where there was no resistance.

This picture, if we assume it is real, simply does not show why WTC7 came straight down.

The fact is, WTC7 was about the most beautifully controlled demolition I've ever seen. There is no fucking way that it was a natural collapse.

[hack89]

38. No, you are wrong

I bet when you look at those Chinese buildings, you will see that they are brick or concrete instead of steel framed. This is the crux of the matter - the vertical support elements of a steel framed building are not one continuous piece of steel - they are made up of many smaller steel beams joined end-to-end. These joints are not flexible - they can withstand loads well as long as they are vertical and the forces travel down through the entire column but when the column is tilted the weight acts to shear each joint and the column comes apart. When this happens the building comes straight down due to gravity as the weight of the building is so much greater than any horizontal force acting on it.

WTC 7 was not a single solid mass like a brick or concrete wall - those I can easily see falling over like a tree. WTC 7 was more like a building made of matchsticks - 90% open space, millions of small pieces with millions of joints combined into a relatively inflexible structure that would disintegrate when large forces were applied to those joints in a manner they were not designed to withstand. Due to the massive weight involved and the lack of any significant lateral forces, the building would collapse straight down.

[spooked911]

41. how high can you build a tower with just brick and/or concrete?

These were high-rise apartment buildings. It is hard to believe they didn't have inner steel frames.


Look, it simply makes no sense that WTC7 fell straight down if it had a gaping hole in one corner. Besides you are ignoring the sound of the demolition charges going off that were heard are recorded (see 911eyewitness DVD), plus the fact that the building fell at free-fall speed.


But we've gone over this ad nauseam. You are not going to be convinced by anything except the planners admitting what they did, which even then you might say they were making it up. :)

[hack89]

44. Again you are wrong...

The brick or cement encasing the steel completely alters how load forces are distributed - much of the integrity of the building comes from the brick and cement. There is no comparison.

If you understood gravity and the weight involved then it would make absolute sense that it fell straight done - once the support is gone what possible force is available to make all that weight move sideways?
Construct a simple vector diagram of the forces involved and it becomes obvious that straight down is the only way it would fall.

There are many things in a building that explode in fires - transformers, high pressure receivers for HVAC equipment, fuel tanks, etc - you believing with all your might that it was high explosives does not make it true.

Why would they use such non-standard method of demolition? Why cleave off one fourth of the building with a vertical line of charges(remember the "squibs"?) and let the rest of the building collapse in a haphazard manner. Can you show that this method is used in building demolition?

I accept the NIST report - when you can explain your position using the same level of technical detail then I will take you seriously. Superficial google engineering is not convincing to me and if you were honest you would admit that a major problem with the CT position is that you cannot produce a comprehensive, technically literate defense of your views.

[spooked911]

47. Since when are you an engineer???? Puh-lease.

I would appreciate a "comprehensive, technically literate defense" of how the upper one-third of WTC2 started to fall off the side of the building, with a vector projection clearly off to the side of the building, and then in a matter of seconds it disappeared into a cloud of dust.

Please don't give me the line that buildings aren't constructed to hold together at a tilted angle, and therefore the huge chunk of building simply disintegrated. That's bull, and you know it.

Buildings and parts of building can fall off at an angle. There is nothing magical about a building falling irregularly. Making a building fall straight down is another matter entirely.

Have you ever hear the phrase "path of least resistance"?

[hack89]

57. Give me a break!

When that one third of the building had completely broken free what were the forces acting on it? Hint: which direction does gravity work? The force vector straight down was orders of magnitude greater than any horizontal force.

You need to get this image of skyscraper falling like a tree out of your head - its screwing up your thought process. The WTC was a lattice work of millions of steel beams joined into a inflexible structure. It doesn't bend - it breaks into pieces. Consider this simple fact - the center of the building had to move 100 feet before it moved beyond the footprint of the building. Do you really believe that all those vertical columns would bend that far without all the joints failing? And once those joints fail what is supporting all the weight of the building? And once all that weight is unsupported which way is gravity going to take it?

Perhaps we are missing each others point - if the WTC "toppled" over is it your contention that the top of the building would fall some 1000 feet from the base? If not, how far?

[spooked911]

66. The top of wtc2 should have fallen just to the side of the building,

right next to the side, probably hitting parts of the structure as it fell-- certainly not 1000 feet away. Also I think the top of wtc2 should have stayed more intact as it fell and not collapsed into dust as it fell.

[kerry_s]

39. They weren't 'just' buildings

WTC 1,2,3 weren't just 'buildings' which can easily fell down.
They were STEEL skycrapers and through all history non of such type of building fell down from fire damage.

The Towers didn't collapse, they rather explode making huge rain of debris in all way.

WTC suffered from fire in 70's an did not collapse.

Madrid Plaza Building stood in enormous fire more than 20 hours and did not collapse...

PS. I have a question, how to paste images to the posts?

[kerry_s]

40. a missing picture

[spooked911]

42. welcome to DU!

I see you learn quickly!

[nebula]

49. I think a building as large as the TTs can only fall at a 90 degree angle

(as in straght down) give or take a few degrees.

but it still doesn't explain the freefall speed in which they collapsed (consistent with a CD).

From my understanding, a collapse caused by pancaking floors would not have fell to the earth so rapidly as they did on Sept. 11. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Rich Hunt]

50. where does this understanding come from?

I'm curious as to the source of this 'understanding'.

[nebula]

52. "where does this understanding come from?"

Prof. Steven Jones of BYU, who has a background in physics and architecture.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=447625

[Rich Hunt]

53. sorry

But for every 'Professor Jones', there are dozens who would say otherwise.

Besides, I don't see evidence of Steven Jones' background 'in architecture'. His web page at

http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/

"Metal-catalyzed fusion, Archaeometry, Solar energy"

"Archaeometry" is not architecture. It has nothing to do with it. -I- have a background in architecture. So why did you bring it into the discussion?

Regardless, I simply do not see how the WTC could have been wired with explosives that would remain undetected and intact until they were 'needed'. What's more, they would not have been necessary to do the damage. You don't need a testimonial from a single 'expert' to be skeptical of this theory. On the one hand, we have hijackers who use boxcutters and knives, on the other hand, we have mega-skyscrapers wired with explosives. Seems to me there is a disconnect in modus operandi here!

The lesson here is that independent thought does not mean trotting out one source who has some 'credentials' after his name.

Testimonials:

Testimonials are another of the seven main forms of propaganda identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. Testimonials are quotations or endorsements, in or out of context, which attempt to connect a famous or respectable person with a product or item. Testimonials are very closely connected to the transfer technique, in that an attempt is made to connect an agreeable person to another item. Testimonials are often used in advertising and political campaigns. When coming across testimonials, the subject should consider the merits of the item or proposal independently of the person of organization giving the testimonial.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm

"Rotten Tomatoes", eh? I had some rotten avocados once. Seems to me that if you wanted to cite Prof. Jones, you'd go directly to his paper at:

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

[nebula]

55. Sorry, but...

you dont need a degree in physics or architecture

to understand simple 10th grade level science.

Cuase thats all it takes to debunk the government's ridiculous story of what happened to the WTC on Sept. 11th.

[theSaiGirl]

56. 9/11 "physics" confirms the dumbing-down of America

The key thing to understand here, is that the actual "events" (representation of events in media broadcast video and audio), such as buildings getting hit and then toppling - or something slamming into the half-vacant wing of a Pentagon sitting securely under the air defense grid over DC (and region) generously provided by NORAD and funded with your tax subsidies....
none of the details of the actual pyro-technic ops, require all that many people.

It's the people required to enable and secure the psy-op as "official" belief, the thousands who saw controlled demolition, right before their very eyes, three times in one day.
Their willingness to comply with that fundamental Big Lie, shows us how far the American "Reichstag Fire" syndrome has gone.

Witness Tucker Carlson, openly ridiculing, condescending and dissing a fully credentialed (magnum cum laude) physics guru from BYU - so that the eloquent account in Plato's dialogue, where Thrysamachus wins the wins the argument through clever and manipulative use of rhetoric and imagery - thus proving that "truth" can be altered, erased or manufactured by mass compliance.
And, in like manner, Achibiades proceeded to sell Athens on a suicidal democratic crusade of conquest, plunging all the Greek city-states into self-destructive madness... by the carefully crafted technology of rhetoric, public relations, information warfare (oracle of Apollo ad Delphi) and just plain lies.

But we lack even the class of the ancient Athenians.

9/11 is more on the order of a late Roman spectacle.
Complete with bread, circuses, scapegoats and lies.

The most basic and elementary premises of physics and mechanics, are spat on and mocked over corporate media (MSNBC - whatever audience remnant remains to it).
Very post-modernist, I would say.
But, at the same time, cheap and common as Latin American banana republics with comic-opera theatrics.

That's exactly how 9/11 - the PSY-OP, the great pyro-technic video performance, actually looks, against a third-rate half-worked Hollywood B-grade script: 19 crazy Arab Muslims with box cutters, masterminded by a dialysis patient from a cave in lower Afghanistan).

The real tragedy here, is not the mass fascist compliance of the American media drones with the Big Lie of 9/11 (and the waves of little lies); it's the fact that such compliance would not be so forthcoming, were it not for the sad and woeful state of American's post-literate populace - stripped naked before the eyes of the civilized world ... as a dumbed-down herd, most of whom probably slept thru their Jr. High School science classes, and then barely slid thru High School Chemistry and Physics.
That's how basic 9/11 is.
And that's why the perps could afford to be so sloppy in actual execution of the "attacks".

Because their greatest odds staked that a willful and compliant population of firemen, cops, engineers, union construction workers - all would democratically buy into the transparent absurdity of "jet fuel fires" causing skyscrapers of steel and concrete to collapse and disintegrate into their own perfectly symmetric footprints, with hot pools of molten steel and tons concrete rendered utter dust (according to Prof. Jones of BYU) ..... transparently ridiculous.

A really clever 9/11 would have had the Towers going down almost concurrent with the "hits" or at least closer in time, instead of sitting there and smoldering before imploding, so much, much later.
Likewise with WTC7 which, for reasons yet to be determined, they failed to level until 5:30 that evening.
Which looks like it couldn't possibly have been part of the original plan. But shows how Capone-sloppy they could afford to be when it came to actual EXECUTION of the op.

It is more empirical validation that 9/11 ultimate significance transcends the "Reichstag Fire", in scale and scope, because it truly seeks to capture the mind and culture of whole populations, which have already been drugged, disciplined or otherwise pacified to play the now boringly redundant role of "good Germans", in this whole tawdry, embarrassing episode.

More than the disastrous and sloppily-executed invasion and occupation of Iraq; more than the rotting hulk of economy and infrastructure, more than the tragic decay of our public education system, the way we are no being laughed at by much of the civilized world, who have pretty much figured out that 9/11 was an inside job of the MIHOP variety...9/11 now emerges as the historical Rosetta Stone of our time. Much like the earlier Kennedy assassination.

It leaves us all with the shame of insulted intelligence and the stale taste of mass intellectual mediocrity in our mouths.

[Caesarmajestic]

58. Dude, they are showing you PICTURES of your incorrectness

Try this - and by the way the building you are talking about is WTC2, the South Tower - the one with no radio tower on top - the one that got hit 2nd - the one that got hit at 2/3 height.

Anyway, we all saw it. This building started to fall like a tree, which you say is impossible.

What I say is that this was 1/3 of a 500,000 ton building falling almost to a 20 degree list.

Then this motion magically stops, and we see that this peice stops falling through the path of least resistance and then STARTS FALLING THROUGH THE PATH OF MOST RESISTANCE (which was through it's own core)

Since this is a violation of Newton's 1st law of Inertia, that it would stop this falling like a tree, we have now proven whatever it is you are so scared of.

And so now it's you vs. Newton, fool. Got Physics?
--------------------------------------------------

It had a chance to fall through thin air, it WAS falling through thin air, but then chose to fall through the core of a steel framed building?

Dude go look at the pictures these people are showing you of some of the earthquake casualties. The small ones are NOT steel framed, they are steel reinforced. The one that is 1/3 as tall as the WTC MAY be steel framed.

It's been a long time since I researched this, but if I remember right there have been 103 incidents with steel framed buildings coming down. Most were demolitions, the rest were from earthquakes (and the pics linked here are pictures of a Taiwanese earthquake in the 70's). Then there are the three from 911. After that, only the Venezuala fire. This is probably Hugo Chavez telling George Bush that he knows what's up with fires bringing down tall buildings.

None from fire. Go get a Merck manual and look through the thresholds that steel goes through before it loses even 60% of it's load bearing strength. Because this would not have been enough, to lose 60% of it's strength.

You are not correct about this and so, as much as you love being a liberal and going against the grain, I think you will find that you are forgetting about a certain trump card that is left in Bush's pocket if you folks don't wake the fuck up.

Thanks for listening

Your welcome

[petgoat]

59. And for his next trick, he can show us all how an Airbus 380

is too big to fly. Once you get it going down the runway at takeoff
speed, you see, it can do nothing but continue forward at ground level
because there is no force big enough to divert it up into the air.

[LARED]

61. Dude - google "Storey Drift" n/t

[Grateful for Hope]

69. Well said. n/t

[mirandapriestly]

62. WTC 7 was 355 feet away from WTC 1, farther from 2

Why would there be this kind of damage and why didn't non WTC buildings collapse?

[berni_mccoy]

70. Wow, longship is a physicist and architect! I didn't know that?

Did you know the easiest way to knock a building down is to topple it, just like a tree. They don't do that sometimes because surrounding buildings need to be preserved. Look at the AMPLE photo evidence in this thread, and you'll realize you are speaking total nonsense.