Debunked: WTC Towers Fell in Their Own Footprints

Of course it is normal if the building has not been stripped to its bones beforehand. Where on earth would you expect the material to go? You think it would evaporate and disappear into thin air do you?

Sorry Oxy- you are just digging a deeper hole and exposing your..er...lack of knowledge...regarding typical building implosions.

Building implosions are designed so that the material is collapsed in on itself- creating as small a debris field as possible.

They do not have large parts of the facade of the building, the steel infrastructure ejected out in a massive EXplosion scattering debris for blocks.

Of course, you completely ignored the questions:

Can you show ANY controlled demolition that looks even remotely like this?

Can you show Any demolition that has material exploding up and outward?

If its normal you will be able to show similar examples.
 
Can you show ANY controlled demolition that looks even remotely like this?

Can you show Any demolition that has material exploding up and outward?

Its NOT normal for any controlled demo.

There's actually no material "exploding up" in the WTC. It all goes down and some of it also goes outwards.
 
And of course there ARE demolitions that look like the WTC collapse (albeit a lot smaller), but for some reason OXY says they do not:

 
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There's actually no material "exploding up" in the WTC. It all goes down and some of it also goes outwards.

I guess I can see that- its seems like some of the dust/smoke is going up and I assume some material was in that...and a few small pieces in the pics look to in an upward trajectory- but I see what you mean.

The point remains is that the behavior of the material in the collapse is counter to what is strived for in "normal" demolitions using explosives (aside from not toppling over)
 
I guess I can see that- its seems like some of the dust/smoke is going up and I assume some material was in that...and a few small pieces in the pics look to in an upward trajectory- but I see what you mean.

The point remains is that the behavior of the material in the collapse is counter to what is strived for in "normal" demolitions using explosives (aside from not toppling over)


Yes, it's not an implosion, which is what a normal demolition would be. It's also not bottom up, which is what normal demolition would be. It also lacked noise of explosives, and any evidence in the rubble of explosives. Collapse also started on the floors that were on fire, meaning there were no explosives on those floors.
 
Watch the actual collapse initiation. What does it look like is happening?



It's initially a partial collapse. The area above the impact point, and to the right collapses, at the floors that that damaged and/or are on fire. That collapse happens about half a second before the entire top of the building comes down. By the time the block is hitting undamaged floors, it's already dropped around 8 floors.
 
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Have the forces been calculated, ie, the weight of the section above the impact, how much force it would bring down to the area just below it, and the blow-out (initial explosion of material) associated with it?

Edit. is that a fall of two floors before the bottom line of fire?
 
I think the main problem is that we perceive buildings like the WTC as rigid structures, much like a jenga tower as Oxy referred to eariler. Skyscrapers are rigid, only as long as their structural elements remain in place. Once a few key pieces are gone, it's more like a house of cards falling down. Another thing to keep in mind is that gravity pulls straight down. There were no others forces pushing things sideways.
 
It is strange that people expect their common sense/logic experience of things at ground-level scales should apply to something that is on such a massive scale and far and beyond anything they have ever experienced in their daily life.
 
Yes, it's not an implosion, which is what a normal demolition would be.

I don't get where you say an 'implosion' is a 'normal demolition'. Implosions are specialist demolitions not 'normal'. Also 'implosions' require massive advance deconstruction and weakening and vacating an area of material to allow other material to 'go into' the space.

It's also not bottom up, which is what normal demolition would be.

Agreed but it is entirely possible to sequence downward explosions and how many and how big would they need to be?

Your view, AFAICS, is that they collapsed due to fire fatigue of the beams. 7 is put down to a single beam failing.

My view is, for them to fall so symetrically and totally, they would need to be aided by taking out some key support. I do not see that would require a large amount of explosives to help it on it's way.

Yes it was 'messy' compared to a demolition which goes well but they were all very 'surgical' for 3 random collapses especially considering the way the top was nearly falling off on 2 at one point and the beam in 7 was way off to the side. In fact, considering their size, they were cleaner than some failed demolitions.

I would only call it a 'partial collapse' if it stopped for a reasonable time, at least a few minutes. What I see is a continuation of the collapse.

It also lacked noise of explosives, and any evidence in the rubble of explosives. Collapse also started on the floors that were on fire, meaning there were no explosives on those floors.

Which is why some theorise about 'exotic substances'. Also there is no way to prove completely that the 'compression puffs' were not some form of explosion. You recognise yourself that accounts of explosions could be falling debris but appear not to consider it the other way round. Why one way only?
 
I think the main problem is that we perceive buildings like the WTC as rigid structures, much like a jenga tower as Oxy referred to eariler. Skyscrapers are rigid, only as long as their structural elements remain in place. Once a few key pieces are gone, it's more like a house of cards falling down. Another thing to keep in mind is that gravity pulls straight down. There were no others forces pushing things sideways.

Yes gravity only pulls down but 'the house of cards', when it falls never 'falls into a pack of cards', there are many forces at work and things will naturally spread out rather than funnel in.

Also the falling debris is hitting the solid building under it and will take the path of least resistance... around it. Imagine using a jetter pointing straight down on a solid object, it would take the path of least resistance but may also damage or erode the object it is hitting.
 
If you can get ANY demolition expert to 'collapse' a wtc like Genga pile in a controlled demolition, (not moving one piece at a time:)), directly into it's own footprint I will concede the point and publicly apologise.

How about that.

If you cannot, perhaps you would like to do the honourable thing :)

Reach your aim and claim your prize:



There's no airspace in a Jenga pile.
 
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It is strange that people expect their common sense/logic experience of things at ground-level scales should apply to something that is on such a massive scale and far and beyond anything they have ever experienced in their daily life.

I don't think it's really that strange. People are used to "scale models" being used of various things, and the vast majority of people simply don't have the experience of comparing physics at various scales, especially largely different scales. When people hear that an ant can carry 100x it's own weight, they just think "wow, ants are really strong", when really it should be "wow, ants are really small". If you scaled an ant up to human size, it would not be able to lift it's own limbs, and would just collapse and die. It's just not something people are familiar with, so it's not really strange that people don't get it.
 
Also there is no way to prove completely that the 'compression puffs' were not some form of explosion.

The weight and energy of the floors above the compression cloud could be estimated to at least rule out physical impossibility of it being caused by compression.
Although a 'compression cloud' does seem a fairly nebulous thing to calculate correctly.
 
Yes gravity only pulls down but 'the house of cards', when it falls never 'falls into a pack of cards', there are many forces at work and things will naturally spread out rather than funnel in.

Also the falling debris is hitting the solid building under it and will take the path of least resistance... around it. Imagine using a jetter pointing straight down on a solid object, it would take the path of least resistance but may also damage or erode the object it is hitting.

But, it isn't a 'solid' building. By that point, there are hundreds of tons of material impacting areas which weren't meant to support that much weight.
 
There's no airspace in a Jenga pile.

You are missing the point. That picture is to represent the 'result' of the tower collapsed in it's own footprint.

It would need building up first, with spaces in between to a greater height. Then to be imploded... leaving the nice neat pile in its own footprint.

I am simply demonstrating how impossible it would be... beyond physics but is it beyond Metabunk Metaphysics?

Steel falling and melting due to kinetic energy

Aluminium tubes cutting through solid steel.

Knives that cannot cut butter. Butter that cuts knives. Where does it end?

A single support column failing only on one side of a massive high rise office results in a perfectly symmetrical collapse of entire building. Albeit we are led to believe an asymetric internal collapse which no one has seen and no data is provided for, has previously taken place inside.

Concrete that is so soft it offers no resistance

It's all in a days work here at Metabunk
 
You are missing the point. That picture is to represent the 'result' of the tower collapsed in it's own footprint.

It would need building up first, with spaces in between to a greater height. Then to be imploded... leaving the nice neat pile in its own footprint.

I am simply demonstrating how impossible it would be... beyond physics but is it beyond Metabunk Metaphysics?

Steel falling and melting due to kinetic energy

Aluminium tubes cutting through solid steel.

Knives that cannot cut butter. Butter that cuts knives. Where does it end?

A single support column failing only on one side of a massive high rise office results in a perfectly symmetrical collapse of entire building. Albeit we are led to believe an asymetric internal collapse which no one has seen and no data is provided for, has previously taken place inside.

Concrete that is so soft it offers no resistance

It's all in a days work here at Metabunk

Your analogy with jenga still makes not sense.

Now you're throwing back all the previously debunked material, presenting it in the same simplistic, erroneous manner. I.e.: Aluminum tubes that cut through solid steel. You might as well be a creationist trumpeting "If we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys, ha ha?" over and over again at various points in a discussion. "Falling in its own footprint" is defined by you as a house of cards ending up back in the pack. "One single column falling and resulting in a perfectly symmetrical collapse."

As you say, all in a days work: the bunk flying over and over and around and around, and you have shown absolutely no proof to support any of your "theories". And it will never end, because you will never stop JAQing off, there will always be something that looks fishy, does not look feasible, looks like something else.

Help me to understand what it is to you that is so troubling about the events of that day, and what exactly you think happened, in a nutshell.
 
"One single column falling and resulting in a perfectly symmetrical collapse."

As you say, all in a days work: the bunk flying over and over and around and around, and you have shown absolutely no proof to support any of your "theories".
You're quite right, there's absolutely no proof to support the above 'theory'. Only issue being its not Oxy's theory, it's what NIST pumped out in their computer 'recreation' of the events... which seems to rather directly suggest a single column collapse led to a long chain-reaction of internal failures that brought down the whole building. You ever see it? It's pretty convincing. It just has no readily apparent basis in reality, especially given they wont release the data with which they compiled it.

Help me to understand what it is to you that is so troubling about the events of that day,
What wasn't troubling about them...?
 
But, it isn't a 'solid' building. By that point, there are hundreds of tons of material impacting areas which weren't meant to support that much weight.

No building is 'solid', otherwise it would not be a building, it would be an obelisk!

However, as evidenced by statements after the 93 bombing, those buildings were designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully fueled 707 traveling at 600 mph and the resultant fire. At no time was it envisaged that they would totally collapse.

Naturally, given that they did collapse, the architect is hardly likely to disagree with the NIST findings which exonerate... he therefore recanted and said 707, traveling slowly, (lost in fog :)), low on fuel. Really, strange parameters to set don't you think, as they were looking to factor in the worst case scenario :confused:

I wonder if he would be working on the massive high rises he currently is working on, if he had disagreed with NIST.

NB Rhetorical question.
 
And if you were to scale that up, the Jenga pile would be about 10,000x as strong as the towers. It's a meaningless comparison.

New uses for Jenga... 'Don't panic...this building is built from Jenga blocks and we all know Jenga doesn't collapse' :confused: More Metaphysics?
 
However, as evidenced by statements after the 93 bombing, those buildings were designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully fueled 707 traveling at 600 mph and the resultant fire. At no time was it envisaged that they would totally collapse.

They were not DESIGNED to withstand that. They did some calculation to see what would happen in an impact, and they found that it looked like the building would not collapse from the impact. This seems to have been mostly an extension of the wind load calculations.

And indeed the towers did not collapse. They held up very well, even though it was a bigger plane that hit them.

They DID NOT design the buildings to withstand the stripping of the fire insulation, and the fire. Not only was the stripping of the insulation not considered (that we have any evidence of), there was no real way at the time (in the 1960s) to simulate the effects of an hour long fire on multiple floors.
 
New uses for Jenga... 'Don't panic...this building is built from Jenga blocks and we all know Jenga doesn't collapse' :confused: More Metaphysics?

No. Real physics. Things simply do not scale as you would expect.

One of the problems of the WTC collapse videos is that they are generally from some distance away. So it kind of looks like a little model. You don't get a sense of what is actually happening in the collapse.

Try to imagine it from inside instead:


See the vast area of unsupported ceiling? Think about the 20 floors above it? The huge weight, thousands of tons of steel. What happens when you remove all those colums on the outside, and start to weaken the columns in the center? What happens when the upper block starts to fall. Picture it, standing in the office above. What happens as those thousands of tons come down from floor to ceiling?
 
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They were not DESIGNED to withstand that. They did some calculation to see what would happen in an impact, and they found that it looked like the building would not collapse from the impact. This seems to have been mostly an extension of the wind load calculations.

They must have just been bigging themselves up after the bombing then

And indeed the towers did not collapse. They held up very well, even though it was a bigger plane that hit them.

Mick please, listen to yourself... that is perfect Orwellian 'Newspeak'

They DID NOT design the buildings to withstand the stripping of the fire insulation, and the fire. Not only was the stripping of the insulation not considered (that we have any evidence of), there was no real way at the time (in the 1960s) to simulate the effects of an hour long fire on multiple floors.

So they were designed to withstand a 707, low on fuel and traveling slowly as the pilot squints through the fog, and then collapse after an hour or so due to the resultant fires.

That's called planning ?
 
What's newspeak about that? They did not collapse from the impact, so that aspect of the calculations was correct.

They obvious did not plan for them to collapse after a fire. They just did not design them to withstand this precise type of fire.

Perhaps you could point me to the evidence that indicates they DID consider this exact type of fire?
 
What's newspeak about that? They did not collapse from the impact, so that aspect of the calculations was correct.

They obvious did not plan for them to collapse after a fire. They just did not design them to withstand this precise type of fire.

Perhaps you could point me to the evidence that indicates they DID consider this exact type of fire?

It is Newspeak because, and I should not need to be saying this, no one designs a building to withstand an aircraft hit and does not take into account the result.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/LooseChangeForums/topic/3873416/1/

But were the Twin Towers really engineered to withstand the consequences of being impacted by the largest commercial aircraft in existence (at that time)?

A great deal has been said arguing that they were designed to only handle a Boeing 707 flying at 180 mph
attempting to land in fog.

In many of these stories, Leslie Robertson, who was credited as being the chief structural engineer for the Twin Towers, endorsed the claim that they were not designed to handle the impact of a Boeing 767 flying at cruise speed.

Leslie Robertson "We had designed the project for the impact of the largest airplane of its time, the Boeing 707. The 767 that actually hit the WTC was quite another matter again. First of all it was a bit heavier than the 707, not very much heavier, but a bit heavier. But mostly it was flying a lot faster. And the energy that it put into the building is proportional to its square of the velocity, as you double the velocity, four times the energy. Triple the velocity, eight times the energy and so forth.

And then of course with the 707 to the best of my knowledge the fuel load was not considered in the design, and indeed I don't know how it could have been considered. But, and with the 767 the fuel load was enormous compared to that of the 707, it was a fully fuelled airplane compared to the 707 which was a landing aircraft. Just absolutely no comparison between the two."

So Robertson in this post 9/11 quote is arguing that though there was a minor weight difference between a Boeing 707 and a Boeing 767, but, the fuel loads were significantly different. He argues that the design called for a Boeing 707 with only remaining fuel for landing vs. a Boeing 767 with a full fuel load.

First of all, a fully fueled Boeing 707, carries 23,000 gallons of fuel and a fully fueled Boeing 767 carries 23,980 gallons of fuel. Not a significant difference, unless Robertson is correct about the status of the Boeing 707 the WTC Towers were designed to handle.

Well, prior to 9/11, Leslie Robertson was making a different, more ego-serving claim;

http://snurl.com/j54gc (Report From Ground Zero page 188

A few quotes from that page;



"After the bombing of the WTC in 1993, Leslie Robertson, one of the engineers who worked on the towers' structural design in the 1960s, claimed that each had been built to withstand the impact of a fully fueled 707. The 707 was the state-of-the-art airplane, and the Port Authority was quite amenable to considering the effect of an airplane as a design criterion...I don't know if we considered the fire damage that would cause. Anyway, the architect, not the engineer, is the one who specifies the fire system."

"Of course, when Yamaski was designing the buildings he was aware that steel, when it reaches an inherent temperature of 1200 degrees, will stretch at the rate of 9 1/2 inches per 100 feet. He undoubtedly took into account the possibility of a plane's hitting the building and causing the steel to stretch in a resulting fire. There might even be a collapse, but only on the side of the building that was 'hit. Partial collapses often happen in burning buildings."

The other critical point was the effective speed of the two aircraft. Did the design call for a limitation of a Boeing 707 flying at 180 mph?

The cruise speed of a Boeing 707 is 607 mph = 890 ft/s,
The cruise speed of a Boeing 767 is 530 mph = 777 ft/s.

On September 8, 2002, two reporters for the NY Times, James Glanz and Eric Lipton posted a story
under the heading The Height of Ambition: Part Four.

A few quotes from that story;

"Robertson took the time to calculate how well his towers would handle the impact from a Boeing 707, the largest jetliner in service at the time. He says that his calculations assumed a plane lost in a fog while searching for an airport at relatively low speed, like the B-25 bomber. He concluded that the towers would remain standing despite the force of the impact and
the hole it would punch out. The new technologies he had installed after the motion experiments and wind-tunnel work had created a structure more than strong enough to withstand such a blow.

Exactly how Robertson performed these calculations is apparently lost -- he says he cannot find a copy of the report. Several engineers who worked with him at the time, including the director of his computer department, say they have no recollection of ever seeing the study.

One architect working for the Port Authority issued a statement to the press, covered in a prominent article in The Times, explaining that Robertson's study proved that the towers could withstand the impact of a jetliner moving at 600 miles an hour.

There were only two problems. The first, of course, was that no study of the impact of a 600-mile-an-hour plane ever existed. ''That's got nothing to do with the reality of what we did,'' Robertson snapped when shown the Port Authority architect's statement more than three decades later.

The second problem was that no one thought to take into account the fires that would inevitably break out when the jetliner's fuel exploded, exactly as the B-25's had."


Well difficult as it is to believe, Robertson, post 9/11 is now arguing his design work never called for the Towers to "withstand the impact of a fully fueled 707" which would also require a consideration of the fires that would result.

But in his defence, Robertson was carrying a great guilt load following 9/11 and may have wanted to distance himself from his earlier claims about the Titanic-nature of the Twin Towers;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/t...tson/index_textonly.shtml

In another interview, with the BBC recorded 2 months after 9/11, Leslie Robertson had this to say; "And then of course with the 707 to the best of my knowledge the fuel load was not considered in the design, and indeed I don't know how it could have been considered. But, and with the 767 the fuel load was enormous compared to that of the 707, it was a fully fuelled airplane compared to the 707 which was a landing aircraft. Just absolutely no comparison between the two."

Well, based on documentation that the NIST obtained in 2003, the Towers most definitely were designed to handle a 600 mph Boeing 707 impact.

In a followup article for the NY Times, published on December 3, 2003, the same reporter, James Glanz, now, in effect retracted his earlier story;

"The investigators also said that newly disclosed Port Authority documents suggested that the towers were designed to withstand the kind of airplane strike that they suffered on Sept. 11.

Earlier statements by Port Authority officials and outside engineers involved in designing the buildings suggested that the designers considered an accidental crash only by slower aircraft, moving at less than 200 miles per hour.

The newly disclosed documents, from the 1960's, show that the Port Authority considered aircraft moving at 600 m.p.h., slightly faster and therefore more destructive than the ones that did hit the towers, Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, who is leading the investigation for the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Commerce Department said."


The reference to these documents appears in NCSTAR 1-2, 8.2 AIRCRAFT IMPACT DAMAGE ANALYSIS, 8.2.1 Safety of the WTC Towers in Aircraft Collision

"Finding 11 acknowledges that " The documents indicate that a Boeing 707, the largest commercial aircraft at the time, flying at 600 mph was considered and that the analysis indicated that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact. No documentary evidence of the aircraft impact analysis was available to review the criteria and methods used in the analysis of the aircraft impact into the WTC towers, or to provide details on the ability of the WTC towers to withstand such impacts."

Here are a few of the salient points that the NIST found in the discovered Port Authority documents from February 3, 1964:

1. A structural analysis was carried out by the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson and is the most complete and detailed of any ever made for any building structure. The preliminary calculations alone cover 1,200 pages and involve over 100 detailed drawings.

2. The buildings have been designed for wind loads of 45 lbs per square foot which is 2.5 times the New York City Building Code requirements of 20 lbs per square foot, the design load for the Empire State, Pan American and Chrysler Buildings. In addition to static wind loads, a complete dynamic analysis has been made to take into account extremely high velocity gusts.

3. The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 707 - DC 8) travelling at 600 miles per hour. Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of of occupants not in the immediate area of impact.

7. The design has been reviewed by some of the most knowledgeable people in the construction industry. In a letter to John Skilling, the Structural Engineer for the World Trade Center, the Chief Engineer of the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel Corporation said:
"In reviewing this design with our Operating and Construction Departments, we are very optimistic that you have turned a new page in the design of structural steel."


Keep in mind that Robertson was attempting to recall details from over 35 years in the past and had already made a number of statements that revealed a plane wasn't the only thing that was lost in a fog.

http://911research.wtc7.n.../wtc/analysis/design.html
"John Skilling was the head structural engineer for the World Trade Center. In a 1993 interview, Skilling stated that the Towers were designed to withstand the impact and fires resulting from the collision of a large jetliner such as Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8."

http://community.seattlet...19930227&slug=1687698
Twin Towers Engineered To Withstand Jet Collision
By Eric Nalder

as reported in the Seattle Times Februaury 27, 1993

"In the wake of the WTC bombing, the Seattle Times interviews John Skilling who was one of the two structural engineers responsible for designing the Trade Center. Skilling recounts his people having carried out an analysis which found the Twin Towers could withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. He says, “Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed.” But, he says, “The building structure would still be there.”

http://www2.ljworld.com/n...1/sep/12/towers_built_to/
Towers built to withstand jet impact
as reported in the Chicago Tribune September 12, 2001

"Les Robertson, the Trade Center's structural engineer, spoke last week at a conference on tall buildings in Frankfurt, Germany. He was asked during a question-and-answer session what he had done to protect the twin towers from terrorist attacks, according to Joseph Burns, a principal at the Chicago firm of Thornton-Thomasetti Engineers.
Burns, who was present, said that Robertson said of the center, "I designed it for a 707 to smash into it."

Burns, whose firm did the structural engineering for the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia one of the world's tallest buildings said Robertson did not elaborate on the remark."


http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml
WORLD TRADE CENTER - SOME ENGINEERING ASPECTS
"Owners: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
(99 year leased signed in April 2001 to groups including Westfield America and Silverstein Properties)

Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and Sons consulting

Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson"


http://sydney.edu.au/engi.../latest/aibs_2002_wtc.pdf
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER AND 9/11: A DISCUSSION ON SOME ENGINEERING DESIGN ISSUES
"Tim Wilkinson, Lecturer, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

The architect for the WTC was Minoru Yamasaki, with the structural engineering led by John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson."


http://www.nytimes.com/20...yregion/20towers.htm?_r=1
Study Suggests Design Flaws Didn't Doom Towers
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: October 20, 2004

"For Leslie E. Robertson, the structural engineer who helped design the twin towers as a young man back in the early 1960's, the latest findings buttress his longstanding assertion that the towers were fundamentally sound. His wife, Saw-Teen See, who is a managing partner at Mr. Robertson's New York design firm, said the report "validates the way we thought the structure would have performed."
The findings by the institute, however, still do not exonerate Mr. Robertson or the building's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which, in defending the trade center project from critics in the 1960s, boasted that the design was so robust that the towers could be hit by a jet traveling at 600 miles per hour without collapsing or endangering the lives of occupants beyond the impact zone. In retrospect, such a claim was unjustified because the engineers had failed to consider the added stresses caused by the resulting fires."


http://web.archive.org/we.../snbc.msn.com/id/3069641/
From a 2003 Newsweek article
by Katherine Stroup

"The buildings were designed specifically to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707—the largest plane flying in 1966, the year they broke ground on the project—and Robertson says it could have survived even the larger 767s that crashed into the towers on Tuesday morning. But the thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel finally brought down the noble structures. “As the fire raged it got hotter and hotter and the steel got weaker and weaker,” he says, adding that building a skyscraper able to handle such a blaze would not have been viable, financially and functionally. “You could always prepare for more and more extreme events, but there has to be a risk analysis of what’s reasonable.”

http://www.nist.gov/publi...leases/wtc_wind_loads.htm.
World Trade Towers design exceeded wind load codes
Public release date: 1-Oct-2004

"NIST recently completed its review of the original 1960s-era source documents containing wind tunnel test data and wind load estimation methods used for the towers, calculated the wind load estimates based on a clearer interpretation of this information, and determined the values actually used in the design of the buildings. These clarified original design wind load estimates all exceed those established by the New York City building code prior to 1968 (when the WTC towers were designed) and through 2001 (when the towers were destroyed). The values also are higher than those required by other selected building codes of the era, including the relevant national model building code.
Wind load capacity is a key factor in determining the overall strength of a tall building and is important in determining not only its ability to withstand winds but also its reserve capacity to withstand unanticipated events such as a major fire or impact damage."


Contradictory statements by Leslie Robertson where he sometimes states that the WTC Towers were engineered for a slow moving B-707 flying in the fog, come across as a emotionally defensive reaction to his sense of guilt over the collapse of the WTC Towers.

Claiming the WTC Towers were never engineered for 600 mph 767 impacts, assuages his sense of guilt over those many lost lives.

A tragedy that he could never have prevented and holds no responsibility for.

82 year old Leslie Robertson is yet another innocent victim of the Inside Job.
Content from External Source
 
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You're quite right, there's absolutely no proof to support the above 'theory'. Only issue being its not Oxy's theory, it's what NIST pumped out in their computer 'recreation' of the events... which seems to rather directly suggest a single column collapse led to a long chain-reaction of internal failures that brought down the whole building. You ever see it? It's pretty convincing. It just has no readily apparent basis in reality, especially given they wont release the data with which they compiled it.


What wasn't troubling about them...?

The failure had to BEGIN somewhere, don't you agree?

Perhaps I wasn't clear: what was troubling about them that would point to something OTHER than some terrorists hijacked planes and caused death and destruction.
 
However, as evidenced by statements after the 93 bombing, those buildings were designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully fueled 707 traveling at 600 mph and the resultant fire. At no time was it envisaged that they would totally collapse.

The buildings weren't hit by a 707 were they?
 
They were hit by 767's which are slightly heavier but not much in it.

And they did not collapse from the impact. It's rather a moot point. You need to establish exactly what analysis there was of damage from fire, and if they anticipated this type of fire. Your long excerpt above seems to indicate they did not.
 
The failure had to BEGIN somewhere, don't you agree?
Surely. But before I put any faith in it, I'd like to know that the CG 'recreation' portraying how the failure took place, something which took NIST 7 years to produce, hasn't been pulled out of a computer technician's ass based on the exterior appearance of the collapse as video-taped in order to fit the official story. As I mentioned in previous threads, that they released this CG 'recreation' with an unquestionably fictional account of 'what would have happened' if the building hadn't taken damage from the collapse of the towers, in which the collapse for some inexplicable reason is initiated in the exact same place and yet progresses in a far more chaotic, far less 'demolition'-like fashion, increases my doubt of the 'recreation', as if the second video is an absolute fiction (which it unquestionably is) what proof is there that the first isn't? Especially considering NIST won't share the data with which it compiled this 'recreation'.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: what was troubling about them that would point to something OTHER than some terrorists hijacked planes and caused death and destruction.
That they managed to successfully circumvent the most powerful security force on the planet multiple times at multiple stages, that they somehow managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in some fucked up 'seven-ten split' many consider beyond belief, and that in the direct wake of the attack investigations began on the wrong foot, and went stumbling suspiciously toward gross inadequacy from there.... not to mention the fact there's been absolutely no blame/accountability assigned to those who allowed the attack to take place, (one would at least expect minor charges of criminal negligence to the security personnel or airport security policy makers who allowed multiple hijackers to board single planes carrying weapons) and the Administration and organizations that failed that day had, rather than suffer scrutiny, punishment, or restructuring, been granted all the more power, reach, and political 'confidence'. There's also a whole host of terribly suspicious coincidences surrounding the people involved that have never been investigated, and efforts to 'follow the money' have been deliberately halted with no real explanation as to why, beyond the ludicrous and offensive notion that 'it doesn't matter.', as stated in the 9/11 commission.
 
That they managed to successfully circumvent the most powerful security force on the planet multiple times at multiple stages


You keep saying things like that, and it sounds awesome, but what does it actually entail? Just two ordinary things.

1) Getting into the US
2) Getting on a plane

How exactly were those things in any way difficult?
 
How exactly were those things in any way difficult?
I've had a fair level of difficulty with each in the past, and I'm a white yuppie with a Canadian passport and no box-cutters/pepper-spray to speak of, typically only flying a few-hundred miles or so, and without my name (so far as I know) in any FBI/CIA databases.


Just two ordinary things.

1) Getting into the US
2) Getting on a plane
*with box cutters, pepper spray, and a plot to wreak havoc on a nation specifically alerted of such a threat and with all the power and influence to respond to it with overwhelming force. Immigrating from Saudi-Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon into the USA is extremely difficult now, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a cake-walk in 2000. There are conditions which apparently some of the hijackers didn't meet, and tests which some of the hijackers apparently didn't succeed at, and yet somehow the vast majority of them managed to get state-side anyway. This would absolutely not have been an easy feat, requiring little coordination. There has been and remains a strong belief amongst many pertinent professionals that it wouldn't have been possible without the help of Saudi-Arabian authorities.

I met a guy who'd just immigrated from Lebanon once. I was waiting for a bus, and he got off one in a rage at the driver, who refused to give him a transfer, as you're supposed to ask for one as you get on, not as you get off, which this guy had absolutely no way of knowing. He started screaming and shouting about how this was supposed to be a land of tolerance and opportunity, and seems to him instead to be the very land of racism. He then started shouting about how afraid we are of his people blowing things up, and how no wonder they're blowing things up with the way the west works... at which point I saw folks start looking rather nervous/getting on their cellphones urgently. When I saw the cops on approach down the busy Main-street, I approached the guy, introduced myself, asked him where he was from. "I am from LEBANON!" he shouted out, not at me but at the sky, and before the cops could track him down I invited him for a beer. He agreed, rapidly calmed, and we had a pretty decent, albeit brief discussion about his situation. The story, albeit brief, he gave me of the process of his immigration made my own difficulties with international travel sound like the whines of a spoiled child.
 
Surely. But before I put any faith in it, I'd like to know that the CG 'recreation' portraying how the failure took place, something which took NIST 7 years to produce, hasn't been pulled out of a computer technician's ass based on the exterior appearance of the collapse as video-taped in order to fit the official story. As I mentioned in previous threads, that they released this CG 'recreation' with an unquestionably fictional account of 'what would have happened' if the building hadn't taken damage from the collapse of the towers, in which the collapse for some inexplicable reason is initiated in the exact same place and yet progresses in a far more chaotic, far less 'demolition'-like fashion, increases my doubt of the 'recreation', as if the second video is an absolute fiction (which it unquestionably is) what proof is there that the first isn't? Especially considering NIST won't share the data with which it compiled this 'recreation'.

I'd agree it would be better if they released the data, but I don't share your incredulity with the simulations.



Remember the collapse is really in two stages. The interior structure collapses and then the extrior skin. The difference is in the way the skin collapses.

The building with damage forms a kink where the damage is. Which makes the skin collapse from the bottom down. The building without damage retains the stiffness at the bottom, so the skin folds in from the top.


 
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I've had a fair level of difficulty with each in the past,

Despite your anecdotes, it is fairly common for people from other countries to visit for work or pleasure or to immigrate to the United States.

These are the numbers of people who immigrated to the US from the respective countries in 1999.

Lebanon: 3,040

Egypt: 4,429

Saudi Arabia: 763


http://www.dhs.gov/fiscal-year-1999-statistical-yearbook-0


The fact that some of the potential hijackers didn't get in runs contrary to the idea that they had help.
 
I think the figure is 15/19, isn't it?
Despite your anecdotes, it is fairly common for people from other countries to visit for work or pleasure or to immigrate to the United States.

These are the numbers of people who immigrated to the US from the respective countries in 1999.

Lebanon: 3,040

Egypt: 4,429

Saudi Arabia: 763
Have a similar list of those who were turned down in their efforts to immigrate from those countries? Haven't been able to google anything up just yet, and Friday night approaches so I'm not going to try to hard... but I'd bet my evenings beers that those figures are significantly larger.

The fact that some of the potential hijackers didn't get in runs contrary to the idea that they had help.
I don't see how considering the large majority of them, so far as we know, did get in in spite of discrepancies in their applications. In any event, I can't begin to imagine how such an effort would have been made without help. Its not as if Osama and 19 guys were sitting around smoking the hookah when OBL came up with a crazy plot, the 19 guys said 'yeah man, lets do it...!!' and they all started immigrating with ease the next day.
 
Non-immigrant visa totals 10/2000-10/2001: Egypt - 50,138 Lebanon - 28,440 Saudi Arabia - 46,636 http://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY2001_NIV_Detail_Table.pdf

B Visa refusal rate by nation 2006:
http://www.travel.state.gov/pdf/FY06.pdf
Egypt 32.9%
Lebanon 26.9%
Saudi Arabia 11.3%

But really it seems like the visa approval process was pretty sloppy back then, particularly with introduction of "visa express"

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130051&page=1

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/terror/articles/visa011212.htm
 
How would you expect them to fall? The part that fell straight down was heavy, it wasn't going to blow over, it was going to fall straight. It then pancaked the floors underneath. What did you expect.
NIST does not support the pancake theory. That has been debunked.
 
NIST does not support the pancake theory. That has been debunked.
The early"Pancake Theory" is different from the vernacular usage of the term. Clearly when one floor failed it would fall on the lower floor, which people (including engineers) often refer to as pancaking. The older "debunked" theory was about the initiation of the collapse, not the progression. See
#8:

https://www.nist.gov/topics/disaster-failure-studies/faqs-nist-wtc-towers-investigation

8. Why didn't NIST consider a "controlled demolition" hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation like it did for the "pancake theory" hypothesis?

NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation that included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the WTC towers.

Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests, and created sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.

Based on its comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed according to the scenario detailed in the response to Question 6.

NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system—that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns—consisted of a grid of steel "trusses" integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.




Diagram of the Composite WTC Floor System Credit: NIST
NIST's findings also do not support the "controlled demolition" theory since there is conclusive evidence that:

  • the collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else, and;
  • the time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by (1) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and (2) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors.
Video evidence also showed unambiguously that the collapse progressed from the top to the bottom, and there was no evidence (collected by NIST or by the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors as the top building sections (including and above the 98th floor in WTC 1 and the 82nd floor in WTC 2) began their downward movement upon collapse initiation.

In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view.
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