AE911Truth is an organization founded by Richard Gage where people with some Architectural and Engineering background discuss the events of 9/11, and generally promote the idea that the destruction of the two towers and WTC Building 7 were controlled demolitions. They are a big budget organization, spending nearly half a million dollars a year (and with $85,000 just on Gage's salary). They have produced some glossy info-graphics to promote those theories. The above is for WTC7, which they like to focus on because people are not familiar with it, and they think it's the best way of convincing people that there was a controlled demolition.
Now this is bunk. Each of the ten points on the left is either bunk, or it does not mean what they think it means. You can generally just look them all up, but I thought it would be useful to go through all ten here (and some of the other points in the image), and provide a concise single-stop debunking.
1 Sudden Onset of destruction near base of structure
False. The visible destruction starts at the TOP of the building, as the east mechanical penthouse sinks into the interior, and then proceeds down though the middle of the building. The collapse of the EXTERIOR of the building happens several seconds after this. AE911 present the collapse of the exterior as the "destruction", when the building was destroyed by the interior structure collapsing, and the the exterior was the LAST thing to collapse.
2. Straight-Down, Symmetrical Collapse into Building Footprint
False. The collapse was highly asymmetric inside. The east half of the interior collapsed gradually, and several seconds before the west half, and that was a few seconds before the exterior collapse. It did not collapse into the building footprint, it fell mostly to the North and South, and in fact badly damaged several nearby buildings, including massive damage to the building to the north.
And the following shows the debris pile fallen across the North street (Barclay) between the two buildings:
3. Patterned Removal of column supports.
False. And nonsensical. If there was a "sudden onset" then all the columns would have been removed at once. This particular point is a little odd to include in a list of evidence, because they could not even see the columns collapsing. Their reasoning is "The overall building mass fell suddenly, uniformly, and nearly symmetrical through what should have been the path of greatest resistance – some 40,000 tons of structural steel. According to structural engineer Kamal Obeid, PE, this requires a precisely-timed, patterned removal of critical steel columns" Thus they are using their own conclusions as evidence. A circular argument.
4. Free-Fall acceleration thru path of greatest resistance.
False. As long as the resistance provided by the building is less than load of the falling structure, then the path of least resistance (measured as acceleration minus retarding force) is always straight down (as there is no other acceleration other than straight down). The initial interior collapse (ignored by AE911) was at far less than free-fall acceleration. The initial fall of the exterior was also at less than free fall, as was the last half. There were a few seconds at near free-fall during the exterior collapse. But that is to be expected from a very tall structure with very little lateral support. The exterior columns had buckled near the base, and once buckled would offer only a tiny fraction of their initial resistance. The building exterior crushed itself not unlike a soda can being crushed.
5. Total Dismemberment of Structural Steel Frame.
Largely. Which is what you would expect when a tall steel frame collapses. The connections between beams are not designed to withstand such loads, so they get ripped apart. You will notice that in all the photos of steel after the collapse the ends of the beams are simply ripped and twisted apart, or bolts are simply ripped out our snapped. This is evidence of a collapse. It's not evidence of beams being cut by explosives.
AE911's image the they chose to use for their current fund-raising drive actually shows part of the exterior frame, not dismembered at all, and instead draped over the pile.
6. Limited Damage to Adjacent Structures
False: See #2. Also:
7. Sounds of explosions heard by credible witnesses
But not recorded on the audio of the video of the collapse. Or the audio of people very close to WTC7. Or even from a significant number of the thousands of people there. Controlled demolition charges are incredibly loud, as they are releasing a lot of energy. What people reported hearing was most likely things falling (including initially from the two towers), or just things blowing up in the fires. You would expect people to hear some bangs. If there was a controlled demolition then you would hear a series of closely spaced very loud bangs.
Listent to what ACTUAL controlled demolition sounds like:
In addition, the explosions reported were heard throughout the day. This is entirely at odds with AE911's notion of "sudden onset", or "a precisely-time, patterned removal of critical steel columns".
8. Pyroclastic-like Clouds of pulverized concrete
Does not even make any sense. Yes there was a huge clouds of dust when the building fell. This would be from concrete, but also the hundreds of tons of wallboard in the building, as well as smoke and ash from the fire. It is entirely expected. It looks exactly like the cloud of dust you get when building are collapsed either with or without explosives. Calling it "pyroclastic" makes no sense at all.
The following shows a "pyroclastic" cloud from a much small building collapsed with NO explosives.
9. Pools of molten steel/iron seen by witnesses.
We don't know what they saw. Very few people claimed they saw anything like this. No photos were taken. Nobody found large solidified pools of metal. Probably they just saw some regions of underground fire in the days after the collapse. But unfortunately all we have a few anecdotal accounts. People also sometimes use the word "molten" to mean "very hot", rather than "liquid".
10. Evidence of thermite incendiaries in steel samples.
False. They found nothing that you would not expect to be there. The most touted "evidence" is iron microspheres, which are formed both in fires, and in violent scraping of steel. The collapses of the WTC towers (the dust from which covered WTC7) was guaranteed to produce these spheres. In fact investigators used iron microsphere as a "signature" when examining the extent of the spread of the WTC dust. In addition, thermite is made from iron oxide and aluminum - vast amounts of were would be found in the towers, so obviously would also be found in the dust.
Debunking 9/11 conspiracy theorists part 3 of 7 -Thermate, thermite and glowing aluminium
Debunking 9/11 conspiracy theorists part 2 of 7 - Nano-thermite found in the WTC dust
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