Forums » Off-Topic
Building 7 WTC controlled demolition
How long does it take to wire a building for demloitions? More than 12 hours? How about a structurally unsound building that's on fire?
They say building 7 of the WTC was "imploded". Is this correct, or did it collapse by itself due to damage from the other towers falling on it & subsequent fires? Lots of stuff out there on the web says that the property owner was consulted re: its fate and told the folks at FEMA, FDNY, et al. to "pull" the building. (i.e. demolitions-time!)
(Thread dedicated to Momerath just to show him that YES I can learn)
http://911review.org/Wiki/Building7Collapse.shtml
http://www.wtc7.net/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=5&c=y
Logic thread: If building 7 was pre-wired for demolition, then 911 was planned well ahead of time and at least SOME governmental entities in the US knew about it.
Discuss.
They say building 7 of the WTC was "imploded". Is this correct, or did it collapse by itself due to damage from the other towers falling on it & subsequent fires? Lots of stuff out there on the web says that the property owner was consulted re: its fate and told the folks at FEMA, FDNY, et al. to "pull" the building. (i.e. demolitions-time!)
(Thread dedicated to Momerath just to show him that YES I can learn)
http://911review.org/Wiki/Building7Collapse.shtml
http://www.wtc7.net/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=5&c=y
Logic thread: If building 7 was pre-wired for demolition, then 911 was planned well ahead of time and at least SOME governmental entities in the US knew about it.
Discuss.
Occam's Razor says:
If the building was prepped for demolition way before 9/11, it was so it could be taken out quickly if the owners decided to replace the building for any reason. Prepping is just drilling holes for the dynamite sticks on the key pillars; the holes on their own do not weaken the building at all, so it's not an unreasonable thing to do.
If the building was prepped for demolition way before 9/11, it was so it could be taken out quickly if the owners decided to replace the building for any reason. Prepping is just drilling holes for the dynamite sticks on the key pillars; the holes on their own do not weaken the building at all, so it's not an unreasonable thing to do.
It should be pointed out that the other two towers could not have fallen on their own without further assistance--the heat from the jet fuel was not and could not EVER get hot enough to melt or deform steel to the point that it would cause massive structural collapse, nor could the towers have collapsed solely from the impact of the two airliners.
Kerosene (jet fuel) burns at around 600 degrees. Steel melts at well over twice that temperature. Explain, then, the large amounts of molten steel and iron found at Ground Zero for months after 9/11 (yes, they were finding actively molten iron over a month later).
Kerosene (jet fuel) burns at around 600 degrees. Steel melts at well over twice that temperature. Explain, then, the large amounts of molten steel and iron found at Ground Zero for months after 9/11 (yes, they were finding actively molten iron over a month later).
Jet A-1's maximum burning temp is:
980 degrees Celsius = 1796 degree Fahrenheit
(An open-air "dirty burn" would be:
315 degree Celsius = 599 degrees Fahrenheit, but I don't think the conditions on 9/11 could be considered "open air" - (nor could they be considered ideal, for that matter.))
The "heat from burning jet fuel could not..." argument is a bit thin, considering that the jet fuel was not the only flammable item in the building. There was aluminum in abundance from the jet, also magnesium, a huge variety of plastics, wood, and other items that could have been ignited by the fuel. Some of these burn hotter than the jet fuel. The heat and gases were largely contained whin the concrete "oven" of the building. It's hard to say what the exact science of a burn like that was, given so many exotic variables, but it's not so simple a question as "Can burning jet fuel melt steel?".
I'm also curious about whether a thermite-type reaction could occur spontaneously in the presence of vapourized aluminum and magnesium during the initial fire. I don't know where the required iron oxide would come from, though.
980 degrees Celsius = 1796 degree Fahrenheit
(An open-air "dirty burn" would be:
315 degree Celsius = 599 degrees Fahrenheit, but I don't think the conditions on 9/11 could be considered "open air" - (nor could they be considered ideal, for that matter.))
The "heat from burning jet fuel could not..." argument is a bit thin, considering that the jet fuel was not the only flammable item in the building. There was aluminum in abundance from the jet, also magnesium, a huge variety of plastics, wood, and other items that could have been ignited by the fuel. Some of these burn hotter than the jet fuel. The heat and gases were largely contained whin the concrete "oven" of the building. It's hard to say what the exact science of a burn like that was, given so many exotic variables, but it's not so simple a question as "Can burning jet fuel melt steel?".
I'm also curious about whether a thermite-type reaction could occur spontaneously in the presence of vapourized aluminum and magnesium during the initial fire. I don't know where the required iron oxide would come from, though.
After looking at the videos, I don't see any charges going off. I see the building sag slightly and then collapse, as if the critical failure was at the root level of the building.
Here's a neato page:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/mslp_ii.htm
So, the fire would merely need to reach 1320 F in order to cause deforming, and thus, collapse.
Where were the fires on building 7?
Here's a neato page:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/mslp_ii.htm
So, the fire would merely need to reach 1320 F in order to cause deforming, and thus, collapse.
Where were the fires on building 7?
I don't know where the required iron oxide would come from, though.
Umm, that would be the steel outer structure of the building itself; the supporting structure was allowed to oxidize, since it didn't hurt the integrity of the building under normal conditions, and treating it to prevent this is uneconomic. (think of rebar) However, while a thermite reaction is a possibility, it would be far from ideal, since the Fe2O3 would not be well mixed or distributed with the aluminum of the aircraft.
Speaking of which, the towers were designed such that the main structural support was in the outer 'exeskeleton' of the tower. This thin lattice of steel beams held up the weight of the building, and was tied to the central spine of the building to keep it laterally stable. Due to the design, if this outer lattice were weakened (by heat, tremors, or the impact of a 150,000 lb blunt projectile carrying jet fuel) the weight of the tower above could cause it to collapse downward around the spine. This is essentially what happened to both towers, and with the floors built like a furnace, jet fuel igniting everything else within, I wouldn't suppose the outter lattice to be structurally sound under all that stress.
On a final note, the pattern of collapse for the two main towers marks controlled demolition as a clear impossibility:
The terrorists can't fly. I know this, because I know the man who trained them to fly, and they couldn't do it... at all. They had barely the skill to keep the things in the air and crash them messily into two gigantic standing targets.
What does this have to do with anything?
There's no way that a controlled demolition could have been prepared to fell the towers starting with the floors of impact, since there's no way they could have known beforehand which floors the terrorists would hit, and there's definately no way in hell that they could have rigged a demolition after the impact.
Blasting is a very exact art, and there are only a handful of people in the world that could have dropped the WTC starting from a specific floor, and to do so would require that that floor was planned from the beginning of the prep - you can't just rig a building to implode in an ad-hoc fashion, and you can't rig it in one night either.
planned demolition was not a factor in the 9/11 WTC incident.
Umm, that would be the steel outer structure of the building itself; the supporting structure was allowed to oxidize, since it didn't hurt the integrity of the building under normal conditions, and treating it to prevent this is uneconomic. (think of rebar) However, while a thermite reaction is a possibility, it would be far from ideal, since the Fe2O3 would not be well mixed or distributed with the aluminum of the aircraft.
Speaking of which, the towers were designed such that the main structural support was in the outer 'exeskeleton' of the tower. This thin lattice of steel beams held up the weight of the building, and was tied to the central spine of the building to keep it laterally stable. Due to the design, if this outer lattice were weakened (by heat, tremors, or the impact of a 150,000 lb blunt projectile carrying jet fuel) the weight of the tower above could cause it to collapse downward around the spine. This is essentially what happened to both towers, and with the floors built like a furnace, jet fuel igniting everything else within, I wouldn't suppose the outter lattice to be structurally sound under all that stress.
On a final note, the pattern of collapse for the two main towers marks controlled demolition as a clear impossibility:
The terrorists can't fly. I know this, because I know the man who trained them to fly, and they couldn't do it... at all. They had barely the skill to keep the things in the air and crash them messily into two gigantic standing targets.
What does this have to do with anything?
There's no way that a controlled demolition could have been prepared to fell the towers starting with the floors of impact, since there's no way they could have known beforehand which floors the terrorists would hit, and there's definately no way in hell that they could have rigged a demolition after the impact.
Blasting is a very exact art, and there are only a handful of people in the world that could have dropped the WTC starting from a specific floor, and to do so would require that that floor was planned from the beginning of the prep - you can't just rig a building to implode in an ad-hoc fashion, and you can't rig it in one night either.
planned demolition was not a factor in the 9/11 WTC incident.
I have a book about 9/11, and among other things it explains WHY the towers collapsed (which, in case you didn't hear, was as much a surprise to the terrorists as to everyone else). To wit:
1. The towers were built under a skyscraper construction code that had JUST changed. In a skyscraper leasable space is king, and these new rules allowed more leasable space at the expense of things like reinforced structures and emergency stairs. These new rules allowed the Tower's builders to put EVERYTHING (water and power lines, elevators, emergency stairs, main support pillars) on a center well on each of the towers. When the planes hit and blew up they took parts of the well with them, dooming the buildings and preventing the people in the levels above from escaping. As a comparison, had a plane hit the Sears Tower or the Empire State building (both of which were built under the old rules) neither of them would have collapsed, or if they had, they would have done it much, much later than either tower; also a lot more people would have been able to escape, as at least half the emergency stairs would have been left intact (the towers had three, and in one tower all three were taken out while on the other just one survived).
2. The fire-retardant coating on the structure was a new technology and had NEVER BEEN PROPERLY TESTED. All the rescue personnel who died inside when the towers collapsed were under the impression they had far more time than they really did. The fire-retardant was finally tested around 2004... and failed the test miserably. The heat from the inferno inside the tower did get high enough to melt the new, lighter alloy the towers were built from (as per the new skyscraper code mentioned above).
Other interesting facts:
1. The emergency radio systems installed after the '93 bombings didn't work properly, and most signals were blocked by the building. That means the rescue personnel on the inside couldn't be reached from the outside.
2. Police and firefighters had different radio systems and used different frequencies; also, the departments were estranged since '93 and refused to work together. When the firefighters were going up the second tower (carrying a lot of equipment that they didn't need) they ran into a police officer heading down that told them to get back down, since the first tower had collapsed. The firefighters didn't believe him, didn't go back down, and couldn't contact the outside, so they died.
3. A lot of people that were already at work that morning( mostly restaurant personnel and stock brokers) began to evacuate both towers when the first plane hit, but upon reaching the lobbies (each tower had one every few levels, where people exchanged elevators) Tower officials instructed them to return to their workplaces. Some didn't listen and continued evacuating, the rest did as ordered. This happened because no one in the Towers was talking to each other about what was going on.
It's easy to imagine a lot of weird ideas about how this came about, but once you look at the facts and incidents before 9/11 you can see it was just a matter of time before a terror plot slipped past the FBI's eyes again; in my opinion, 9/11 has changed the world for the worse on its own without the need for screwball theories to further darken the tragedy.
1. The towers were built under a skyscraper construction code that had JUST changed. In a skyscraper leasable space is king, and these new rules allowed more leasable space at the expense of things like reinforced structures and emergency stairs. These new rules allowed the Tower's builders to put EVERYTHING (water and power lines, elevators, emergency stairs, main support pillars) on a center well on each of the towers. When the planes hit and blew up they took parts of the well with them, dooming the buildings and preventing the people in the levels above from escaping. As a comparison, had a plane hit the Sears Tower or the Empire State building (both of which were built under the old rules) neither of them would have collapsed, or if they had, they would have done it much, much later than either tower; also a lot more people would have been able to escape, as at least half the emergency stairs would have been left intact (the towers had three, and in one tower all three were taken out while on the other just one survived).
2. The fire-retardant coating on the structure was a new technology and had NEVER BEEN PROPERLY TESTED. All the rescue personnel who died inside when the towers collapsed were under the impression they had far more time than they really did. The fire-retardant was finally tested around 2004... and failed the test miserably. The heat from the inferno inside the tower did get high enough to melt the new, lighter alloy the towers were built from (as per the new skyscraper code mentioned above).
Other interesting facts:
1. The emergency radio systems installed after the '93 bombings didn't work properly, and most signals were blocked by the building. That means the rescue personnel on the inside couldn't be reached from the outside.
2. Police and firefighters had different radio systems and used different frequencies; also, the departments were estranged since '93 and refused to work together. When the firefighters were going up the second tower (carrying a lot of equipment that they didn't need) they ran into a police officer heading down that told them to get back down, since the first tower had collapsed. The firefighters didn't believe him, didn't go back down, and couldn't contact the outside, so they died.
3. A lot of people that were already at work that morning( mostly restaurant personnel and stock brokers) began to evacuate both towers when the first plane hit, but upon reaching the lobbies (each tower had one every few levels, where people exchanged elevators) Tower officials instructed them to return to their workplaces. Some didn't listen and continued evacuating, the rest did as ordered. This happened because no one in the Towers was talking to each other about what was going on.
It's easy to imagine a lot of weird ideas about how this came about, but once you look at the facts and incidents before 9/11 you can see it was just a matter of time before a terror plot slipped past the FBI's eyes again; in my opinion, 9/11 has changed the world for the worse on its own without the need for screwball theories to further darken the tragedy.