Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust

[beats me]

sure they could, they could also be photos of something else entirely. or they could be what they're purported to be. that's the problem with photos.

Cool. Just wanted to check if that was a possibility.

I am now officially not monitoring this thread. I've got more interesting pointless conversations to debate.

[Machinesworking]

I didn't want to believe in explosives and inside job, but as this is popping up again and again and again... I start to believe in it.

I remember being on a documentary movie film festival in 2003 or so, where they had this movie called "10 open questions" (don't remember the exact name). People were sitting there with mouth open, and we just couldn't believe it. Since then the very same discussion comes up again and again.

Up until now the people that say "nooo, this can't be a conspiracy, this is too big" never had a convincing answer on

- why the "airplane" that fell on the pentagon has disappeared
- why the other plane that fell into the woods has disappeared
- why G.W. Bush's father had a meeting with members of the Bin Laden family right before all of that happened
- etc etc.

I can't speak for the others, but I've never denied that there are really some disturbing coincidences surrounding 911. All I think is not a valuable use of someone's time is trying to show that the twin towers were rigged with explosives, that the planes were drones flown by the US military, that the towers were built to fall straight down ( seriously WTF? common sense rules this out! ) ...... and so on. Investigating building 7, the pentagon tape, the lack of any photos from the plane that crashed in the woods, and other aspects of this make sense to me, but everybody who questions anything about that day gets branded with the same Alex Jones level of hype/whack job tag because people won't give up on trying to pin the collapse of two buildings on some internal plot.
Again, I think the efforts should be focused on things that we can expect to see some chance of seeing change with, like getting out of Iraq, and Afghanistan, not trying to prove that the government did 911. Only Stalin and Hitler that I can think of recently have been outed as staging attacks against their governments to consolidate power, and that of course was years after they were gone. The chances of success even if it was true, are way too low to go through with, and the ranting of people like Alex Jones clouds the issue to the point that real unsolved issues are ignored in favor of hype and drama IMO.

[Green Lemon]

Thanks for that. Just for my own education, could you describe the structural system of the WTC a little more- you seem to be familiar with it. All I know is the facade was essentially a mesh of steel tubes making one large tube. Concrete core, I assume? What were the slabs?

[LoopStationZebra]

The core was a tube within a tube. Box steel columns surrounding the typical concrete core.

A hat truss was used at the top to evenly distribute the floor loads from the core to the perimeter. It also supported the antennas. Pretty standard details as well, really.

The slabs were actually very standard: concrete poured into metal pan.

It's great because you will actually find TONS of Truthers who are claiming that the core construction was being sold as a hoax as well. They will point to several graphics that were shown on news and documentary programs that show a *gasp* SOLID concrete core. I mean, solid. As in, no room for stairwells, vertical penetrations, etc. lol. Of course, it's far more likely that the graphics dudes just didn't care...

[LoopStationZebra]

All I know is the facade was essentially a mesh of steel tubes making one large tube.

Heh, that's really the most important design/engineering detail of all, and one of the main reasons that the WTC was special. Column free, baby!

It was pretty much the first time in modern skyscraper construction that the curtain wall wasn't just a curtain wall (with the exception of the Hancock, constructed a year earlier or so, which really was the first skyscraper to use steel framing on the exterior construction in tube-like fashion).

[Green Lemon]

Nice.

This whole discussion has brought me back to the moment in school when I learned that steel buildings are vulnerable to fire. I also remember being shocked. Ideas which seem to be obviously true but in fact are false are amazingly difficult to root out of people's consciousness. The whole thing reminds me a great deal of the debates over evolution. ("Anything so complex must have had an intelligent and conscious designer.")

What about the way the WTC went straight down? That's always surprised me. I guess with so much force acting in one direction, there was nothing to shift it to a lateral trajectory.

What kind of stuff do you work on?

[mikemc]

What about the way the WTC went straight down?

I may be interjecting, but the reminder that there were no columns in the space explains a lot about the appearance of the buildings as they collapsed: the sort of "palm fronds" of debris.

What happened to disengage the floors from the steel core aside (that is, whether or not the steel core was compromised using incendiaries/explosives/alien technology etc aside) once the steel "encasement" of support tubes failed, it makes sense that it would fall back like the peel from a banana, but at the same time the relinquishing steel encasement would guide the falling floors straight down.

[Machinesworking]

I guess with so much force acting in one direction, there was nothing to shift it to a lateral trajectory.

Exactly, people forget how wide these buildings were compared to the typical skyscraper.

[UKRuss]

Pretty sure I mentioned the primary school physics earlier. We should ignore this farce and move on.

There are pirates in another thread! Check it out!

[LoopStationZebra]

Nice.

This whole discussion has brought me back to the moment in school when I learned that steel buildings are vulnerable to fire. I also remember being shocked. Ideas which seem to be obviously true but in fact are false are amazingly difficult to root out of people's consciousness. The whole thing reminds me a great deal of the debates over evolution. ("Anything so complex must have had an intelligent and conscious designer.")

What about the way the WTC went straight down? That's always surprised me. I guess with so much force acting in one direction, there was nothing to shift it to a lateral trajectory.

What kind of stuff do you work on?

lol, Without giving out too much personal info, I spent 12 years with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in NYC - doing tower and mixed-use projects. The past 5 have been spent at Gensler, doing office interiors. Kind of a big change, but well worth it.

The thing about structural engineering that most people don't realize is that when a building is being designed, there's a lot of debate and viable options about the best method to actually engineer the structure. It's never cut and dry. Like any construction process, I suppose. One idea eventually wins out, but it's often not the ONLY possible solution that could have been utilized. It's the same with figuring out how they fell. Nevermind possible sabotage, the smartest structural mofos on the planet can't even agree 100% on HOW they fell - or why they collapsed a certain way and not another.

Truthers tend to take that indecision as evidence of conspiracy, when it fact it's entirely normal. When the mall walkway collapsed in Kansas City during the 80s, the engineers called in to review what happened actually got into a fist fight over the cause! And there was no conspiracy/explosion/thermite/etc!

*or waaas there!*

[Machinesworking]

ps. the reailty here in the UK is: Rain, with long periods of depression.

so the whole country, not just London is just like Seattle? No wonder I liked it when i visited.

[LoopStationZebra]

I guess with so much force acting in one direction, there was nothing to shift it to a lateral trajectory.

That's exactly right.

Even then, under what circumstances would there be any lateral trajectory? The answer is probably very few. Unless Godzilla or that cool creature from Cloverfield actually leaned against the entire structure at once. It would take that much force to topple a modern highrise tower sideways.

It's something that got talked about a lot after 911: Would a skyscraper ever actually fall over? The columns at one or two corners at the base are cut, etc. Would it topple over? Like in this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMtb5Vndo2g

Eh, no. Not quite. That would never happen in any modern steel structure. You would definitely have some lateral debris coverage, but the entire support structure would start to fail on all floors - around the entire building - pretty early on in the topple. The building would begin to collapse on itself quickly. Too much weight and pressure being put on connection points. Highrise structural detail connection points keep the overall building rigid, but are anything but themselves. They are, in fact, rather flimsy.

Toppling was a huge concern in Chicago and New York during the birth of the skyscraper age. "You want to build THAT next to MY lovely 5 story department store?? What if it falls?! I'll be ruined!" Engineers had to prove fairly early on that steel framed structures would not fall over, per se, lol.

[inmazevo]

I used to work with a guy that swore that there actually weren't planes involved, and that everybody in NYC was in on a massive government plot to... do... something...

He was VERY serious about it.
All TV footage was staged, he said. Everyone in New York was in on it.
He said it was missiles, rather than internal explosives, but... six of one, etc...
And he could back it all up... via the internet.

He actually nearly got into a fight with a fellow coworker who was there when it happened, blocks away, and now has some lung problems. Man, nothing is more serious than one guy who promises it was a cover-up/hoax trying to convince an eye-witness who lost friends that the eye-witness is actually a government agent, amongst the millions of others.

Let's talk about whether we actually went to the moon. Or do you guys think THAT happened too.

The real conspiracies are the ones you don't see coming, and there are a lot of them.
You'll see.

- zevo

[inmazevo]

Double... sorry.
I care that much.

[UKRuss]

ps. the reailty here in the UK is: Rain, with long periods of depression.

so the whole country, not just London is just like Seattle? No wonder I liked it when i visited.

That's because the whole country is more or less the size of Seattle.

inmazevo, that is some scary co-worker shit.

LOL, a mate of mine got grabbed once by a co-worker in the 'evangelist head grip' when he told him he had a cold and the guy starts shouting 'demons out! demons out!' now wtf do you do about that?

I know, i know. Stab him. That's what I said, but meh, different strokes for different folks.