Why I don't think there was a bomb in WTC 1 & 2.

[benburch]

I wrote this for the thread about the Chicago LaSalle Bank fire, but I think it bears repeating here.

A poster asked (ironically) when the fire was going to weaken the steel of the building and make it collapse as in WTC on 9-11.

I replied;

"In WTC 1 & 2 there were tons of burning jet fuel and a totally different theory of construction.

This (the LaSalle Bank Building) was a steel skeleton building with a masonry skin that supported only its own weight.

WTC was built as a steel skin-supported with the central services core supporting only itself. It was a needle tower wrapped in a monocoque building. In fact the two were to a degree dynamically separate structures during maximum wind load.

Into this you slam an aircraft full of fuel. All the fire needed to do was weaken one section of that skin enough for the floors above to slump an inch or so. Then momentum took over. All of the gravitational potential energy that had been put into that material to raise it to that height was given back in a few seconds.

THAT was your bomb.

In fact, I explored a similar effect for a book I was working on back in the 80s. I wondered what would happen should a New Madrid Earthquake repeat cause the Sears Tower to shift off its center of gravity (towards the river, obviously.) The result I calculated was like a tiny nuclear bomb going off..."

[The Doctor.]

1. Interesting... very thoughtful.

I'm not so keen to buy into the 'bomb theory', but I did find the 'elegant implosion' kind of interesting.

In a plutonic sense- I can imagine the structural dynamics of such a gargantuan building resulting in such a demolition (something that huge just doesn't fall sideways), but I am curious to know how much collateral damage occurred to surrounding structures and what the projections of a deliberate demolition would have been in contrast.

Ideas?

[benburch]

2. Well, a LOT of damage was done to surrounding structures.

In a controlled implosion, the needle core would have been blown first, and then the skin, from which as much material as possible had been removed. The skin would have been tied to the core with cables, and would have been sawn through in many places to weaken it. All of the energy would have gone straight down into the foundation hole. Mind you, this never would have been done due to the subway lines and etc. WTC was going to have to be taken apart when the time came.

In this case, when the building came down, in addition to the shock wave, both seismic and carried by the air, there was solid material that shot out at near rifle velocity. This is what weakened the surrounding structures.

I don't think anybody lived who was within a block when the shock wave hit. This was an event much like a small nuclear weapon going off in the city.

[The Doctor.]

3. Yeah- sounds about right...

I remember hearing about a meeting the owners of the buildings had where they discussed how much money they would lose when they had to 'deconstruct' the building... a net loss.

[demodewd]

4. objections

In WTC 1 & 2 there were tons of burning jet fuel and a totally different theory of construction.

Much of the jet fuel exploded outside the WTC2. As to what percentage..I would say an overwhelming majority of the fuel.

Firecrews reported from WTC2 that they were putting out only small isolated fires and appeared to have everything under control.They reportedly asked for only three hose outlets which apparently is nothing unusual.

I also refer to the photograph of a woman standing at the edge of the plane's entry point in the WTC2.

Does jet fuel heat up hot enough to compromise steel to the point of collapse? And these were oxygen starved fires as evidenced by the billows of black smoke.

WTC was built as a steel skin-supported with the central services core supporting only itself. It was a needle tower wrapped in a monocoque building. In fact the two were to a degree dynamically separate structures during maximum wind load.

It is my understanding that the towers were profoundly supported by the cental core.

Why would the core disintegrate spontaneously with the floors as it obviously did? Why would not the core remain standing as the floors pancaked? Corresponding to your understanding of the buildings' construction,wouldn't the core be prone to topple in large chunks working as a separate mechanism as the floors tore themselves away?

[benburch]

5. Answers.

First, my reading of published material is that the core supported mainly itself and the floor immediately around the elevators, and that there was a flexible coupling between that and the rest of the floor to allow for differences in bending during wind deflection.

Second, something that big almost cannot topple. There is almost no way to make it do anything whatsoever other than fall nearly straight down. Even so you will note that one of the towers had its upper floors rotate considerably from true vertical as it fell. I forget which one.

I believe the core was weakened too on the fire floors. Remember there was a lot of fuel here. Not just jet fuel; Wood panelling, desks, chairs, curtains, carpet, file cabinets full of paper. In short, plenty to yield a raging inferno, at least in certain spots within the structure. Remember we do not need to do more than cause a failure in one place. When either the core or the skin began to fall, the loose coupling between them was nevertheless sufficient to make the other element fail.

Go look at the videos of yesterday's LaSalle Bank Building fire if you want to see what a raging inferno you can get with just office furniture! The fact that at one place in the rent left by the aircraft a person was able to reach the precipice and be seen in photographs says nothing whatsoever about conditions elsewhere in the structure.

I see nothing whatsoever sinister about the WTC other than a corrupt administration who decided to let down our guard on terrorism long enough to get the Reichstag Fire they knew would result. The failures of WTC 1, 2 and 7 follow engineering principles.

[demodewd]

6. immediate pulverization with no hammer effect

But there was no raging inferno in the WTC 2 except for its initial explosion. And a large majority of that inferno lay outside the building.You're equating the two buildings as if the consequences of jet fuel invasion were quantitatively similar. They weren't.

And again...what physical data do you subscribe to that allows for a fire hot enough and sustained long enough to compromise the steel?

How do you explain the immediate pulverization of concrete and building materials at the initiation of the South tower collapse? As you can observe the tower is essentiallty cut in two at the onset of collapse. Yet the lower section immediately begins to pulverize upon itself. There is no hammer effect from the upper floors coming down on the lower floors. Yet there is immediate pulverization!

The upper section at the same time breaks apart as you can see it pulverize from the bottom up. What mechanism causes this? I can only explain this by controlled demolition.

[benburch]

7. Ummm... Have you any idea of the amount of energy here?

I was not kidding when I said it was on the scale of a tactical nuclear weapon. Materials fail when they are forced to transmit that sort of energy.

And as for WTC2, did you look at the LaSalle Bank Video yet? That floor reached 2000 F for a sustained period of time due to burning furniture. Go talk to a fireman if you don't believe me.

[demodewd]

8. "tactical nuclear weapon". Again..tell me what force enabled

You're forgetting the conduction of heat away from the fire areas. The core would have functioned as a radiator.

The beginning of the collapse of WTC2 should not have been comparable to a "tactical nuclear weapon". Again...tell me what force would have enabled the immediate pulverization of the lower section of WTC2 when the upper section had been torn away and was collapsing upon itself?

refer to: http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/

This is the most widely seen video of the WTC-2 collapse, seen from east and slightly north of the towers. As can be seen in the still above, there are what appear to be rows of explosions on the east face at the level of the initial collapse, and the building begins to fall by toppling to the south. The top section (~30 floors) continues tilting to the south, but quickly it can also be seen to start collapsing on itself, losing about half its height before the bottom of it reaches the bottom of the frame. This article (originally at http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian) gives a good frame-by-frame analysis of the rows of explosions that precede the actual collapse, and discusses the rotation and collapse of the top section. As the author notes it is very peculiar that the top section, having begun tilting to the south, did not continue to topple and land far to the south of the tower. Needless to say, had this happened the damage to other buildings in the area would have been vastly greater.

Conservation of angular momentum requires that an object continue to rotate around its center of mass once set in motion, unless acted on by an outside force. Even if the tower beneath it had completely given way, leaving it nothing more to push against laterally, the rotation once started would not abruptly stop. But the top section does not stop rotating and drop straight down, as some have claimed. What does in fact happen is that the top section breaks up internally so that it no longer behaves as a rigid object, relieving it of the obligation to conserve angular momentum.. By turning into a slurry of concrete dust and shattered steel the rotation becomes dissipated into the motion of what is essentially a fluid. Why the top would collapse on itself in this manner is very difficult to explain on the basis of a simple plane damage and heat-induced collapse. It would require the entire top section to lose all internal mechanical strength just at the moment it started to topple, at the same time that its thirty one-acre slabs of 4" thick concrete were turned to dust. To accomplish this without explosives would be very difficult indeed.
http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/

[benburch]

9. This is all the effect of the titanic forces involved.

Your common-sense expectations of the way matter behaves simply don't hold true here.

When WTC was built, an amazing amount of mechanical work was done, raising the structure. This work was not lost, but was safely stored away in the structure as gravitational potential energy.

In the years since its building, tenants had moved in a weight of furniture, television transmitters, etc, etc. that is probably equal to the weight of the structure.

When the top of the building began to slump, it developed momentum that, due to it's incredible mass, was sufficient to carry it through whatever resistance it met until it was in full free-fall.

Now, both the top and the bottom of the tower still have quite a bit of structural integrity. And it shows. The top becomes a piston forcing steel, debris, fuel, people, and most important a lot of compressed air down into the lower part of the tower. This shock wave is what caused the disintegration of the tower as the sections fell.

Let me repeat, once the slump began, the was an amazingly catastrophic process. You can literally not imagine, even having seen it as most of us have, how much destructive force can be unleashed by that much mass falling that far.

Do you remember when the Coyote would get smashed flat by the falling safe? That is a fairly ok model of what happened here. Then hammer of the gods came down.

[demodewd]

10. re: "hammer"

Your "Hammer of the Gods" didn't come down. Not immediately. Just at the moment the lower section began pulverizing itself floor by floor the upper section was deliberately pulverized by controlled demolition. Thus for a split second huge violent flurries of dark smoke and pulverized material from the tilted section hung suspended in place.

Notice the sharp differentiation between the tilted section and the rest of the building in regards to flurry coloration. Your "hammer" would have intermingled this dark smoke with the lower section's pulverized materials. Your "catstrophic process" would have pushed that upper floor smoke right into the point of collapse initiation. This didn't happen. Your "hammer" arrived later. The immediate pulverization of the lower section had no initial hammer. This is the smoking gun.