A look at Mr. Blanchard's .pdf

Duhh posted this, and I figured if I'd respond in any detail, I could at least make it a little more worth my trouble and make it a new thread.

From the article:

ASSERTION #1
"The towers' collapse looked exactly like explosive demolitions."
PROTEC COMMENT: No they didn't. It's the "where."

Blanchard asserts here that the WTC do not appear as demolitions because of where the collapses began within the buildings (on higher floors). The paper paper suggests that damage must first be done to the base of a building, but since none was observed, the WTC couldn't possibly have been demolitions.

The author also fails to consider that preparatory damage had indeed been done to the bases, as evidenced by several witness testimonies (ie, Rodriguez and co-workers) of concrete-shattering and steel-crushing explosions in the basements at the times of impacts, which has "officially" been attributed to jet fuel rushing down the elevator shafts into the basements and then exploding.

From there, charges can be initiated from wherever they are programmed to go off, assuming that damage to the base would indeed have to been done prior to additional charges in the specific cases of the Towers, considering the circumstances.

And finally, the author fails to realize that if the failure of a single floor's structural members' by fire and impact damage alone could lead to global collapse, then logically, a thermite cutting of the exact same members would lead to the exact same result.

By official theory, the bases of the Towers would not have been compromised, and yet the Towers had no trouble completely failing, from top to bottom.

ASSERTION #2
"But they fell straight down into their own footprint."
PROTEC COMMENT: They did not. They followed the path of least resistance, and there was a lot of resistance.

I agree that the Towers did not fall into their own footprints, but were mostly ejected outwards, outside of their footprints. The author of this article suggests 95% of the debris landing outside of the footprints. I have been much more conservative, suggesting 80-90%, as per Jim Hoffman's suggestions, or, as of lately, only describing the mass that fell outside of the footprints as "most" of the mass.

But here we have agreement from someone on the "other side" of the issue that most of the mass did indeed fall outside of the footprints, and thus did not fall straight down as an ever-increasing amount of driving mass. This raises questions as to how the collapses maintained a steady speed, despite most of the debris falling outside of the footprints (as Mr. Blanchard agrees) and not straight down onto the lower floor systems, as well as the strengthening of support columns nearer the bases of the buildings, and the increasingly great amounts of energy that would have been required for the destruction of each additional floor. Also puzzling is how floors that have already been destroyed, and "crushed" into dissociated steel beams and concrete powder, could have contributed much to the alleged pancaking effect in the first place, especially when most of the mass is falling around the Towers and not straight down.

The author rehashes truss failure theory here as well, which I disagree with for a number of reasons. For one, truss failure theory, as an explanation for the alleged pancaking, is completely unprecedented scientifically, and has no substantiating evidence going for it even in the case of the Twin Tower collapses. The NIST Report is the latest government-issued report, and supposively the definitive one. The NIST's Report fails to back its own assertions of global collapses from single floor failures (and utterly fails to even analyze this theory, let alone test it), or even the plausibilities of single floor failures from the given impacts and fire. The NIST Report presents a lab test and a computer simulation in an attempt to verify its assertions of whole-floor failures from the impact and fire damage, and utterly fails with both, despite even using what it describes as more severe parameters in one of its computer simulations (as in, more severe than could be realistically expected).

Another problem with truss failure theory is that it would require an additional mechanism to explain the failures of the first totally-collapsing floors in either Tower. A limited amount of buckling is shown by NIST, but never enough to justify the failure of an entire floor. The apparent buckling comes about slowly in either Tower, not even nearing the amount that would be required for failure, before each Tower's failure. An attempted explanation to make up for this problem suggests buckling/truss failures propogating further buckling/truss failures until a critical point is reached, where a given floor's loads can no longer be sustained and the floor fails at once. This, however, would require the additional mechanism mentioned above: some mechanism that would allow failures to propogate themselves while most of the floor's structure is still intact and functioning properly. Here you'll find a contradiction, however: none of the previous buckling, in either Tower, resulted in such failures, despite involving the exact same structural elements.

ASSERTION #3
"But explosive charges (aka plumes, squibs, etc.) can clearly be seen shotting from several floors just prior to collapse."
PROTEC COMMENT: No, air and debris can be seen pushing violently outward, which is a natural and predictable effect of rapid structural collapse.

First of all, I would love for Mr. Blanchard to provide one non-demolition example of the phenomena observed at the WTC. If he can describe them as "a natural and predictable effect of rapid structural collapse", then he must surely have a number of examples for us to serve as precedent.

In the case of WTC 1 and 2, it has been scientifically documented [sic] that the failures of interior floor trusses were occurring slightly ahead of exterior columns, which is why the columns fell outward and contributed to a "mushroom" effect.

Two problems here.

For one, this would only explain squibs coming immediately before the collapse wave, by a single floor. In reality, many squibs were observed multiple floors below the collapse wave, as far as 50 floors down.

For two, this would not result in seldom, violent expulsions here and there, but many, even expulsions from each pancaking floor. This was not observed either.

ASSERTION #4
"Several credible eyewitnesses are adamant that they heard explosions in or near the towers."
PROTEC COMMENT: Maybe they did hear loud noises that sounded to them like explosions, but such statements do nothing to refute scientific evidence that explosives were not used.

I'll save a response to this statement when I have seen the scientific evidence refuting the use of explosives. This is a damned pretty circular argument (a logical fallacy, aka "begging the question") given the context in this "study".

The author mentions the lack of seismic data pre-collapse for the Towers, but ignores the impacts. This is when eyewitnesses reported violent basement explosions (not just sounds, but significant physical damage to the structure). This would have appeared seismically as one event that could be written off as an impact alone.

ASSERTION #5
"An explosive other than conventional dynamite or RDX was used...a non-detonating compound such as thermite (aka thermate), which gets very hot upon initiation and can basically 'melt' steel. This can be proven by photographs of molten steel taken at Ground Zero, the temperature and duration of underground fires, and comments made by rescue workers."
PROTEC COMMENT: We have come across no evidence to support this claim.

What investigations have been done by PROTEC? What information do they have on this issue, that we do not have, or that Steven Jones does not have?

Blanchard mentions that sufficiently molten steel would have damaged the excavation equipment. This is true, and this would have also provided a motivation to avoid digging directly into molten material.

Greg Fuchek, vice president of sales for LinksPoint, Inc.-added that "sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel" (Walsh, 2002).

(Source) Quotes like this suggest the molten material was not being directly picked up by the excavation equipment, but that there was a buffer of cooler steel between the equipment and the molten material.

Blanchard also seems to overestimate the speed at which steel conducts large amounts of heat:

At a minimum the hydraulics would immediately fail and its moving parts would bond together or seize up. The heat would then quickly transfer through the steel components of the excavator and there would be concern for it soperator.

(Emphasis mine.)

I seriously doubt steel will transfer so much heat as fast as Blanchard suggests, and for Blanchard to be concerned about heat transferring all the way up a steel beam, through a crane arm, and around the operator, seems pretty ridiculous to me. I would like to see some kind of justification for those statements, as steel doesn't seem to transfer so much heat that fast at all:




Blanchard then references talking to operators of clean up equipment at Ground Zero. No objection to the responses he got from them, but there is contradictory testimony from many others at Ground Zero that is publicly available. I referenced one above. Just use Google.

ASSERTION #6
"Debris removed from Ground Zero - particularly the large steel columns from towers #1 and 2 - were quickly shipped overseas to prevent independent examination or scrutiny.
PROTEC COMMENT: Not according to those who handled the steel.

Here the author goes over the various places the steel went before being shipped out, but does not mention how little steel was saved for investigations, or that the BPAT team for FEMA was unsatisfied with their limited access to the steel beams, etc. It isn't being disputed that the steel was moved around a good deal, to local scrap yards, before being shipped out.

In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris – including most of the steel from the upper floors – was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel – including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns – were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site.

Source.

From A. Astaneh-Asl, an appointed volunteer investigator at Ground Zero:

I wish I had more time to inspect steel structure and save more pieces before the steel was recycled. However, given the fact that other teams such as NIST, SEAONY and FEMA-BPAT have also done inspection and have collected the perishable data, it seems to me that collectively we may have been able to collect sufficient data. The main impediments to my work were and still are:

1. Not having a copy of the engineering drawings and design and construction documents.
2. Not having copies of the photographs and videotapes that various agencies might have taken during and immediately after the collapse.

Source.

It was just noted above that critical debris was removed before a single member of BPAT arrived to examine the evidence. SEAONY came later, and NIST came still later, and was also not given access to much evidence. NIST's inability to find a single column that had been significantly heated, for example, tends to be justified by supporters of the official story by the fact that NIST only analyzed a very limited number of samples.

The rapid removal of the debris, the evidence, was clearly an impediment to investigations on the collapses, whether it was intended or not.

ASSERTION #7
"WTC 7 was intentionally 'pulled down' with explosives. No airplane hit it, and the building owner himself was quoted as saying he made a decision to 'ppull it'."
PROTEC COMMENT: This scenario is extremely unlikely for many reasons.

I will avoid addressing what Silverstein said, as I don't think we're ever going to get anywhere with that one.

An argument is made that explosives would have been picked up on a seismograph. I take it that Mr. Blanchard is talking about pre-collapse spikes, as WTC7 did have seismograph readings, and I fail to understand how he would be able to determine whether or not explosives were used simply by looking at that graph.

References are made to the structural damage to WTC7 by WTC1's collapse. There are no photos of significant structural damage for WTC7 (ie, anything any more severe than what any other nearby building received). The diesel tank fire theory is also unsatisfactory, as the FEMA Report itself notes that the majority of this fuel was recovered after WTC7's collapse, and that the little that was missing might have been used earlier that day, before the collapse (Source: FEMA Report, section 5.4).

Blanchard fails to mention that WTC7 fell at the speed of free-fall as he states he has no reason to believe explosives were used in its collapse. Maybe his profession does not require knowledge of basic physics?

ASSERTION #8
"A steel-framed building has never collapsed due to fire, yet three steel buildings collapsed on one day...therefore explosives must have been responsible."
PROTEC COMMENT: No, actually it means three steel buildings collapsed due to fire (and violent external forces) on one day.

Not much is said here other than that the author is not convinced of any evidence pointing to the use of explosives, and that a lot of unprecedented things happened on 9/11.

ASSERTION #9
"Anyone denying that explosives were used is intentionally ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn't suit their conclusion."

I don't really agree with this "assertion" in the first place.

And so Blanchard wraps up his "study" here with sarcastic dismissals of any evidence pointings towards demolitions of any of the WTC buildings.

Originally posted by bsbray11
And finally, the author fails to realize that if the failure of a single floor's structural members' by fire and impact damage alone could lead to global collapse, then logically, a thermite cutting of the exact same members would lead to the exact same result.

WOW. So you are actually admitting that the collapse of a single floor would have been enough to lead to a global collapse?

There is hope for you after all.

The opposite is also true, if a single floor of thermite charges could have initiated the collapse, then so too, could a fire. Especially considering the extent of the damage to the building caused by the impacts.


Also, if there were explosive cutting charges in the basement that went off with the airplane impacts, how come the buildings didn’t collapse right then?

It was an "if, then" statement, HowardRoark. If "this", then "that".

The opposite is also true, if a single floor of thermite charges could have initiated the collapse, then so too, could a fire.

No, this does not work at all. Thermite is known to be able to "cut" through steel. Fire is not. But if fire could, then so could thermite. It is a hypothetical.

Also, if there were explosive cutting charges in the basement that went off with the airplane impacts, how come the buildings didn’t collapse right then?

The blasts would've been equivalent to preparations for bringing down the entire structure later. If you watch building demolitions, you'll often see/hear charges coming from the base of the building before squibs from upper stories emerge. The buildings will not totally collapse before all of the charges are finished.

[edit on 10-8-2006 by bsbray11]

On your first point only ...

Originally posted by bsbray11
The paper paper suggests that damage must first be done to the base of a building, but since none was observed, the WTC couldn't possibly have been demolitions.

Please point out exactly where this is suggested.

Originally posted by bsbray11
And finally, the author fails to realize that if the failure of a single floor's structural members' by fire and impact damage alone could lead to global collapse, then logically, a thermite cutting of the exact same members would lead to the exact same result.

He seems to consider it in the above quote.

[edit on 10-8-2006 by vor75]

Originally posted by vor75

Originally posted by bsbray11
The paper paper suggests that damage must first be done to the base of a building, but since none was observed, the WTC couldn't possibly have been demolitions.

Please point out exactly where this is suggested.

While smaller supplemental charges can be placed on upper floors to facilitate breakage and maximize control as the structure collapses, every implosion ever performed has follow the basic model of obliterating structural supports on the bottom few floors first, "to get the structure moving."

This was not the case with the collapse of Towers 1 and 2.

[...Straw-man scenarios and misleading information presented, suggestions that explosives cannot survive inefficient hydrocarbon fires, etc...]

This is impossible.

xbehome.com...

Originally posted by bsbray11
And finally, the author fails to realize that if the failure of a single floor's structural members' by fire and impact damage alone could lead to global collapse, then logically, a thermite cutting of the exact same members would lead to the exact same result.

[...]
He seems to consider it in the above quote.

He does not. A thermite reaction cannot be initiated by a hydrocarbon fire. Steven Jones, in his paper, even shows a picture of a torch flame being put right to a thermite mixture, and no reaction occurs. The author mentions 1100 F fires. Thermite reactions initiate at more like 1100 C.

Also, plasticizers can be added to even more conventional RDX explosives so that they can withstand higher temperatures without detonating. I'm sure there are all kinds of little tricks like that, or even totally different kinds of explosives altogether that could have been used. We are dealing with the biggest military force in the world, after all, with hundreds of billions of dollars in publicly-disclosed, annual budgeting.

[edit on 10-8-2006 by bsbray11]

He is making the point that the WTC collapses did not look like a classic demolition. A common CT assertion is that they did.

Again, please point out exactly where the paper suggests that damage must first be done to the base of a building, but since none was observed, the WTC couldn't possibly have been demolitions.

Do you think that the airliners hitting the towers might of had something to do with it?

Originally posted by bsbray11
He does not. A thermite reaction cannot be initiated by a hydrocarbon fire. Steven Jones, in his paper, even shows a picture of a torch flame being put right to a thermite mixture, and no reaction occurs. The author mentions 1100 F fires. Thermite reactions initiate at more like 1100 C.

How did they ignite the thermite?

If the thermite was capable of withstanding heat up to 1000 C without igniting, then how was it ignited?




[edit on 10-8-2006 by HowardRoark]

Originally posted by vor75
He is making the point that the WTC collapses did not look like a classic demolition. A common CT assertion is that they did.

Oh yeah. Those things were not conventional in the least. Farrrrr from it.

Again, please point out exactly where the paper suggests that damage must first be done to the base of a building, but since none was observed, the WTC couldn't possibly have been demolitions.

I just did. He concludes that since there were no blasts in the lower floors, either A or B must therefore have been the case and neither of them could have been so therefore the Towers were not demolitions. That's a more elaborate version, but pretty much the same thing.

Originally posted by
Do you think that the airliners hitting the towers might of had something to do with it?

Give me some figures on how much structure the impacts compromised. Hint: FEMA 2.2.1.1, 2.2.2.2, NIST core impact modeling (absolute worst case scenarios).

From that you can deduce about how much the impacts did, being generous with the official story.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
How did they ignite the thermite?

If the thermite was capable of withstanding heat up to 1000 C without igniting, then how was it ignited?

If NASA can send a probe to Mars and control it remotely, how much do you want to bet that our military can initiate a thermite reaction remotely? Magnesium shavings would be really easy to use, for one. Burn ridiculously hot.

Originally posted by bsbray11
If NASA can send a probe to Mars and control it remotely, how much do you want to bet that our military can initiate a thermite reaction remotely? Magnesium shavings would be really easy to use, for one. Burn ridiculously hot.

The auto ignition temperature for magnesium is only 473 C. So, what is to stop the magnesium from auto-igniting from the heat of the strucutre fire and setting off the thermite early?

Originally posted by HowardRoark

Originally posted by bsbray11
He does not. A thermite reaction cannot be initiated by a hydrocarbon fire. Steven Jones, in his paper, even shows a picture of a torch flame being put right to a thermite mixture, and no reaction occurs. The author mentions 1100 F fires. Thermite reactions initiate at more like 1100 C.

How did they ignite the thermite?

If the thermite was capable of withstanding heat up to 1000 C without igniting, then how was it ignited?




[edit on 10-8-2006 by HowardRoark]

Come on - this is the coolest last-day-of-highschool-chemistry .... thing..... MAGNESIUM....... that stuff is the coolest.... it's like staring into a miniature sun or halogen lightbulb.

Although, one factor that I don't think has been discussed is a little factoid that metal's rigidness and strength degrades with the increase in temperature. After extensive heating of the structure, which would be ducted through the steel structure (insulated by the spray-on fireproofing that was not blown off in the impact), the affected area of impact finally caved.

Metals aren't like super materials that can be heated up to several hundred degrees farenheight and have some sort of magic ability to support more than its own weight (if it's not already drooping). Remember that Steel was often forged with old fashioned wood-coals and embers. A fuel fire is more than hot enough to weaken the structure - possibly melt it in some isolated cases.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Oh yeah. Those things were not conventional in the least. Farrrrr from it.

So then you agree with him on his first point. Good.

Originally posted by Aim64C
Come on - this is the coolest last-day-of-highschool-chemistry .... thing..... MAGNESIUM....... that stuff is the coolest.... it's like staring into a miniature sun or halogen lightbulb.

Like I pointed out above, magnesium auto ignites at 473 C, well within the temprature parameters for a typical structure fire. How was it that the fires did not cause the magnesium to ignite and set off the thermite?

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Like I pointed out above, magnesium auto ignites at 473 C, well within the temprature parameters for a typical structure fire. How was it that the fires did not cause the magnesium to ignite and set off the thermite?

Didn't you get the memo Howard? We're talking about that new super nano thermite.


You have voted HowardRoark for the Way Above Top Secret award.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
The auto ignition temperature for magnesium is only 473 C. So, what is to stop the magnesium from auto-igniting from the heat of the strucutre fire and setting off the thermite early?

Any number of things can be used to insulate magnesium, and the whole "charge".

I'm not saying magnesium was added to the thermite mixture itself, but that it could have been used in the ignition process, just as an example as to how it can happen.

Magfire is a new firestarter that has been developed by survival experts to work trouble-free even after geting wet, in a storm, and below freezing point. Glowing sparks developed by a single strike will make a campfire, light your gas stove etc.

* Produces a 3000 degree [Celsius] hot spark.
* High quality metal alloy lasts for 3000 sparks.
* Magfire is water and oil resistant.
* Safe to use, won't burn or ignite by itself
* Made of 6 diferent metals including magnesium.

Source.



The above motion wouldn't exactly take a mechanical engineering genius to simulate, to use in place of a conventional blasting cap.

Originally posted by Aim64C
Metals aren't like super materials that can be heated up to several hundred degrees farenheight and have some sort of magic ability to support more than its own weight (if it's not already drooping).

So then show us where the building was sufficiently heated. It's that simple.

The fires were inefficient, as they were producing dark smoke whereas they were producing lighter smoke earlier, when there was obviously more jet fuel after the impacts. The max an open-atmosphere hydrocarbon fire will burn is around 825 C with perfect fuel-to-air ratio. The WTC were well-ventilated and had poor fuel-to-air ratio leading up to their collapses, as evidenced by the smoke.

Even supposing 800 C fires, which I would doubt by the smoke, the steel would not automatically be heated to 800 C. The heat from the fire would be first carried away in smoke (dark smoke is sooty and has a high thermal capacity), in the atmosphere around the fire itself in general, then in the concrete slabs, and everything else nearby in addition to the steel. And the heat that reached the steel would have an additional challenge in heating up the steel: steel conducts heat well and would have wicked the heat further down the beams, spreading it out and lessening the temperatures.

Steel will glow in broad daylight at a little over 400 C (starts emitting photons). No glowing was seen before the collapses, or during the collapses, except for some molten metal running out of the corner of WTC2 that official story supporters like to claim was aluminum and therefore the intense glowing doesn't count somehow and should be ignored (as the intense glow suggests thermite rather than a fire). The higher the temperature of the steel, the brighter it will glow. NIST tested a couple hundred or so pieces of steel from the buildings for heating, and found a couple core columns were heated to no more than about 250 C. They didn't find evidence of heating on any of the other pieces they tested. They obviously didn't test all of the steel on the impacted floors, but heating to 250 C is insignificant in terms of integrity loss, and is about where I'd put any heating in either building, given the information in the preceding paragraph.

You can look up tests that have been done on steel by NIST and British Steel and probably others if you'd like. They intentionally set fires all around steel systems and see how hot the steel gets and what happens to it. Even in this controlled settings, going for the worst scenarios, they don't get the steel much over 600 C, and all that happens is sagging. That's all that's ever happened. No one, even in a lab, has ever gotten a steel column or truss to completely fail from fire alone. And NIST specificially tested this for its WTC Tower final report.

Remember that Steel was often forged with old fashioned wood-coals and embers. A fuel fire is more than hot enough to weaken the structure - possibly melt it in some isolated cases.

Steel was never forged by just laying it into a hydrocarbon fire. Blacksmiths actually have to work to be able to forge steel with "coals and embers".

You have voted bsbray11 for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

JimC, your comment adds nothing of value to this thread and should be deleted by the mods. It is simply meant to be rude to BSBRAY11 and cheer on your hero HowardRoark. Do you really need to be a cheering section or could you for once bring something legitimate to the table?

Originally posted by bsbray11
The heat from the fire would be first carried away in smoke (dark smoke is sooty and has a high thermal capacity), in the atmosphere around the fire itself in general, then in the concrete slabs, and everything else nearby in addition to the steel. And the heat that reached the steel would have an additional challenge in heating up the steel: steel conducts heat well and would have wicked the heat further down the beams, spreading it out and lessening the temperatures.

The concrete floor slabs were only 4” thick. The thickest parts of the trusses were the 1” diameter rods. The chords where thin, narrow angles of steel.

If the fire was burning on the floor above, as well, then where would the heat “wick away” to?

Researchers who study the behavior of buildings in fire also study the rate at which the structural members heat up for a given heat release of a fire.

www.civ.ed.ac.uk...

Originally posted by HowardRoark
If the fire was burning on the floor above, as well, then where would the heat “wick away” to?

An even better question: Why couldn't NIST get the trusses to fail in their tests, where they recreated the fires in a lab?

[edit on 11-8-2006 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by Slap Nuts
You have voted bsbray11 for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

JimC, your comment adds nothing of value to this thread and should be deleted by the mods. It is simply meant to be rude to BSBRAY11 and cheer on your hero HowardRoark. Do you really need to be a cheering section or could you for once bring something legitimate to the table?

And why is that? Howard isn't my hero. He just shares the same view that I do.

Oh jee whiz my view might disagree with yours or BSBRAY11? I do structures for a living and have a working knowledge of explosives. I'm getting sick and tired of people coming up with fantastic stories about how the towers collapsed. If someone would come up with something plausible I'd be happy to listen. Mini nukes and Nano explosives doesn't cut it.

Mr Blanchard is an aknowledged expert in the field of building demolitions. When you show me someone with the same credentials then we can talk.

[edit on 12-8-2006 by JIMC5499]