The why of WTC7--Silverstein's blackmail

It is the rate of collapse that is critical. WTC7's roof hits the pavement in 6.5 seconds. A pool ball dropped from that height (approx 600ft.) hits the ground in 6.8 seconds. This necessarily means that all structural integrity was eliminated ahead of the collapse wave.

There is no getting around conservation of momentum. The rate of collapse demands that some force took out the support columns completely and simultaneously. There is no way to spin it otherwise.

Therefore, some form of demolition was used to being that building down. Period. And if that is the explanation for this unprecedented, complete collapse at free fall rate, then one must seriously consider that the tower's collapse were likewise precipitated by the addition of energy not admitted to by investigators.



[edit on 14-4-2007 by brisa]

Originally posted by Griff
Funny thing about the NYC DOB website is that they have deleted mostly all permit applications from viewing from WTC 1, 2 & 7.

Down the memory hole. Wasn't it Napoleon who said the victors get to write history?

Originally posted by SR
i would trust scientific fact, mathematical laws and physical laws wayyyyy more than i would of people's account. Because the funny thing is they have no reason to lie but people do.

Very well said, and cuts to the heart of the matter. The facts don't lie. Buildings simply don't fall like that, except by controlled demolition.

Brisa's post sums this up beautifully and succinctly.

All right, to recap:
It was a CD.
Bldg was randomly hit by debris from the North Tower at about 10:30 am.
NYFD is pulled out and office fires left to burn at about 11:30.
Bldg falls at about 5:30 pm.
No logic to pre-planted charges, because no guaranteed cover story for them.
Has to be a rush job then.

How & why?
Follow the money.

Originally posted by gottago
No logic to pre-planted charges, because no guaranteed cover story for them.
Has to be a rush job then.

They could have planted explosives and calculated the force needed for part of the tower to collapse on WTC 7. So, I believe that they could have pre-planted and still have been sure of it's workability. Just my opinion though.

Originally posted by gottago
is there a standard means of calculating a safety factor

I have to correct myself. 1.6 is a load factor, which yields a factor of safety of 1.6. I forgot to add that on the other side of the equation, so to speak, there is also more redundancy built in. When you design, you take the allowable strength as 85% of the ultimate strength. So, that builds in more redundancy. So, it is 1.6 + 1.1 (1/.85), which gives us 2.7. Which is about right. Most factor of safeties for steel are around 2.5-3 I believe. Just had to correct myself there. I knew something didn't seem right with 1.6.

Edit: I only used 1.6 in the begininning because I've heard that that was the factor of safety (of course from the official side) and wanted to be conservative.

[edit on 4/15/2007 by Griff]

Originally posted by Griff

Originally posted by gottago
No logic to pre-planted charges, because no guaranteed cover story for them.
Has to be a rush job then.

They could have planted explosives and calculated the force needed for part of the tower to collapse on WTC 7. So, I believe that they could have pre-planted and still have been sure of it's workability. Just my opinion though.

Griff,

You're saying that they might have placed some sort of shaped charges in WTC 1 to ensure that the debris would reach to WTC 7?

Here are some pics of WTC 1 exploding, with and without WTC 7 in view:







I don't see any evidence of the Tower exploding asymetrically. And even with such foresight, I still don't think there would be any guarantee that the debris would reach its target, or do enough damage to provide cover.

Here is link to a page with some excellent photographic documentation of the damage to WTC 7 and it's relation to the main WTC site: wtc 7 pics and related damage

WTC 7 was approximately 350 feet away from WTC 1. That is a long way for a sufficiently compacted, non-dispersed mass of ejecta to fall from WTC 1 and still do the observable damage. I just don't buy it. How could randomly falling, parabolically ejected steel members, traveling nearly straight down, create that damage? You'd have a glancing blow that would not strip away as much structure as occurred.

Note also that the footprint of the building is a flaring trapezoid and the damage occurred on the oblique, short corner. The much wider wedge of building to the north was untouched and would have been able to carry the building mass, since most of it was in the northern half of the building. Those flaring angles would act like buttresses and re-enforce stability.

But what is so interesting here is not WTC 7's relation to the North Tower but the building's relation to WTC 6, whose center has been gutted like some huge apple corer was taken to it, with deep, sharply defined holes also seen in WTC 5 adjoining. Excellent overhead view of site here.

I think the damage to WTC 7 was collateral damage to whatever vaporized the core of WTC 6 and punched those neat holes in WTC 5. It wasn't falling, dispersed debris from the North Tower.

[cleanup]

[edit on 15-4-2007 by gottago]

Originally posted by Griff

Originally posted by gottago
is there a standard means of calculating a safety factor

I have to correct myself. 1.6 is a load factor, which yields a factor of safety of 1.6. I forgot to add that on the other side of the equation, so to speak, there is also more redundancy built in. When you design, you take the allowable strength as 85% of the ultimate strength. So, that builds in more redundancy. So, it is 1.6 + 1.1 (1/.85), which gives us 2.7. Which is about right. Most factor of safeties for steel are around 2.5-3 I believe.

Griff,

Thanks very much for the information and clarification.

Assuming the three SW corner column lines--even four--were undercut, and with redundancy at 2.7 times building mass, and the flaring, trapezoidal floorplan, free-fall collapse is preposterous.