Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact

Originally posted by bsbray11
Yeah, but that goes back to NIST, because he's going off of NIST figures here. So basically what your post amounts to is "Keep in mind NIST may be lying." And even though NIST has made similar disclaimers, they're the only ones giving out information anymore, because they're the only ones with the blueprints.

I may have missed this somewhere previously, but have efforts been made to obtain the blueprints under the FOIA? I mean there can be no reason for keeping them under wraps...

Originally posted by Zamboni
Howard,

I am a Structural Engineer .. and a global collapse scenario is impossible. Even if the the 'steel had melted' as the government and NIST contends the below impact structure would have resisted collapse and reduced the rate of fall or at the very least deflected the momentum of mass.

The 'smoke clouds' seen rising at the tower's base before they collpased was most likely from explosives in the sub ground level demolishing the core super structure. This in turn would cause vertical fall of the core while other thermite charges were detonated at 30 floor intervals cauing a uniform an explosive global collapse.

Any truthful structural engineer will deduce the same conclusion just the same as any demolition expert would also(and did).

No real structural engineer would ever make a blanket statement such as “a global collapse scenario is impossible.”

Nor would a real structural engineer ever make the statement that NIST and the government claim that the “steel had melted.”

Originally posted by SKMDC1
1. WTC 7 was demolished. It didn't collapse because of fire.

What about the partial collapse of Building 6? It was right next to building 7.

Was that also a “deliberate demolition?”

From Trumpman’s paper:

There was no detectable fatiguing or bending of perimeter columns prior to collapse. What one sees is a motionless building rigidly retaining its shape, then suddenly goes into catastrophic, out-of-control collapse. There is no in-between state that would be typical of steel in fire.

Wrong.

He ignores the clear indications that the perimeter walls were buckling inward shortly before the collapses of both buildings.

It’s not like he missed the data since he later makes the claim:

If weak bolts broke to cause the collapse, how is it that these same weak bolts were strong enough to pull on the hundreds of massive steel columns and make them bow? How can weak bolts withstand fire, but entire floor systems droop and sag? How can weak bolts during fire be strong and weak at the same time?

Which, BTW is a total misrepresentation of what is said in the NIST report and the facts as well.

His statement:

But the WTC 1 collapse is a unique situation. The building did not fall all at once, but floor by floor.

is also rather disingenuous. Since a floor by floor collapse is that signature of a progressive structural failure while if it “fell all at once” would be a sign of a controlled demolition.

His use of the following comparison is pointless since the description that he provides is insufficient to adequately compare the two structures and their respective columns.

I want to point out that the WTC 1 had massive steel columns. The building used 100,000 tons of steel. Large columns would have required large demolition charges. To corroborate, this is what a well-known demolition company, Controlled Demolition Inc (CDI), had to say about a demolition of the JL Hudson building, a structure about 1/2 as massive as WTC 1:

"Columns weighing over 500 lb/ft, having up to 7.25 inch thick laminated steel flanges and 6 inch thick webs, defied commercially available shaped charge technology. CDI analyzed each column, determined the actual load it carried and then used cutting torches to scarf-off steel plates in order to use smaller shaped charges to cut the remaining steel. CDI wanted to keep the charges as small as possible to reduce air over pressure that could break windows in adjacent properties."

Furthermore, in reading that, one has to wonder if Trumpman is making a case for or against a controlled demolition.

As for his calculations, This part makes no sense whatsoever:

On average, about 15 perimeter columns were severed per floor. This is about 40% of the total severed perimeter columns. Using this percentage we can scale and estimate how many severed columns per floor. We find that the equivalent severed column average is 16 for the perimeter and 3 for the core per floor. This means the perimeter was weakened 7% and the core weakened 6%. This corroborates that the impact of a Boeing 767 at high speed did not cause overwhelming structural damage to the WTC 1. The average weakening of a floor comes out to be 6.4%. Adjusting our steel figure we get 435 MPa.

This type of calculation is totally oversimplified and wrong. Firstly you can not work the numbers for a “per floor” average. The loss of a column affects the al of the loads carried by that column above the impact point.

Also, you have to look at the redistribution of the loads, etc. which is exactly what NIST did.

As for his other calculations, they are equally meaningless, since he assumes that the damage is evenly distributed and that the loads are evenly redistributed. That is simply not the case.

Verdict: Trumpman is another “Conspiracy Guru wanabe” who is deliberately biasing his arguments and calculations to support his contentions.

Originally posted by hands

Originally posted by bsbray11
Yeah, but that goes back to NIST, because he's going off of NIST figures here. So basically what your post amounts to is "Keep in mind NIST may be lying." And even though NIST has made similar disclaimers, they're the only ones giving out information anymore, because they're the only ones with the blueprints.

I may have missed this somewhere previously, but have efforts been made to obtain the blueprints under the FOIA? I mean there can be no reason for keeping them under wraps...

Go ahead and ask for them. They belong to the Port Authority BTW, so you will have to ask them, and probably pay to have them duplicated.

THe NIST report contains enough data for a resonably competant engineer to reconstruct the design. Why don't you check with Zamboni or MacMerdin.

Going back a couple of pages . . .

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
Get a syringe, depress the plunger, isn't the air excaping out of the syringe before the plunger reaches the end of travel ?

But it's not going to come out at 10 or 15 miles per hour when you're only pressing down on the syringe at 5 mph.

Oops, sorry, but yes it will

Because the hole in the end of the syringe is smaller than the cylinder and plunger, the air will have to speed up as it passes through the hole.


Now if air were non-compressible fluid, then the speed of the air leaving the syringe would be easy to calculate.

If the opening in the end were 1/4 the diameter of the cylinder, then the fluid would exit the opening at 4 times the speed of the plunger.

Since air is compressible, the speed that it exits the end is influenced by drag and other factors that can affect the pressure build up. However, this doesn’t mean that the air can’t move faster then the speed of the plunger.



[edit on 30-12-2005 by HowardRoark]

Originally posted by hands
I may have missed this somewhere previously, but have efforts been made to obtain the blueprints under the FOIA? I mean there can be no reason for keeping them under wraps...

I'm sure many efforts have been made. MacMerdin, an engineer that posts here, has even been trying to obtain them for personal investigation for a while.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
No real structural engineer would ever make a blanket statement such as “a global collapse scenario is impossible.”

Alright, Howard. I'll entertain this.

WTC aside, show us global collapses of any skyscrapers by means other than demolition and/or earthquake.



...What? There haven't been any?

Then there's no evidence that global collapse of a skyscraper could occur by any other means than earthquake or demolition. You should try to discredit people with a little more substance, or at least sound logic.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
What about the partial collapse of Building 6? It was right next to building 7.

Was that also a “deliberate demolition?”

Building 7: A skyscraper that completely collapses vertically and symmetrically, and at the rate of the free-fall.

Building 6: "Partial collapses" as in holes in the roof, allegedly from falling material from the WTC1 and 2 collapses. Only a few stories tall.

How on Earth do you find those comparable, Howard? And yet the WTC Towers and other skyscrapers can never be compared?

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Wrong.

He ignores the clear indications that the perimeter walls were buckling inward shortly before the collapses of both buildings.

Trumpman debunks the buckling in the same paper, Howard. Look through it again.

If weak bolts broke to cause the collapse, how is it that these same weak bolts were strong enough to pull on the hundreds of massive steel columns and make them bow? How can weak bolts withstand fire, but entire floor systems droop and sag? How can weak bolts during fire be strong and weak at the same time?

Which, BTW is a total misrepresentation of what is said in the NIST report and the facts as well.

I don't know what "facts" you are talking about, as there is absolutely no evidence of floors drooping before collapse or any of that bull, but if there is such a misrepresentation of NIST, then what do you think the report says about the failure of the one single floor that it focuses on?

Since a floor by floor collapse is that signature of a progressive structural failure while if it “fell all at once” would be a sign of a controlled demolition.

Firstly, progressive collapses do not exist (only alleged PC's being The Murrah Building and the WTCs: progressive collapse = controlled demolition that's being lied about. They can't even reproduce the things with computer simulations), and secondly, demolition charges can be programmed to go off in whatever order they're needed to, including down buildings in sequence.

In fact, you'll notice the same speed of collapse was maintained in both collapses. No slowing down, even as massive amounts of momentum should've been lost on each floor, especially with so much mass falling over the sides, and with each progressing floor having stronger and stronger columns. Yet the speed never changes! That is a sign of controlled demo: charges going off in sequence at set intervals, "boom boom boom," as the firefighters put it, all the way down.

It would be impossible for a gravity-driven collapse to maintain the same rate of collapse without losing momentum. Therefore the collapses could not possibly have been gravity-driven.

This type of calculation is totally oversimplified and wrong. Firstly you can not work the numbers for a “per floor” average. The loss of a column affects the al of the loads carried by that column above the impact point.

Also, you have to look at the redistribution of the loads, etc. which is exactly what NIST did.

As for his other calculations, they are equally meaningless, since he assumes that the damage is evenly distributed and that the loads are evenly redistributed. That is simply not the case.

1) The figures are "simplified" because of the lack of information from NIST.

2) The figures give advantages to the official story by assuming averaged load capacities, weights, etc., for the floors being calculated (the highest floors), when in reality these floors were much lighter, with smaller columns, and could withstand much less weight. It's making the so-called "plunger" bigger; it gives strength to the official story and yet the official story still fails to compute.

3) The assumptions that the loads were evenly distributed is as relevant as any other assumptions, because the buildings fell straight down. That's another problem yet to be explained, Howard: why did the angular momentum disappear, and how did the buildings remain so symmetrical all the way down?

4) NIST's own report is a whitewash, and all of its conclusions are huge jumps taken on no solid evidence; the only thing the report is good for is providing figures to work with for our own calculations.

Verdict: Back to the drawing board, lil' Howard. This one just won't pass for a debunking. You've lost your touch.

[edit on 30-12-2005 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by HowardRoark
THe NIST report contains enough data for a resonably competant engineer to reconstruct the design. Why don't you check with Zamboni or MacMerdin.

MacMerdin's already posted his experiences with the NIST report's data:

Originally posted by MacMerdin
All I have to say to NIST......poor job guys.

Keep in mind that the WTC collapses are really only within the expertise of physicists, and demolition engineers. Structural engineers have least to do with it, as their expertise is in making buildings stand, and not how they're supposed to fall, or what the collapse physics would indicate.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Going back a couple of pages . . .

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
Get a syringe, depress the plunger, isn't the air excaping out of the syringe before the plunger reaches the end of travel ?

But it's not going to come out at 10 or 15 miles per hour when you're only pressing down on the syringe at 5 mph.

Oops, sorry, but yes it will

Because the hole in the end of the syringe is smaller than the cylinder and plunger, the air will have to speed up as it passes through the hole.

Funny, I was actually waiting for you to respond with something like this immediately after I posted that.

The fact is that the WTC towers were equal on both ends. One side wasn't smaller. Your whole point is null.

Ahhh...

But the stairwells and ventalation ducts are smaller than the area of the floors (aka plunger)...

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
Ahhh...

But the stairwells and ventalation ducts are smaller than the area of the floors (aka plunger)

...

The stairwells and ventalations ducts weren't exploding, now, were they?

The wide-open floors were. Look at the floor charts and match up the explosions.



[edit on 30-12-2005 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
Ahhh...

But the stairwells and ventalation ducts are smaller than the area of the floors (aka plunger)

...

The stairwells and ventalations ducts weren't exploding, now, were they?

The wide-open floors were. Look at the floor charts and match up the explosions.

[edit on 30-12-2005 by bsbray11]

I'm sorry you've lost me...

So now you're saying that the entire floors were exploding, and that the bombs were placed there, instead of the core columbs???

And no the stairwells and vents weren't exploding because there were no bombs...

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
I'm sorry you've lost me...

So now you're saying that the entire floors were exploding, and that the bombs were placed there, instead of the core columbs???

Dude, you really should consider having some idea as to what you're talking about before responding to something. It's obvious you're having trouble understanding the argumentation behind these kinds of points, even though they've been fleshed out repeatedly, and yet you try to post contradictory info anyway. It's just some automatic reflex for you to post, apparently. It's no surprise at all that you're lost.

The "bombs" blew out the perimeter "columbs" in a very rapid fashion, while something else took down the core independently. Watch the WTC1 collapse from Hoboken and you can see the core still standing after the perimeter all falls away, and then the core collapses straight down upon itself from the base. This proves that the pancake theory is wrong, too, btw, but even NIST has abandoned that one by now.


When you see the squibs and claim they're air, you're claiming that the air from a floor - not a vent, not an exploding janitor's closet, etc. etc. hopeless grasping at straws, but air from an open floor - blew out a random section of perimeter column. That's why I've been saying the air would've had to have been some kind of magical, uncompressing fairy land air. Either that or the whole air theory is bunkum. Which do you think is more likely?

And no the stairwells and vents weren't exploding because there were no bombs...

Nice. Might help you out if you could keep a single train of thought for more than two posts.

[edit on 30-12-2005 by bsbray11]

When you see the video, it looks more like it's just being pushed out gradually and for a sustained period of time. It's not an explosive burst at all, if some windows were out in that area and there were fires or smoke on that floor then it would be pushed out the opening. But regardless, in the video it doesn't behave explosively at all, it acts like air being pushed out of a confined opening.

[edit on 30-12-2005 by AgentSmith]

bsbray11 do you think you could post with a little less condescension. I'm sure you can make your point without insulting people.

Point made?

[edit on 30-12-2005 by intrepid]

Sorry, Intrepid. It just gets old, you know? Like, all offense aside, his logic did a complete 360 over the course of two posts, to avoid showing a misunderstanding. x.x

But yeah, point taken.

Originally posted by bsbray11


Keep in mind that the WTC collapses are really only within the expertise of physicists, and demolition engineers. Structural engineers have least to do with it, as their expertise is in making buildings stand, and not how they're supposed to fall, or what the collapse physics would indicate.

I can't believe you just said this after spending several posts in a row on this thread trying to win an argument with nothing but sheer obnoxiousness. What do you think they get a set of "special" equations that vary from all the others the rest of us engineers would use?

Any mechanical, aerospace, controls or structural engineer worth their salt can work with the failure, dynamics and harmonics involved in a building collapse. That Howard has for some unknown reason decided to commit himself to standing against people so committed to holding to bad science shows he's got a lot more patience than me.

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by Jedi_Master
I'm sorry you've lost me...

So now you're saying that the entire floors were exploding, and that the bombs were placed there, instead of the core columbs???

When you see the squibs and claim they're air, you're claiming that the air from a floor - not a vent, not an exploding janitor's closet, etc. etc. hopeless grasping at straws, but air from an open floor - blew out a random section of perimeter column. That's why I've been saying the air would've had to have been some kind of magical, uncompressing fairy land air. Either that or the whole air theory is bunkum. Which do you think is more likely?

No...

I'm claiming that the action of the floors collapsing comressed the air causing it to build up enough pressure to blow out the windows, and knock the firemen off their feet that were on the lower floors...

All compressed air needs is a conduit such as a vent or stair well to travel...

BTW how old are you?

[edit on 30-12-2005 by Jedi_Master]

ALL RIGHT, ENOUGH SNIPING!

Originally posted by Valhall
I can't believe you just said this after spending several posts in a row on this thread trying to win an argument with nothing but sheer obnoxiousness. What do you think they get a set of "special" equations that vary from all the others the rest of us engineers would use?

No; apologies. I'm sure any engineer is just as able to plug in the appropriate formulas as the next, but Howard has had the whole issue focused around structural engineers and structural engineering since the beginning, when, really, the most conspicuous oddities of the collapses are not oddities of structural engineering but oddities of basic physics. The structural engineering side is just a bunch of speculation as to what failed first, what had to fail when and how to do this or that, etc., and even then there's little to no evidence to corroborate what NIST has put forward with this information in the first place.

There's a big tendency to use some structural engineering jargon about how these columns buckled, or these slabs sagged, and suddenly it doesn't matter that the initial angular momentum was totally lost upon the initiation of the vertical collapse: the physicist is thrown to the side in favor of engineers that are having their attention drawn to lesser, trivial issues of the collapses that make assumptions that are not necessarily true (for example, that any one floor was weak enough from impact damage and fire to collapse - let alone some scenario of 13 light floors crushing 97 heavier into dust and shards). By emphasizing physicists and demo engineers, I was just countering Howard's bias towards the NIST report and its presentation.

That Howard has for some unknown reason decided to commit himself to standing against people so committed to holding to bad science shows he's got a lot more patience than me.

Yeah, I've found that interesting as well. I'd been starting to get tired of the bad science coming from him, when I decided to take up his style of posting, as I've experienced it first hand from him for a few months or so now. But now I guess I've been applying his style a little too densely [pun there ], for the past handful of posts, as apparently the attitude is much more repulsing when coming from this side of the table. But hey - at least it's been more than 2 pages since the last time I called someone an "idiot."

[edit on 30-12-2005 by bsbray11]

Okay, let me be real clear, since I don't have the patience to stick with arguing like Howard does, that running the numbers myself, analyzing the damage photos myself, and using my own educated brain - without knowing what NIST claims - this is what this engineer believes:

1. there was enough substantial damage (completely missing support members) to the outer support structure of WTC1 and WTC2 to immediately cause a situation where the remaining intact support structures were reaching their capacity for the floors affected;

2. the heat generated by the burning fuel was sufficient to weaken the remaining steel support structures, both on the outer shell as well as the inner column - maybe more importantly MORE on the inner column, because the heat would have had a harder time of being dissipated via the breached outer walls when you look at its effect on the inner columns. I did my own analysis on this that has been posted in a couple of threads now. It depends on no agency's data, and is extremely conservative toward avoiding failure. This weakening due to heat would have been affecting the remaining support structures which had already taken on added loading due to the missing support structures referenced in number 1;

3. If one single floor referenced in number 1, and affected by number 2, had collapsed (which calculations show would have happened) you would have (depending on which tower between WTC1 and WTC2) between a 10 to 30 story building dropping through approximately 12 feet as that floor collapsed.

Now - here's where I tend to lose my patience and leave it to Howard. If you are so deft to believe that a 30 story building could fall 12 feet, hit another damaged and weakened floor that is designed to carry a static load that its support members are already exceeding, and think that the dynamic loading of that 30 story building impacting wouldn't cause a progressive failure....

I leave you to your servitude.

Because it appears you are enslaved to your own obsession; your own dogma, and will not listen to reason.