• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

'What about building 7'?

Status
Not open for further replies.
In my opinion, recasting the inconsequential WTC 7 as the new principal character was when it jumped the shark. When you have to justify why your suspicious outcome matters, you've lost any sort of reasonable argument. Trying to solve Kennedy's murder over and over again has some appeal because you don't have to justify why Kennedy's death was significant. But the squabble over WTC 7 is like trying to promote some random murder as necessarily conspiratorial because the victim was secretly someone very important, somehow.

It's like arguing that the "real point" of the Kennedy Assassination was to murder the unfortunate Officer J.D. Tippit. :boggled:
 
Last edited:
I am willing to accept a period of (+/-)free fall and even the characterization of it being for (+/- X)100 feet of drop.

Its significance is however, not demonstrated.
The entire free fall=CD idea is a complete handwave argument from AE911T that a bunch of people simply bought into.
nitpickery though
sqrt(100X2/32)=2.5 not 2.25
Apparently its 100(+/-20) feet
OR perhaps its not 'g'.

hey, I'd settle for MM acknowledging an acceleration of g does not require CD. One step at a time. We already did a whole thread on this and he couldn't do either thing: back up constant free fall, or contradict how g and over acceleration can be achieved on part of a building when another part goes first and they are attached. Must never have heard of a bungee cord, or pulled a broken branch off a tree with a rope.

Gee, tension is a force, who'd a thunk it?:boggled:
 
I have a big problem with a 47 storey modern office tower completely dropping to the ground in several seconds.
I highlighted the irrelevant terms meant to sound more impressive.

Especially when it is claimed that it was not caused by a controlled demolition but was blamed on office furnishing's fires.
Appeal to incredulity.
 
hey, I'd settle for MM acknowledging an acceleration of g does not require CD. :

That would be part of the non-demonstration of a period of near(+/-) free fall being significant. Its no more than a bald assertion by AE911T. They have done zero research into it and yet a two minute Google search shows that there are situations that can be set up that demonstrate that systems can be arranged such that parts of that system accelerate at greater than 'g'. Systems of connected individual structures can generate forces on other parts which add to the force due to gravity. While the whole system may not be accelerating at 'g', parts of it may be at , or above, 'g', and/or simplistic measurement of only a few points on the system can show that these points were at or above 'g'.

The falling rope ladder arrangement is a decent illustration of this. I could look it up but MM will either ignore it or miss the point that while its not meant to demonstrate exactly what DID take place in WTC 7, it does demonstrate that in a system of connected structures, simplistic Newtonian Law application does not work.

You or someone more familiar with the femr2 research could tell me if any points along the 'kink' were measured. That is a line on the structure that began falling before the rest, and MM's own stills above show that this kink out-paced the rest of the building.
Possible there's your tension force illustrated. the internal collapse would be doing the same thing but out of sight.
 
Last edited:
Especially when it is claimed that it was not caused by a controlled demolition but was blamed on office furnishing's fires.

Appeal to incredulity.
Its also a deliberately simplistic parsing of the contributing factors in the collapse of the building.

-There was previous impact damage , which although it did not cause collapse did contribute to the fashion in which it collapsed.
-There is the asymmetric arrangement of beams along some girders in the building that allowed greater deformation in one direction.
-There was the fact that the upper 40 storeys were largely constructed upon an eight storey tall elevated foundation in order to accommodate a preexisting structure.
-There was a core structure that relied upon heavy lateral bracing at its east and west extremities, and a very unique arrangement of columns in these areas.
 
Last edited:
What "many miles away"?
57 simultaneous explosions able to sever the 57 perimeter columns of WTC7 must have been loud enough to be heard from that distance. There's no way around that, and you can't pretend it can't be captured from such a distance like that of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2-R1L-FhFA or even not make the reporter shout from the explosions or their echoes.

Just as a reminder:

Concrete columns are generally easier to destroy, and usually require a small amount of conventional dynamite packed into specially drilled holes. Steel beams, however, require a very high-velocity explosive to perform a 'cutting' action through the steel. A specialized explosive called RDX, made famous by NASA’s space program, is used to perform this task.​
http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk3.html

So, you need a very powerful explosive to cut steel. (That, by the way, is why nanothermite explosives won't work.)

In short, your "best guess" doesn't fly. What's your second-best guess?
 
...A specialized explosive called RDX, made famous by NASA’s space program, is used to perform this task.​
http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk3.html

<snip>

So, you need a very powerful explosive to cut steel.

Well, darn, now you've gone and brought space science into it. Everyone remembers Challenger, I assume. The shuttle solid rocket booster is made from hardened steel, thinner than the web or flange of building structural steel. The fuel is thermite -- or close enough. It's aluminum mixed with ammonium perchlorate oxidizer. It burns hot and fast, and each SRB contains tons of it. It's made in segments, meaning that where the segments meet there's a gap across the whole transverse diameter of the booster. The infamous O-rings create the pressure-tight seal while thermal putty protects the inside of the steel casing from the fury of burning thermite that fills the gap.

We know from examining the launch film that the putty and the O-ring went up in a puff of smoke as soon as the stack flexed back from the characteristic "twang" of main engine ignition. So from that moment on, the inside of the steel casing was exposed to the full brunt of burning thermite. We found the pieces in the ocean later.

It took seventy seconds for tons of thermite to burn through the steel enough to let the hot gas escape and wreak havoc on the rest of the stack.

Everyone remembers what happened next -- the huge fireball of the deflagrating external tank, then two separate explosions as the SRB range safety devices were activated.

Guess what NASA uses RDX for? Range safety destruction of a rocket on ascent is meant to thoroughly fail the structure of the rocket, spill the propellants, and if possible assure that all propellants are combusted at altitude. So each rocket launched, including the shuttle SRBs, has a linear shaped charge of RDX running down the side. When fired, it instantly splits open the rocket casing all the way from top to bottom and spills the propellant.

ATK is one of my clients. So yes, I do know a bit about how thermite works in steel casings, and I do know what RDX destruction charges look and sound like. And from my 15 years working with them, this is partly why I think I can fairly represent the voice of the industry when they write off Richard Gage and his controlled-demolition-by-thermite claims as pure crackpottery.
 
hey, I'd settle for MM acknowledging an acceleration of g does not require CD.

The refutation of MM is one of those disjunctive kettle arguments that's akin to the situation in law where someone's case fails both as a matter of fact and also as a matter of law. Failure of fact is when the defendant didn't do what he's accused of. Failure of law is when what the defendant did wasn't against the law. Both can occur: he can have not done what he's accused of, but even if he did it wouldn't have been against the law.

I believe the law allows you to mount both defenses simultaneously, even though they're putatively contradictory. Outside the courtroom sometimes it seems better to stick to one, rather than to avoid confusion. But then also it's important at other times to know just how really wrong someone's claims are.

The part of this pseudo-dilemma that MM doesn't get is that it doesn't matter a single bit to the whole rebuttal whether the data show identically a free-fall collapse (with only insignificant statistical variation), or whether they show a variety of speeds.

Now it matters a whole lot to MM's case in chief, for his argument is

Buildings that free-fall must have been controlled demolition.
WTC 7 free-fell, therefore
WTC 7 must have been controlled demolition.​

His argument requires both premises to be true. But a successful rebuttal only has to undercut one of the premises. It just so happens that neither premise is true.

His major premise is entirely a begged question. He simply has a "big problem" with the notion that it could happen. But the people who are professionally qualified and well experienced with really big buildings made out of steel don't have any problem with it. And I don't either. I wouldn't call those buildings flimsy, but they exhibit a much higher structural efficiency than anything a layman might have built. Hence they fail differently -- specifically they don't magically exhibit in an inexhaustible supply of reserve strength. When a column buckles, for example, its strength is entirely gone. This and other important facts differ from the layman's presupposition.

The minor premise is also false, but refuting it is largely only to show the desperation in Truther claims. It doesn't affect their argument much, since the argument already fails upon its major premise. But it illustrates the depths to which Truthers sink to misrepresent and cherry-pick the data, which informs our ability to trust them as serious scholars. And subversion-of-support arguments do have a certain poetic air of finality. "If WTC 7 free-fell then it had to be controlled demolition!" Good thing it didn't, then.
 
Last edited:
hey, I'd settle for MM acknowledging an acceleration of g does not require CD.

All other things being equal, an object, whether it be a stone, or a 47 storey office tower, requires the 'virtually instant' removal of support in order to freely fall at gravitational acceleration.

When not held by lateral support, an object or building will 'sink' at the same rate of acceleration as that of its falling vertical support.

If an area of vertical support is lost, its load will be transferred to the remaining vertical bracing.

The overhanging upper load on the now unbraced area will create an increased torque which, if vertical support failure progresses, will cause an expected tilt, or possible vertical fracture, as the building's center of gravity shifts and leading support columns bend.

The bottom line is that without demolition, not all the vertical support would be expected to be lost in unison.

It is totally unrealistic to expect fires to induce the building to perform a high speed global collapse with comparable symmetry to that of a controlled demolition, unless it was a controlled demolition.

As the NIST engineers have agreed, for a period from
"1.75 to 4.0 seconds", the removal of support for WTC7 was sufficiently rapid that there were "no structural components below" resulting in a condition known as "free fall".

Unfortunately, for the NIST, they never explained why their WTC7 collapse hypothesis would permit free fall.

Without any re-evaluation, the NIST stuck by their original steel expansion hypothesis even after they 'later' acknowledged a stage 2 period free fall.

LSSBB you and others have failed to make a case for a non-controlled demolition (CD) scenario that would 'instantly' remove enough vertical support that both the east and west sides of the WTC7 were dropping in unison and in free fall.
 
It is totally unrealistic to expect fires to induce the building to perform a high speed global collapse with comparable symmetry to that of a controlled demolition, unless it was a controlled demolition.

In a nutshell....the troofer problem. They demand something be unrealistic that the vast majority of trained and licensed professionals find completely realistic.
No amount of reason, science, etc will sway them from their religious belief. :rolleyes:
 
The obsession of truthers with Building 7 never ceases to amaze me. The seem to have latched onto it because it "looked like" (at least superficially) a controlled demolition.

To buy into this notion one has to assume that the perpetrators were simultaneously fiendishly clever and unbelievably stupid.

The perpetrators were clever enough to somehow rig three large occupied office buildings for controlled demolition without any of the occupants noticing. Two of these buildings were buildings that almost everybody in the US, and a whole lot of people abroad knew about (they were the tallest buildings in the world when built). They arranged for planes to be crashed into these two buildings, and rigged the demolition such that the collapse initiated in the area of the impact of the planes.

Also, for some unknown reason, they rigged a more conventional demolition of Building 7, a nondescript office building that hardly anyone ever heard of, and, despite destroying the twin towers in a way that caused thousands of deaths, demolished 7 hours afterward, so that it was fully evacuated. Not only did they not bother to make it look different from a regular controlled demolition, they didn't even bother to crash a plane into it.

Also, of course, nobody in the "truth" movement has ever come up with a plausible reason for the destruction of Building 7. The choice of 1 and 2, for terrorists or false flag operation, is obvious. These were well known buildings, symbols of American wealth and power, with a whole lot of people inside to be killed.

Building 7: Who the heck ever even heard of it before 9/11? If your goal is to kill Americans, why would you wait to destroy it hours after the towers, and, if it was a false flag, why risk exposure by failing to hit it with a plane? It makes sense only to a "special" kind of mind.
 
Last edited:
The bottom line is that without demolition, not all the vertical support would be expected to be lost in unison.

It is totally unrealistic to expect fires to induce the building to perform a high speed global collapse with comparable symmetry to that of a controlled demolition, unless it was a controlled demolition.


Nope. That's the kind of judgment only a qualified engineer would be expected to make properly and accurately, and with the requisite knowledge to back it up.

You are not a qualified engineer of any kind.

By the way, where are you getting this weird notion that controlled demolitions are symmetrical? Most patently are not, intentionally so.

LSSBB you and others have failed to make a case for a non-controlled demolition (CD) scenario that would 'instantly' remove enough vertical support that both the east and west sides of the WTC7 were dropping in unison and in free fall.

By whose judgment? The entire relevant industry agrees that we have.
 
Last edited:
All other things being equal, an object, whether it be a stone, or a 47 storey office tower, requires the 'virtually instant' removal of support in order to freely fall at gravitational acceleration.
There lies your problem. The acceleration matching gravitational acceleration does not imply the fall was a free fall.

All you have proof of is that the average acceleration matched g for a certain period of time. But average acceleration = g does not imply falling freely. Even more so given that there are clear indications of the acceleration going over g for certain periods.

Therefore, using the term free fall to refer to the façade's collapse is disingenuous, because you don't know that, and there are strong indicators pointing otherwise. Your wishful thought that it was free fall does not give you authority to treat it as if it were, and continuing to conflate gravitational acceleration with free fall is lying. (Aren't you happy that lies are allowed in this forum? Imagine if you were banned for lying this way repeatedly the way you have!)

Not that that will make you change your free fall canard, I know. But if I call you out on that as a lie, at least you will know why.
 
Last edited:
Building 7: Who the heck ever even heard of it before 9/11?

That's the point. People died in WTC 1 and 2. People saw the buildings get hit, burn, and fall to the ground. Hence there was quite a lot of attention paid to the events surrounding the loss of those buildings and their inhabitants.

As a result, it's too hard for conspiracy theorists to pull the wool over people's eyes about those structures and events. People already know too much about them and there is already too much information available for fact-checking conspiracy claims.

So they jump ship to WTC 7, a building that burned unopoposed for hours and fell with no one inside it. Consequently it didn't much matter and didn't receive much attention. This allows conspiracy claimants to swoop in and work their special handwaving magic, claiming it was improperly or incompletely investigated and that the materials were whisked away unexamined, and that there is somehow something disastrously wrong with the way it fell down. All this, they declare, points to "something" suspicious about the building.

In other words, precisely the because the general public doesn't know very much about WTC 7, the conspircists can fill people's heads with whatever nonsense they want. It's a blank wall upon which they can smear conspiratorial boogers to their heart's content and rest comfortable in the belief that debunkers will find it tougher going.
 
Last edited:
Nope. That's the kind of judgment only a qualified engineer would be expected to make properly and accurately, and with the requisite knowledge to back it up.

You are not a qualified engineer of any kind.

By the way, where are you getting this weird notion that controlled demolitions are symmetrical? Most patently are not, intentionally so.
By my understanding symmetrical or not isn't the issue, it's irrelevant. CD's are engineered specifically to avoid damage to other buildings or minimize the impact on adjacent occupancies and the exact method with which that's achieved depends on the building being demolished and its surrounding context. If they come out symmetrical or not... it is what it is but it's not as though it's a specific criteria in of itself. THis specific point is true even if one argues WTC 7 was an "unconventional CD"... To get a building to fall in a specific manner the engineers have to know which structures to fail and in what order. But truthers in general don't care about design parameters. And a "natural" collapse could see similar results "IF" the structure has failed a particular way.

MM wants to draw conclusions from purely cursory visual exterior analysis and assumptions. That's all well and good but that doesn't provide any kind of design justification to suggest that the building could not have come down on its own due to damages, nor does he or other truthers elaborate on specific physical evidence that would prove beyond a doubt that the building was demolished with devices of some kind. So, their opinions aren't worth a darn as far as I'm concerned and arguing over those irrelevant points give more credit to their psuedo-science than deserved when they don't address the weaknesses in their claims
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom