The iceberg cannot stop the ship by itself if it only applies a force of 1N. Since the propeller is providing 1N, to stop the ship will require a force in the opposite direction of greater than 1N. If you include the 1N from the iceberg and the 1N from water resistance, from your example, the ship will eventually be stopped. Although since your 1N of water resistance requires the ship to be moving at a particular speed, this resistance will decrease as the ships speed decreases, which would mean that the ship takes a nearly infinite amount of time to reach a full stop. But as we keep telling you, stopping the ship requires a force GREATER than the one already present in the opposite direction.
To equate to the towers...to arrest the collapse, the sum of the forces acting against gravity must be greater than the force of gravity to arrest the collapse.
ETA: Italics
Let's take it again in laymen's terms. Ship is pushed by propeller force 1 N at certain speed x and is subject to resistance force -1 N at that speed x. There is balance of forces and you cruise at constant speed x. No acceleration. For every meter you cruise the energy required is 1 Nm.
Now you hit an ice berg and let's assume that the ship stops at once (rapid deceleration to x = 0), but is still pushed forward by the propeller force 1 N.
As there is no velocity any more, there is no water resistance; reason why the ship does not move any longer is that the ice berg applies force -1 N on the ship.
There is again balance of forces, etc. But you do not move. But energy is still required to push the ship with 1 N against the ice berg. If you look aft you will now see the propeller pushing a lot of water aft - that's where the energy goes to produce 1 N!
Anyway - back to the ice berg at the other end. Before the impact with the ice berg propeller force 1 N was nicely balanced by water resistance force -1 N and you happily cruised at speed x. The propeller was designed to produce this thrust/force 1 N = no problems there. The water resistance force -1 N was applied to the complete wet surface of the ship = no problems there. Big surface! Some paint may be polished off.
But when you hit the ice berg, BANG, and the velocity suddenly becomes 0 (very rapid deceleration and anything loose on the ship will proceed with speed x forward), the propeller pushes the ship against it with force 1 N, the ice berg applies the force - 1 N only to the shaped bow of the ship. And that bow was not designed to resist a point load of -1 N. Local stresses in the structure will become very high. But the total force is still only - 1N.
Please - you must realise that the force cannot be bigger than -1 N! But it is sufficient to stop the ship and cause havock.
Thus the bow is damaged, CRUNCH! (Evidently also the ice berg is deformed a little, but who cares about an ice berg?)
But you could be lucky! Say the ship's bow was made extra strong to resist a collision with an ice berg, i.e. to resist force -1 N applied to the bow; then you may bounce off the ice berg and go off in another direction. Or stop.
Or, do you just slice through the iceberg using your propeller force 1 N and continue at constant speed and no deceleration at impact, etc? This is unlikely in reality, but
this is what Bazant wants you believe in his NWO ivory tower. For this strange event to take place Bazant assumes
that the ship suddenly becomes rigid and applies a shock wave into the ice berg so it collapses into snow flakes ... and the ship proceeds as if nothing had happened (just the water still providing resistance as usual).
But believe me - the ice berg will stop the ship. The Bazant shock wave will not produce snow flakes. You need plenty of energy to crush an ice berg into snow flakes and it is not available at the impact. Same applies when the WTC1 top collides with the lower structure.
BTW - it does not take infinite time to stop a ship, if you shut off the propeller force 1N at speed x. The ship will just decelerate at a certain rate, while the kinetic energy available when you shut of the propeller - mx²/2 Nm - is absorbed by the water resistance/friction (a function of speed at any time during deceleration). When the kinetic energy is consumed, ship stops. Just try it yourself in any boat. If you impact an ice berg or a jetty, you will be stopped much quicker though.