To chrismohr,
Thanks for posting your final video, number 18, which looks at the collapse of WTC7. You have asked for opinions about this so I’ll offer my input.
As a former architect myself, I will reveal that I do not believe the NIST NCSTAR 1A report and as much of your work here reflects what they have written this video is subject to the same criticisms which I levy to the NIST report on WTC7, a report which is based on pseudo science and distortions.
To focus more on the latter part of your video first I will start by looking at the symmetry of collapse, something that you do mention but you too distort to favour your own agenda. As is often the case with debunkers like yourself, you try to tie the collapse of the penthouse with any statements about the symmetry of destruction and clearly this is not fair or correct. What the ‘truth’ movement refers to when discussing the symmetry of collapse is the latter stage of the building’s failure when the main bulk of the building falls vertically to the ground. This is a clear and obvious stage and even NIST discusses this as being a distinct phase in the process of destruction referring to it as the ‘global collapse’. Therefore to suggest that the building’s failure was purely asymmetrical is wrong, especially when the evidence shows very clearly that after the fall of the penthouse, the remaining building, and that means most of it, fell straight down into its own footprint; not just the north wall, but at least three walls as seen in the available CBS and NBC videos. You need to be more honest here.
Also, contrary to your own interpretation of NIST’s report, you should make it clear to the viewer that NIST could not account for much of the physics in the latter stage claiming it to be uncertain, random and less precise. In fact they couldn’t even get their own models to fit very well as their simulations clearly show the outer walls starting to deform where as in practice they never did. Also, when describing the slight kink in the building compared with their own models NIST had to state that...., “the simulations do show the formation of the kink, but any subsequent movement of the building is beyond the reliability of the physics in the model”. Hmmm, doesn’t sound convincing to me and maybe not to many others either so why not come clean and mention this?
But what concerns me more is that NIST must have changed the parameters of its own computer simulation in order to get it to fit at all since they make the ridiculous assumption that steel buildings will effortlessly fall apart and return to their individual elements of I-sections and connectors when put under stress by gravity. This is simply not the case and perhaps this is why their own data is kept secret from public view. Buildings, especially steel ones, put up enormous resistance to being broken apart in such conditions because all those elements have been acting as a homogenous unit since construction and therefore never allow complete progressive collapse to occur. This makes your claim that WTC7 followed the ‘classic’ form of progressive destruction a gross distortion since no high-rise steel building has ever fully collapsed due to fire or damage prior to or since 9/11 making such comparison impossible. Again, you make it sound to the watcher that it is a common, everyday sort of event, when it is not.
I would put it to you that a more logical and probable reason for the outer walls remaining vertical and almost fully intact while the building fell is because the inner floors and columns were intact also. I could also draw a diagram like yours and show this and it would have as much validity as your example, in fact more so since it doesn’t rely on the many assumptions you make about buildings falling to pieces from the inside out or the north facade falling faster than free-fall due to a pivoting action! (which couldn’t have happen anyway since the east and west sides were intact too). I would argue that the simple fact the ‘global collapse’ occurred as it did; symmetrically, straight down at free-fall or near free-fall speed and with little or no deformation to the outer walls was because every supporting member of the lower floors had been removed of structural integrity at exactly the same time. Had this not happened, the bulk of the building would have rotated and toppled over or only partially collapsed, something which even NIST acknowledges. Only controlled demolition can cause such structural failure across the entire plan of such a massive building so quickly.
In short, I’m sorry to say that your video is an extremely lame rebuttal of the argument by Richard Gage and certainly does not put an end to the controlled demolition theory. By the way, steel I-sections do not snap like sticks.
