Offer to the Truth Movement: Let's Settle It

[beachnut]

I had thought that features of the collapse of WTC7 was already well known.

For evidence I will cite a video.
Remember that as a new poster I cannot give external references.
But google the phrase "reviewing the nist report on wtc 7" and you should get to a video presented by David Chandler.

I have downloaded a video of the WTC7 collapse, and the Physics Toolkit software used in the making of that video and verified the free fall collapse for myself.

The video is wrong, as in false.

One of those video leaves out the first movement to come up with his numbers. So these truth guys are all frauds, you have been taken.

The inside of WTC fell in first. You have no idea what speed a building falls at. But WTC7 had no explosives, and there is no motive except in the minds of CTers who make it up.

WTC7 did not fall at free fall.

Now all you need is evidence and some big bangs.

BTW, other high-rise buildings have been totaled by fire.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Ultra short version:
If WTC7 was not a controlled demolition, why does it look like one?

Because the collapse of tall buildings due to any other cause than controlled demolition is a very rare event. In the absence of other experiences for comparison, it's natural to focus on the similarities and to ignore the very obvious differences. The best example of this is the WTC1 and WTC2 collapses; despite the fact that both these collapses initiated near the tops of the buildings, completely unlike any high-rise building demolition, many observers claimed that these resembled controlled demolitions.

The walls of WTC7 came down suddenly, simultaneously, virtually straight down and virtually in free fall.
These are all characteristic of a controlled implosion which supposedly can only be brought about with the skill of expert demolition contractors.

These are not necessarily all true assertions. In the absence of synchronised multi-view films of the WTC7 collapse, it's very difficult to ascertain whether all the walls fell simultaneously, but it's clear from the collapse dynamics that part of the core failed several seconds before the perimeter columns, that the remainder of the core failed slightly before the perimeter columns, and that exterior columns in the centre of the North face failed slightly in advance of the columns to either side. There are videos which show a visible tilt of the building as it fell. Finally, the main requirement on the skill of expert demolition contractors is to collapse a building without causing damage to adjacent buildings, whereas several buildings adjacent to WTC7 were damaged by its collapse.

In the absence of cases of buildings collapsing due to other causes, it's of course very difficult to determine to what extent they should resemble collapses due to explosives. The argument "It looks like a CD, so it must be a CD" isn't therefore a very convincing one; there's no reason to believe a collapse due to fire-indiced failure necessarily looks so different as to be distinguishable on the level you suggest. There are, however, ways in which the collapse differs from a CD, specifically that there wasn't any sufficiently loud blast heard at the time of collapse initiation to have severed even a single core column.

The commonly used argument by certain doubters of the generally accepted sequence of events, of course, is that there was no sound because thermite, rather than explosives, was used to sever the columns. However, this negates the argument that the collapse looks like a demolition using explosives, because it claims that the collapse was not initiated by explosives. Since it's the very precise control of the time of detonation of explosives that's used to cause buildings to fall in a controlled manner, and this level of control is not available with thermite, then a claim that thermite can be used to collapse a building in the same way as explosives is equivalent to a claim that precise control is not needed to produce a collapse with the appearance of that of WTC7. This, therefore, supports, rather than contradicts, the possibility that an equivalent collapse could have been caused by fire damage. This, together with the undisputed fact that on no verifiable occasion has thermite been used to cause the collapse of a large building, leaves fire damage as a more probable hypothesis; fire was known to be present, and modelling supports the hypothesis, whereas thermite was not known to have been present and no fully formed hypothesis has been presented for its possible use.

In order to NOT believe demolition then you have to believe in a different mechanism that can cause the walls to have come down in that way.
I'd like to know what that mechanism is.

A hypothetical mechanism has been described in the draft NIST report. It will never be possible to be absolutely certain of the detailed collapse dynamics. If your requirement for belief that 9/11 progressed as understood is that such a mechanism be established, then be assured that it will not; there would, in that instance, be little point in your continuing to debate the issue.

Plus, I am sorry to say, that due to the dishonest way that the NIST report on WTC7 has dealt with the issue, I feel I would also need some kind of evidence to back up a claim that such a mechanism is what actually happened.

So far as evidence of dishonesty on the part of NIST is concerned, all that I've so far seen presented is that:
(1) Statements made by NIST about their working hypothesis in the provisional report have been shown to be incorrect by data presented in the final report. This is hardly surprising; if every working hypothesis or tentative conclusion had been correct, there would have been no point in carrying out the subsequent work. This is not therefore evidence of dishonesty, but of NIST revising their conclusions in the light of further analysis. For a comment on this, see my signature.
(2) Commentators have estimated fire areas, durations and temperatures by eye from NIST's published figures and claimed that these simple estimates differ from NIST's summaries of the same data. Trying to perform an integration by eye from a false colour chart is sufficiently difficult that I'd be amazed if they didn't.

If you have any other evidence than this that NIST is dishonest, please post it. If it's just the two points above, there are threads on both these issues that may interest you.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

Can I not treat an overall outward resemblance to CD as one claim?

I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to proceed. On this specific point, I'd like to add a little more detail.

What you're actually claiming is an outward visual resemblance to CD. Let's look at the other areas of possible resemblance, based on what we know from the observed features of the collapse.

From the prior fall of the east mechanical penthouse, we know that at least one of columns 79, 80 or 81, most probably 79 from its location, failed before any other part of the structure. These three columns were roughly the same size and strength, so the same size explosive charge would be required to sever any of the three. NIST has calculated that a charge large enough to sever column 79 would produce a noise level of 130dB within a half mile radius of WTC7. A reasonable question is, how loud is 130dB? From the BBC health website on noise damage to the ear:

As a general rule, any noise above 90 decibels (dB) risks injury to the ears and the louder the noise the shorter exposure needed for damage. Hearing of high pitch notes is lost first, and as damage persists lower tones are also lost.
From 90dB to 120dB, the deafness and pain may be temporary. But ringing in the ears, or tinnitus, may persist and be a sign that damage has been done. Above 120dB, injury is very likely indeed.
As a guide, normal conversation is about 50dB to 60dB, what the brain perceives as loud music is about 100dB, a pneumatic drill at 1m (3.2ft) is about 120dB and a jet engine at 30m (98.4ft) is about 130dB.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/ask_the_doctor/noiselevels.shtml

Although a few observers have reported hearing loud noises as WTC7 fell, none report noises this loud. If WTC7 had been brought down by explosives, we would expect to see temporary deafness to everyone within a half-mile radius, with a very large number of those suffering permanent hearing impairment. This, quite simply, did not happen.

It's fairly trivial to conclude that the collapse of WTC7 could not have been caused by pre-planted explosives. To say, as NIST did, that blast events could have played no part in the collapse, is perhaps a slight overstatement; but quite simply, whatever the visual similarities, the audible dissimilarities prove beyond the possibility of doubt that the collapse of WTC7 was not an explosive demolition.

Dave

 

[Disbelief]

Ultra short version:

The walls of WTC7 came down suddenly, simultaneously, virtually straight down and virtually in free fall.
These are all characteristic of a controlled implosion which supposedly can only be brought about with the skill of expert demolition contractors.

May I ask how you think it should have looked? I know I am asking you to speculate, but this is important to know your understanding. Also, why is a sudden collapse such a surprise? The unfought fire was causing changes to the material properties, so the "sudden" collapse was really going on for a long time. Just mentioning the final catastrophic failure kind of misses the rest of what happened.

 

[CliveHill]

Finally, the main requirement on the skill of expert demolition contractors is to collapse a building without causing damage to adjacent buildings, whereas several buildings adjacent to WTC7 were damaged by its collapse.

I was not aware of this. Can you supply a reference please?

Since it's the very precise control of the time of detonation of explosives that's used to cause buildings to fall in a controlled manner, and this level of control is not available with thermite

I understand that Steven Jones has built and tested thermate devices that slice through a steel column in seconds, so there is quite a high degree of control required. However, I would still suspect that conventional explosives were used to trigger the actual collapse and that the thermate devices were merely for weakening the steel in advance.

A hypothetical mechanism has been described in the draft NIST report. It will never be possible to be absolutely certain of the detailed collapse dynamics. If your requirement for belief that 9/11 progressed as understood is that such a mechanism be established, then be assured that it will not; there would, in that instance, be little point in your continuing to debate the issue.

The NIST report halts at the point of collapse, saying, in effect that the fall after that is too unpredictable. Which would further suggest to me that a CD like collapse is more remarkable.
I am not really saying that such a mechanism must be identified, just that if it were it would settle the argument. It could also be settled by an investigation that actually treated demolition as credible, rather than being dismissive of it.

If you have any other evidence than this that NIST is dishonest, please post it. If it's just the two points above, there are threads on both these issues that may interest you.

There were 2 large things that occurred to me upon reading the NIST report on WTC7. The largest being that the 18 floors visible in videos take 5.4 seconds to disappear from view. In fact they take only 4 seconds and anyone can verify this for themselves.
The other was the sound of the blasts, which they modeled based on an assumption that explosives would be placed in a tenanted floor of the building rather than in a basement location, and that only loud high velocity explosives could have been used. There are indeed witness statements concerning explosions and shockwaves going on in WTC7, but NIST simply claimed that there were not.

 

[DC]

and this level of control is not available with thermite

How do you know that?
I thought Thermite is not used in CD's.
And how long does a Linear thermite charge need to cut a steel coloumn?

 

[CliveHill]

May I ask how you think it should have looked? I know I am asking you to speculate, but this is important to know your understanding. Also, why is a sudden collapse such a surprise? The unfought fire was causing changes to the material properties, so the "sudden" collapse was really going on for a long time. Just mentioning the final catastrophic failure kind of misses the rest of what happened.

I tried a simple experiment. I held out a table mat, roughly the same area as an a4 sheet, in front of me at shoulder height and released it so that it fell flat all the way down to the ground. The result was quite reliably repeatable. I repeated the same test with a sheet of thin card, this time the card would not fall flat but would tip and shift sideways and not land flat. I assume that the card behaves this way due to its lighter mass relative to the force of air resistance.
I would expect the WTC7 roofline collapse to be like the card, not the mat, due to the force of resistance from the steel perimeter columns relative to the mass of the building.

 

[funk de fino]

I tried a simple experiment. I held out a table mat, roughly the same area as an a4 sheet, in front of me at shoulder height and released it so that it fell flat all the way down to the ground. The result was quite reliably repeatable. I repeated the same test with a sheet of thin card, this time the card would not fall flat but would tip and shift sideways and not land flat. I assume that the card behaves this way due to its lighter mass relative to the force of air resistance.
I would expect the WTC7 roofline collapse to be like the card, not the mat, due to the force of resistance from the steel perimeter columns relative to the mass of the building.

Oh my good god

Did he really just post that? you better hurry up and edit or delete it mate

 

[Disbelief]

I tried a simple experiment. I held out a table mat, roughly the same area as an a4 sheet, in front of me at shoulder height and released it so that it fell flat all the way down to the ground. The result was quite reliably repeatable. I repeated the same test with a sheet of thin card, this time the card would not fall flat but would tip and shift sideways and not land flat. I assume that the card behaves this way due to its lighter mass relative to the force of air resistance.
I would expect the WTC7 roofline collapse to be like the card, not the mat, due to the force of resistance from the steel perimeter columns relative to the mass of the building.

This makes zero sense. You need to relate the collapse to something a bit more substantial than a card. Look at the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota. Was it sudden? Why or why not?

 

[R.Mackey]

Ultra short version:
If WTC7 was not a controlled demolition, why does it look like one?

To CliveHill, welcome. I believe at the moment you are the only Truth Movement member here asking reasonable questions... so good on you.

You have to be careful with this particular question, however. The collapse of WTC 7 does not look like any controlled demolition I've ever heard of in a few aspects, notably that there's never been one of a burning building, nor one that wasn't associated with clearly artificial sounds of explosions. However, you do clarify:

Bit longer version:

The walls of WTC7 came down suddenly, simultaneously, virtually straight down and virtually in free fall.
These are all characteristic of a controlled implosion which supposedly can only be brought about with the skill of expert demolition contractors.

In order to NOT believe demolition then you have to believe in a different mechanism that can cause the walls to have come down in that way.
I'd like to know what that mechanism is.

So by the numbers:

1. The collapse was not simultaneous. As you should be aware, the core preceded the perimeter by several seconds. While the perimeter wall did fail more or less at once, and this is not too surprising given the design. I answered a similar question early in this thread in this post, which you probably haven't seen due to the large size of this thread and frequent bad behavior of posters therein. I should remark that the post above was written before the NIST WTC 7 report, but is materially consistent with their findings.

2. You need to be careful defining "virtual free fall." We know the collapse was not actually in "free fall," so how different is enough?

As I explain in Appendix B of my whitepaper, the collapse time as a function of structural resistance is actually a hyperbolic relationship. This makes it very difficult to sense based on the timing alone -- a measurement error of only a single second has a huge effect on the conclusion. There are no unobstructed views of WTC 7 that I'm aware of, so you are guaranteed to have measurement errors in this range or higher. Thus, no mystery.

I also discussed this issue with poster Gregory Urich, whom I consider to be among the few respectable and numerate within the Truth Movement, in this thread. There is a fair amount of bickering there as well -- my replies are here, here and here. Following this discussion, Gregory agreed that the collapse time was not proof of foul play, and even sought to present his findings on the "Journal" of 9/11 Studies -- which ignored him completely.

Plus, I am sorry to say, that due to the dishonest way that the NIST report on WTC7 has dealt with the issue, I feel I would also need some kind of evidence to back up a claim that such a mechanism is what actually happened.

I can't respond to this unless you give me more detail. Nothing in the NCSTAR1A appears "dishonest" to me.

I have downloaded a video of the WTC7 collapse, and the Physics Toolkit software used in the making of that video and verified the free fall collapse for myself.

For reasons detailed above, there is no video of sufficient accuracy to make this determination. We've had this discussion here, quantitatively, several times.

I understand that Steven Jones has built and tested thermate devices that slice through a steel column in seconds, so there is quite a high degree of control required. However, I would still suspect that conventional explosives were used to trigger the actual collapse and that the thermate devices were merely for weakening the steel in advance.

There is no evidence of either thermite reactions or explosives in WTC 7. To my knowledge, there has been no device tested in anything approaching the scale required. Thermite reactions are insanely bright, and it is difficult to imagine how this alone would have escaped notice, even if we overlook the other absent features, or the sheer uniqueness of such a strange approach.

The NIST report halts at the point of collapse, saying, in effect that the fall after that is too unpredictable. Which would further suggest to me that a CD like collapse is more remarkable.

I see no connection between these two statements. Dynamic modeling of such a complicated system is not practical. That does not in any way preclude a "CD-like" collapse, which as explained above is the expected result.

The other was the sound of the blasts, which they modeled based on an assumption that explosives would be placed in a tenanted floor of the building rather than in a basement location, and that only loud high velocity explosives could have been used. There are indeed witness statements concerning explosions and shockwaves going on in WTC7, but NIST simply claimed that there were not.

The witness statements regarding "explosions" and "shockwaves" are of neither, as video of the phenomena demonstrate. Just loud noises and structural flexure, nothing at all unpredicted.

Charges large enough to sever structural elements are insanely loud. Ever been to the rifle range? Take that and add about 40-60 dB. There is no way the video could have failed to capture those sounds, yet it did. That alone closes the book on CD by explosives.

 

[RedIbis]

If NIST concludes that WTC 7 was brought down by the weakening of one column, Column 79, then that's the only column that would need to be rigged with explosives in the CD scenario.

In other words, if global collapse can occur by the failure of one column, then CD can be accomplished by the demo of this one column, as well.

 

[R.Mackey]

If NIST concludes that WTC 7 was brought down by the weakening of one column, Column 79, then that's the only column that would need to be rigged with explosives in the CD scenario.

In other words, if global collapse can occur by the failure of one column, then CD can be accomplished by the demo of this one column, as well.

Perhaps, but that's gradualism, and it doesn't support your position. Not if you actually try to assemble a hypothesis.

If your theory is that there was only one explosive charge, a small one, and it was placed at Column 79, then whomever placed it must have known the following:

• Exactly how much damage WTC 7 would suffer from the collapse of the Towers
• Exactly how the fires would progress, leaving their explosive charges intact
• Exactly how the fires would weaken the rest of the structure, such that only a single demo charge would lead to a full collapse

They'd have to know this ahead of time, in 2001. They'd have to know, somehow, that their explosive would not malfunction, or be discovered, or be dislodged.

Ridiculous.

Besides, if you admit the structure can be weakened by fire, such that one charge would do the job, why not admit the structure can be weakened all the way to collapse by fire, and not plant it at all?

I've gone over this before.

 

[twinstead]

All the CD companies have to do is set raging, uncontrolled fires and let them go for a few hours and then demo that one column. Nobody will have a problem with that, right? But, now I'm just a layman so I am probably totally wrong, even though it took one column, if in some alternate universe today was 911 and it happened again, it may be a different column that brought it down, right?

I mean, did it have to be column 79? How would the demo company know what single column to demo?

 

[DC]

Perhaps, but that's gradualism, and it doesn't support your position. Not if you actually try to assemble a hypothesis.

If your theory is that there was only one explosive charge, a small one, and it was placed at Column 79, then whomever placed it must have known the following:

• Exactly how much damage WTC 7 would suffer from the collapse of the Towers
• Exactly how the fires would progress, leaving their explosive charges intact
• Exactly how the fires would weaken the rest of the structure, such that only a single demo charge would lead to a full collapse

They'd have to know this ahead of time, in 2001. They'd have to know, somehow, that their explosive would not malfunction, or be discovered, or be dislodged.

Ridiculous.

Besides, if you admit the structure can be weakened by fire, such that one charge would do the job, why not admit the structure can be weakened all the way to collapse by fire, and not plant it at all?

I've gone over this before.

you assume that it was rigged before 9/11.

afaik was Column 79 accesable from the garage.
and according to Danny Jovenko, it would have been possible to rigg even alot more than just one column.
so you could rigg that one column after the tower collapses.

 

[twinstead]

I see R.Mackey asked my question in a MUCH better way. Cool

 

[A W Smith]

If NIST concludes that WTC 7 was brought down by the weakening of one column, Column 79, then that's the only column that would need to be rigged with explosives in the CD scenario.

In other words, if global collapse can occur by the failure of one column, then CD can be accomplished by the demo of this one column, as well.

not necessarily, You would still have intact concrete and steel floors acting as a composite that surround the remaining column suspending it, If you remember NIST states that the composite bond between the steel beams and the concrete was broken due to thermal expansion from fire. then the floors failed then the column buckled from lack of lateral support. also consider that by cutting column 79 alone the remaining column would only drop the section distance that the alleged "thermite" burned from the column.

 

[RedIbis]

If your theory is that there was only one explosive charge, a small one, and it was placed at Column 79, then whomever placed it must have known the following:

I said one column, not one charge.

 

[R.Mackey]

Doesn't change my analysis. Although, if you want to elaborate a hypothesis of your own, feel free. You've been asked to provide one many, many times.

 

[WildCat]

I understand that Steven Jones has built and tested thermate devices that slice through a steel column in seconds, so there is quite a high degree of control required.

No, he hasn't. In fact, no truther to date has managed to sever a column with thermite. Some have tried, and they failed completely.

The problem is, thermite burns downward and there is no device using thermite capable of cutting horizontal across a column any bigger than an inch or so in diameter.

 

[DC]

No, he hasn't. In fact, no truther to date has managed to sever a column with thermite. Some have tried, and they failed completely.

The problem is, thermite burns downward and there is no device using thermite capable of cutting horizontal across a column any bigger than an inch or so in diameter.

Go read the patents how those devices work........

Hint: Hot gases