Split Thread The Towers should not hve collapsed (split from Gravysites)

[Dabljuh]

I can't believe this thread still exists, much less is still stickied. Whoever believes that either of the WTC buildings came down because of "fire" is either utterly misinformed, is paid or pressured to propagate this nonsense, or is so completely devout in sticking to a certain, hilariously irrational worldview ("durr Conspiracies are impossible") that it would impress even the most fanatic muslim or christian fundamentalist.

Lets just, for a minute, look at the magical fairyland. In the magical fairyland, we have these buildings completely engulfed with fire. And not just fire, but also oxygen. Instead of having a couple small fires on a couple floors that burn at low temperatures and not posing a threat to anything other than the color of the wallpapers, we pretend the entire building is in flames. And even more, we let the thing burn indefinitely to make sure the massive steel structure actually heats up to the temperature of the fire. For that purpose, in this mystical fairy land, we constantly add kerosene and oxygen to these giant torches.

Now here's the question - Would these towers collapse?

The answer is no. Not even in magical fairyland where there would be a true and real inferno, not even there could the towers have collapsed due to the fire alone.

The Towers truly massive central cores were built for 600% redudancy, that means they could have carried six times their own weights. However, even in hypothetical fairy land, this perfect fire only reduces the structural integrity of the steel to about half of what it is - That means these buildings still have 300% redundancy with regards to their structural integrity.

Why were the buildings built with cores set for 600 percent redundancy? Not because of fires, that's for sure, because in the real world, fires in a building virtually never heat a central steel structure to anywhere near where the steel would lose half the structural integrity. Fire can be a problem in that it destroys individual floors and of course the interior when it bends steel, and when it does that, it is more likely to spread and cause even more damage still, which is why special heat-resistent steel is used in the construction of skyscrapers, and this heat-resistent steel is again fire- and heatproofed with foam.

The reason for the large amount of redundancy in the WTC buildings (and any other skyscraper to date) was winds, light-to-medium earthquakes and the such, and even the impacts of airplanes, which could considerably increase the load on the central structure, for a multiple of just the weight of the building alone for short periods of time.

Considering all of this, it becomes painfully clear that fire cannot possibly be the explanation for the collapse. Not in magical fairy land. And empirically we can confirm this - never in the history of structural engineering has a steel structure building come down because of a fire. If we look at the nature of the real fires in the WTC buildings, small, oxygen starved fires that burn off office supplies, there is little need to argue if the fires had anything to do with the collapse at all.

Now that we have conclusively ruled fire out as an explanation as to why the towers could have come down, we need alternative explanations. Controlled Demolition appears as the best guess, since no other real life, physical world mechanic seems to be able to take the buildings down the way they did.

That does not conclusively prove that it was CD so far, we just can very certainly rule out fire.

However, even with just a glance at a few videos on youtube, there's so much evidence pointing towards or even confirming the controlled demolition theory, that even idiotic alternative theories - like ones involving HAART or aliens heating the building up with "heat rays" or something similiarly absurd are not worth at all following up to.

If we wanted to disprove the CD theory the same way we can disprove the fire theory, we'd have to show that it is impossible for CD to have brought down the building. Which no one argues.

In fact, there is not a single, good counter argument against the CD theory. Fallacious arguments are of course plenty, for example "That would have taken a huge conspiracy to pull off" with the gravely fallacious implication that conspiracies cannot possibly happen in the real world. Of course they can - and do.

Now that we can reasonably argue that CD is by far the most likely scenario to explain what has happened, we of course (like with every good theory) are confronted with a bucketload of further questions:

- Who planted explosives there?
- Did they have the permission or cooperation of, or were they on the payroll of the authorities?
- Why the planes? Were they muslim hijackers that just happened to fly into the buildings at the same time in a huge coincidence, or are they connected?
- Could a related group of muslims have planted explosives? Or were there no muslim hijackers at all?
- What happened at the Pentagon?
- What about Flight 93?
- Were the same people that orchestrated this the same people that ordered the entire air force to go to Alaska that day?
- Is there *even* a possibility that the government wasn't involved in this?
- Why are the media so incompetently useless about covering any this?

These and more are real and relevant questions. The question whether the WTC buildings were brought down by CD however, is not a legitimate question at this point anymore. Not even in mysterious magical fairy land could fire have brought down any of these buildings.

 

[SDC]

1/ Have you used the search functions, so you might review the previous discussions here?

2/ I note that you do not refer to any planes hitting WTC 1 and 2. Are you a no-planer?

Why didn't you start an actual thread to present your views? Is there some actual reason or did you just believe there was no need to do what others do?

 

[Dabljuh]

1/ Have you used the search functions, so you might review the previous discussions here?

I have, in fact, previously posted in this thread. Did that elude your usage of the search function or didn't you use it in the first place?

2/ I note that you do not refer to any planes hitting WTC 1 and 2. Are you a no-planer?

Now this is the type of argument I can only explain with acute drug induced psychosis. I have mentioned the planes several times. I haven't treatised on them in detail as they bear little to no relevance to the central argument itself.

Why didn't you start an actual thread to present your views? Is there some actual reason or did you just believe there was no need to do what others do?

First of all, why bother if there's already a sticky up for discussion. Secondly, The reason for my posting here was to specifically refute the central point of the "Durr fire brought the buildings down" hypothesis that gravy supports - rather than going into details of refuting/supporting a massive number of often speculative and frequently irrelevant arguments in favor of either position.

 

[kookbreaker]

I can't believe this thread still exists, much less is still stickied. Whoever believes that either of the WTC buildings came down because of "fire" is either utterly misinformed,

Or, unlike you, is competent in judging the opinions of experts and evidence. Consider that over 99.999% of engineers in the world pretty much agree that it was the fire.

The rest of your post is just made-up stuff. I shan't bother.

 

[Dabljuh]

Or, unlike you, is competent in judging the opinions of experts and evidence. Consider that over 99.999% of engineers in the world pretty much agree that it was the fire.

Statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. Some 50% of NY's population alone don't believe that according to some ancient and well known poll, and NY probably hosts more than 0.001% of the world's population of engineers.

The rest of your post is just made-up stuff. I shan't bother.

Haha. Right.

I don't expect you to argue. You don't have an argument to begin with. All you can do is to appeal to authority "Person X believes it, so it must be true" and ad hominem ("you are incompetent" etc)

 

[kookbreaker]

Statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. Some 50% of NY's population alone don't believe that according to some ancient and well known poll, and NY probably hosts more than 0.001% of the world's population of engineers.

Then why do you assert that it is foolish to think that the WTC fell from fire? If there was even a *hint* that what you are asserting was true then the engineering community would be screaming at the conclusions. They are not. Even in countries hostile to the United States they are pretty much in agreement.

Its so bad that the so-called 'Architects and Engineers for 911 truth' can't even scrape up more than a handful of engineers, the majority of which are irrelevant electrical engineers and software engineers.

Haha. Right.

I don't expect you to argue. You don't have an argument to begin with. All you can do is to appeal to authority "Person X believes it, so it must be true" and ad hominem ("you are incompetent" etc)

You really need to learn what these terms are, you obviously do not understand logical fallacies:

An appeal to authority when the authority is a relevant professional in the field is not a logical fallacy. Nor is it a fallacy to point out where you have a complete lack of relevant credentials.

Nor is it a fallacy to point out that you have basically just brought up invented 'facts' to the arguement without any sources whatsoever. Where do you get the 600% figure, after all? That is completely unsourced, yet you seem to expect us to accept such a ludicrous figure?

 

[Dabljuh]

Then why do you assert that it is foolish to think that the WTC fell from fire? If there was even a *hint* that what you are asserting was true then the engineering community would be screaming at the conclusions. They are not. Even in countries hostile to the United States they are pretty much in agreement.

You're making up things. The reality is that engineers pretty much all over the world, US-friendly or not, either don't care about the subject and buy into the 'official explanation' without doing any research (which really makes their opinions not count as they are as uninformed as any uninformed non-engineer's) or they actually have somewhat informed opionions on the subject and are in wild disagreement with each other.

Its so bad that the so-called 'Architects and Engineers for 911 truth' can't even scrape up more than a handful of engineers, the majority of which are irrelevant electrical engineers and software engineers.

Engineers apply formulas to real life applications. That's why it's also called an applied science. Any engineer who performs some research into 9/11 can come up with valid (or bogus) conclusions. Plus, again, you're not refuting an argument but again pointing to other people and their (hypothetical!) opinions. NIST employs a bunch of structual engineers and they haven't come up with a satisfying explanation. Maybe their reasoning satisfies you, but it doesn't satisfy me.

You really need to learn what these terms are, you obviously do not understand logical fallacies:

An appeal to authority when the authority is a relevant professional in the field is not a logical fallacy. Nor is it a fallacy to point out where you have a complete lack of relevant credentials.

No, it's not a "fallacy" to point out that authoritative figures with credentials disagree with me, or to point out my apparent lack of credentials. The fallacy that you commit is that you believe that any of this would suffice to refute my argument. It doesn't.

Nor is it a fallacy to point out that you have basically just brought up invented 'facts' to the arguement without any sources whatsoever. Where do you get the 600% figure, after all? That is completely unsourced, yet you seem to expect us to accept such a ludicrous figure?

Ludicrous? What do you believe is the average redundancy in a skyscraper the size of the WTC? Any figure below +100% would essentially make the thing fall over at the slightest gust. Much less of what even mild earthquakes would do to such a house of cards. Do you have any conception of the forces (and fires!) a skyscraper has to withstand in his lifetime? I can't remember the source for the perfectly reasonable 600% redundancy figure, and I won't even vouch for it's accuracy.

Instead: Come up with your own source. Find the accurate value.

If you fail with that, you can try to look at other steel frame skyscrapers where the central structures have in fact failed catastrophically due to fire. Wait, there aren't any.

Then at least find some skyscrapers where the central steel structure has in fact survived tremendous abuse, and make a qualified estimate at what the lower minimum of their redundancy would have to be.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

This is my only reply in here, perhaps if you'd like to continue this it'd be best to either have a new thread or discuss this in an existing one... I don't want to derail the entire thread

You're making up things. The reality is that engineers pretty much all over the world, US-friendly or not, either don't care about the subject and buy into the 'official explanation' without doing any research (which really makes their opinions not count as they are as uninformed as any uninformed non-engineer's) or they actually have somewhat informed opionions on the subject and are in wild disagreement with each other.

Ah argumentum ex silentio, you're making an argument that their silence on a matter suggests ('proves' when a logical fallacy) that person's ignorance of the matter or their inability to counterargue validly.

BOLDED: So you're arguing that every structural engineer that supports the 'official story' is uninformed? Are you even remotely aware of how much time and experience is required to get to a professional level? You're assuming they know nothing about material relevant to their own field?

What research do you require that they do, because apparently because they believe the the official theory or aren't voicing out against it, their research must be faulty by default by your line of reasoning.

Engineers apply formulas to real life applications. That's why it's also called an applied science. Any engineer who performs some research into 9/11 can come up with valid (or bogus) conclusions. Plus, again, you're not refuting an argument but again pointing to other people and their (hypothetical!) opinions. NIST employs a bunch of structural engineers and they haven't come up with a satisfying explanation. Maybe their reasoning satisfies you, but it doesn't satisfy me.

Then explain why their applications don't satisfy you. What have they left out?

Ludicrous? What do you believe is the average redundancy in a skyscraper the size of the WTC?

Why do you believe ALL steel construction requires fire proofing? Do you think fire proofing has an infinite lifespan for offering protection from fire for steel? The redundancy of steel is meaningless when steel is exposed to heat. Any structural engineer can and will tell you this.

Any figure below +100% would essentially make the thing fall over at the slightest gust. Much less of what even mild earthquakes would do to such a house of cards.

The fact that the towers stood demonstrated this. What is your point? Steel loses 50% of that redundancy when it is heated to 1100 oF, and 90% when heated to 1800 oF. See above.

Do you have any conception of the forces (and fires!) a skyscraper has to withstand in his lifetime?

Do you? Are you aware of live loads and dead loads? Static and dynamic?

Dead loads are considered for the weight of the building with a 25% safety factor for typical construction, Live loads are varying loads that include building contents such as furniture and building occupants. Static loads represent the dead loads arrested by the structure. Dynamic loads include the force of an impact in acceleration.

Are you familiar with any of this?

If you fail with that, you can try to look at other steel frame skyscrapers where the central structures have in fact failed catastrophically due to fire. Wait, there aren't any.

In Chicago, Illinois, the McCormick Place Exhibition Center collapsed as a result of a fire in 1967. In this structure, the steel-frame of the building was unprotected. The reference to McCormick Place is significant because it illustrates the fact that steel-frame buildings can collapse as a result of exposure to fire. This is true for all types of construction materials, not only steel.

If steel were ever able to retain redundancy during fire then no steel structure would ever require fireproofing. Steel is well-known to lose it's integrity when it is unprotected. Fire ratings however are based on entire assemblies, not individual components.

 

[Dabljuh]

Ah argumentum ex silentio, you're making an argument that their silence on a matter suggests ('proves' when a logical fallacy) that person's ignorance of the matter or their inability to counterargue validly.

That's a strawman argument, you pretend I make an argument that I really don't. I made a response to the statement that 99.999% of all structural engineers would subscribe to the official theory. There is absolutely no indication that this or even something similiar were the case, but more so an indication of the person who wrote this to be completely in the wrong about the demographics of who believes what.

BOLDED: So you're arguing that every structural engineer that supports the 'official story' is uninformed?

Strawman argument again. No, I don't. I'm saying a large number of structural engineers have probably never investigated 9/11 for themselves. Hence their opinion on the matter is irrelevant. What about structural engineers that didn't spend 5 seconds looking at the evidence and came up with the conclusion "Aliens did it"? Or what about those - assuming there engineers in arabic countries too - immediately jump to the conclusion that "Jews did this"? Are their hypothesises relevant just because they are structural engineers? Is their number below 0.001% of the total structural engineer population? This is your fallacious argument by authority - in fact doubly fallacious because it also assumes that the vast majority of structural engineers believe the same thing you do, giving you a doubly fallacious faith in the strength and validity of your own theory. A bit of scientific rigor there, please.

Are you even remotely aware of how much time and experience is required to get to a professional level? You're assuming they know nothing about material relevant to their own field?

Irrelevant.

What research do you require that they do, because apparently because they believe the the official theory or aren't voicing out against it, their research must be faulty by default by your line of reasoning.

The strawman again.

Then explain why their applications don't satisfy you. What have they left out?

They subscribe to the pancake theory when there is absolutely not the slightest bit of evidence that pancaking occurred, much less that it had caused the catastrophic failure of all three buildings. That means that while in theory it "could" have caused the collapse of the WTC - making it a viable theory by the standards of fallibilism - empirical evidence conflicts with the hypothesis on a massive and obvious scale. The reason for NIST to ignore the much more explanatory hypothesis of controlled demolition is likely to be political in nature, and has nothing to do with their quality or expertise as structural engineers. And a similiar peer pressure may - in some cases - apply to other structural engineers.

Why do you believe ALL steel construction requires fire proofing? Do you think fire proofing has an infinite lifespan for offering protection from fire for steel?

The fireproofing was renewed during the 90ies in the aftermath of the unsuccessful 1993 bombing. Furthermore, no amount of fireproofing or lack thereof can change the fact that a steel skyscraper cannot implode due to a fire. Your argument is doubly invalid.

The redundancy of steel is meaningless when steel is exposed to heat. Any structural engineer can and will tell you this.

Any qualified structural engineer before 9/11 would have told you - and with good reason to - that steel buildings have never collapsed due to fire and never will. That certainly does not mean they do not suffer damage from fires, but they will not catastrophically implode ever. That's a physical impossibility.

The fact that the towers stood demonstrated this. What is your point? Steel loses 50% of that redundancy when it is heated to 1100 oF, and 90% when heated to 1800 oF. See above.

Irrelevant. As of yet there is no reason to assume that any part of the central columns ever reached even 700°F. (Due to the fire - Explosive and incendiary charges are actually an explanation for certain phenomena found in the aftermath)

Are you familiar with any of this?

Red Herring, irrelevant. My qualification is also irrelevant for the validity of my argument. So is yours. Or anyone elses. Ad hominem much?

If steel were ever able to retain redundancy during fire then no steel structure would ever require fireproofing. Steel is well-known to lose it's integrity when it is unprotected. Fire ratings however are based on entire assemblies, not individual components.

Steel structures undergo fireproofing because they can and do suffer damage from fires. A skyscraper has a lot of stuff in it. It's a catastrophe in itself if the slightest fire causes the entire thing to burn out with nothing but the metal/concrete skeleton still standing. Which is pretty much the worst that fire can do to a steel skyscraper. Normally built-in redundancy and the relative difficulty of uncontrolled fire to heat a steel structure to even near the point where it loses a significant amount of tensile strength make sure that no fire can ever hope to cause the central steel skeleton itself to fail catastrophically.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Strawman argument again. No, I don't. I'm saying a large number of structural engineers have probably never investigated 9/11 for themselves. Hence their opinion on the matter is irrelevant.

In other words their knowledge in the field is completely irrelevant? I don't pretend to know that every structural engineer would be necessarily familiar with the towers, but they do know a great deal of material relevant to the construction. The ASCE did an assessment on the collapse, as well as numerous other architectural organizations.

Your wording; 'Probably' is not a fact, it is an assumption or guesstimate.

What about structural engineers that didn't spend 5 seconds looking at the evidence and came up with the conclusion "Aliens did it"? Or what about those - assuming there engineers in arabic countries too - immediately jump to the conclusion that "Jews did this"? Are their hypothesises relevant just because they are structural engineers? Is their number below 0.001% of the total structural engineer population?

Irrelevant to the discussion. We're not discussing how many subscribe to anti semitism, sheer fantasy, or otherwise to make their conclusions.

Your fallacious argument by authority - doubly fallacious because it assumes that the vast majority of structural engineers believe the same thing you do, giving you a doubly fallacious faith in the strength and validity of your own theory. A bit of scientific rigor there, please.

No, members of the truth movement assume that their silence is evidence that the official theory is bogus. There is no consensus here.

Irrelevant.

You have told us that the evidence doesn't satisfy you, I asked by what grounds? What in their report leads you to believe that. You've made a claim, the burden of proof is yours

The strawman again.

They subscribe to the pancake theory when there is absolutely not the slightest bit of evidence that pancaking occurred, much less that it had caused the catastrophic failure of all three buildings. That means that while in theory it "could" have caused the collapse of the WTC - making it a viable theory by the standards of fallibilism - empirical evidence conflicts with the hypothesis on a massive and obvious scale. The reason for NIST to ignore the much more explanatory hypothesis of controlled demolition is likely to be political in nature, and has nothing to do with their quality or expertise as structural engineers. And a similiar peer pressure may - in some cases - apply to other structural engineers.

Strawman: NIST never suggested that pancaking caused the catastrophic failure at collapse initiation. Nor did it occur in WTC 7.

Pancaking inevitably happened during collapse progression. The portions of the core columns that briefly stood following the collapse of the rest of the building supports this. If the collapse progression was not pancaking, then the core would not have stood even for the brief time that they did. It's called a progressive collapse.

The fireproofing was renewed during the 90ies in the aftermath of the unsuccessful 1993 bombing.

WRONG, you misread my post. Fireproofing has a standard rating for FULL FLOOR ASSEMBLIES of a limited amount of time. During a fire the rating for WTC 1 & 2 was between 1 and 2 hours.
I am not talking about OVERALL life span of the material from the time is applied, I am talking about the length of time it can offer protection in fire.

Furthermore, no amount of fireproofing or lack thereof can change the fact that a steel skyscraper cannot implode due to a fire. Your argument is doubly invalid.

Wrong again... Example: All of the steel components in the windsor tower failed in fire.

Source: http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/pr...Study/HistoricFires/BuildingFires/default.htm

"The Damage

The Windsor Tower was completely gutted by the fire on 12 February 2005. A large portion of the floor slabs above the 17th Floor progressively collapsed during the fire when the unprotected steel perimeter columns on the upper levels buckled and collapsed (see Figure 1). It was believed that the massive transfer structure at the 17th Floor level resisted further collapse of the building.

The whole building was beyond repair and had to be demolished. The estimated property loss was €72m before the renovation.

Based on the footages of available media filming, Table 2 summarises the estimated time frame for the structural collapses of the Windsor Tower."

Any qualified structural engineer before 9/11 would have told you - and with good reason to - that steel buildings have never collapsed due to fire and never will.

Wrong... Steel properties have been well known for decades now. There is good reason why they apply fire proofing to steel. No protected steel building has ever collapsed, but then again... no steel building has ever been left burning with unfought fires for 7 hours, and no building with the same construction as the WTC has ever been hit with a plane.

That certainly does not mean they do not suffer damage from fires, but they will not catastrophically implode ever. That's a physical impossibility.

Start telling that to all the engineers that were worried over the years about the nature of progressive collapse. Why would they be worried it it was a known impossibility?

And yet there is no reason to assume that any part of the central columns ever reached even 700°F.

Why? On what basis do you assert this claim? The jet fuel fires?

Red Herring, irrelevant. My qualification is also irrelevant for the validity of my argument. So is yours. Or anyone elses. Ad hominem much?

I am entering the architecture field and have studied the subject. I am qualified to ask you questions on material I am familiar with. How is asking a question an ad hom?... you're neither required to answer whether you are familiar with the material nor do I have any intention to capitalize on such an answer for personal attacks.

Steel structures undergo fireproofing because they can and do suffer damage from fires. A skyscraper has a lot of stuff in it. It's a catastrophe in itself if the slightest fire causes the entire thing to burn out with nothing but the metal/concrete skeleton still standing. Which is pretty much the worst that fire can do to a steel skyscraper.

I'll bring up the windsor tower again which ironically is something the TM likes to use as an example of why the towers should not have fallen. The tower was built with perimeter steel supports starting at the 17th floor. If, as you contend fire couldn't possibly cause steel to lose its load bearing capacity, then why dis the steel perimeter columns fail from fire alone? Your assertion that fire cannot fail steel supports is completely wrong.

Normally built-in redundancy and the relative difficulty of uncontrolled fire to heat a steel structure to even near the point where it loses a significant amount of tensile strength make sure that no fire can ever hope to cause the central steel skeleton itself to fail catastrophically.

Irrelevant. Steel loses rigidity under exposure to extreme heat of fire. Construction methods using steel ultimately determine the structure's overall collapse vulnerabilty to fire. A gridded structure with react differently to local failures than those using a tube on tube design.

Please study steel construction more, you're clearly not familiar with the worries engineers and architects have had over the years over the susceptibility of steel construction and fires

 

[Myriad]

Thanks, Dabljuh, for helping to clarify a key point that many people misunderstand.

The Towers truly massive central cores were built for 600% redudancy, that means they could have carried six times their own weights.

You state that the core structure could support six times its own weight. (Let's say, that's in addition to supporting its own weight.)

Now, how much weight was it actually supporting? A structural column that supports only its own weight is of course useless except possibly as an antenna or flagpole. Structural columns exist to support the weight of the rest of the structure.

Urich (2007) has tabluated the weight of the all the structural components of the towers. The total weight of all the steel in the core was 32,542 metric tons.

The additional weight inside the core (including floors inside the core, elevator machinery, live load, etc.) was 52,586 tons.

The floors outside the core weighed 131,727 tons; the core (as a very conservative estimate) supported 40% of this load (the rest being borne by the perimeter columns), or 52,691 tons.

So, the core steel was supporting, in addition to its own weight, 52,586 + 52,691 = 105,547 tons.

So, the core steel was already supporting 3.2 times its own weight, in addition to its own weight, before the plane crash damage and fires occurred.

Thanks to your informed knowledge that they were only capable of supporting 6 times their own weight, we can calculate that their total capacity was less than twice the load they were already carrying.

Thus, if the core steel were reduced to half its strength by the "perfect" fire, it would collapse. However, that precise scenario is not necessary, because the capacity of the core steel was also reduced by impact damage and, as heating and cooling of floor trusses applied additional lateral forces and exterior columns buckled, by unbalanced loading. The combination of those factors could and ultimately did overcome the less than 100% safety factor.

Airplane damage and fire explains the collapses of the towers, consistent with all known information about their structures and with all the principles and methods that structural engineers use to design every large steel-framed structure that exists today.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Dabljuh]

Your wording; 'Probably' is not a fact, it is an assumption or guesstimate.

Responding to a much more unlikely guesstimate. Your whole section dealing with this is completely irrelevant.

You have told us that the evidence doesn't satisfy you, I asked by what grounds? What in their report leads you to believe that. You've made a claim, the burden of proof is yours

Observation: Was there a sign of pancaking?
[_] Yes
[X] No

Furthermore, irrelevant, as we're also dealing with fallacious appeals to authority here.

Pancaking inevitably happened during collapse progression. The portions of the core columns that briefly stood following the collapse of the rest of the building supports this. If the collapse progression was not pancaking, then the core would not have stood even for the brief time that they did. It's called a progressive collapse.

Actually you could also call it "Mystery WTC Collapse". Because that sort of "thing" was never observed before 9/11 or after. Hence it's not proof of anything other than that what happened there is unpreceded (if the only options to explain it must not involve demolition)

WRONG, you misread my post. Fireproofing has a standard rating for FULL FLOOR ASSEMBLIES of a limited amount of time. During a fire the rating for WTC 1 & 2 was between 1 and 2 hours.
I am not talking about OVERALL life span of the material from the time is applied, I am talking about the length of time it can offer protection in fire.

Irrelevant.

Wrong again... Example: All of the steel components in the windsor tower failed in fire.

Lies. The tower didn't implode on itself. Your comparison is invalid. All your talk about the windsor tower merely demonstrates impressively that even a fire much much worse than the one at the WTC cannot bring a steel structure building down. Did a "Mystery WTC Collapse" occur at the Windsor Tower? No. What happened was perfectly normal and expected. The thing burned like a torch but it didn't collapse. Yes, parts of it failed - certain floor trusses collapsed - there was even pancaking - But the central structure stood steadfast.

Start telling that to all the engineers that were worried over the years about the nature of progressive collapse. Why would they be worried it it was a known impossibility?

"Mystery WTC Collapse"

Why? On what basis do you assert this claim? The jet fuel fires?

Qualified guesses based on observation, and an analysis that does not exclude all alternatives to fire as a reason for the failure.

I'll bring up the windsor tower again which ironically is something the TM likes to use as an example of why the towers should not have fallen. The tower was built with perimeter steel supports starting at the 17th floor. If, as you contend fire couldn't possibly cause steel to lose its load bearing capacity, then why dis the steel perimeter columns fail from fire alone? Your assertion that fire cannot fail steel supports is completely wrong.

In a structure like that, the exterior columns hold actually only a small percentage of the weight - the sturdy, central core does most of the work. So while the exterior columns may fail and even pancaking *could* occur, there is no way the central columns could have failed. Destruction to the point of uselessness, yes. But not implosion.

Irrelevant. Steel loses rigidity under exposure to extreme heat of fire. Construction methods using steel ultimately determine the structure's overall collapse vulnerabilty to fire. A gridded structure with react differently to local failures than those using a tube on tube design.

Argument from Ignorance. The WTC wasn't a "Tube in Tube" Design. It had a ridiculously sturdy central core with the exterior holding only very little of the weight.

Thanks, Dabljuh, for helping to clarify a key point that many people misunderstand.

You state that the core structure could support six times its own weight. (Let's say, that's in addition to supporting its own weight.)

Nope. I state that they could have supported six times the weight of the entire tower. The entire rest of your post becomes useless. Furthermore your estimates are likely way off:

Source: Wikipedia (Yes, I know, Fail)

Over 1.5 million tons of debris produced by the collapse of the WTC posed unique problems for the cleanup effort.

1.5 million tons. Most of which would previously have been supported by the steel columns.

Granted, say 1/3 of that isn't actually Tower material but building 3-6. 1 million tons supported by the columns. 500'000 tons per tower. That's a factor of 15 times the central column's weights.

As a comparison, consider the world's largest Supertanker, the Knock Nevis
Dimensions:
1500ft length
225ft beam (width)
97ft draft
Tonnage: 260,941

It can't even navigate the english channel because it's draft is so deep

For comparison, the dimensions of a WTC tower:
208 ft x 208 ft x 1368 ft
Weight: ?? I'll estimate 500'000 tons

There's even a picture
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Tanker-size-comparison.png

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Actually you could also call it "Mystery WTC Collapse". Because that sort of "thing" was never observed before 9/11 or after. Hence it's not proof of anything other than that what happened there is unpreceded (if the only options to explain it must not involve demolition)

No mystery, try studying construction of the towers... progressive collapse has been observed before, and it's exactly what happened in the towers. Again, Try telling engineers that this is impossible. If it were impossible they would not have spent years prior to 9/11 worried about such scenarios.

Irrelevant.

Completely relevant when you do not read my post as intended.

Lies. The tower didn't implode on itself.

Strawman, I never said it did. The quote I provided states this directly, and the lack of a complete progressive collapse of the entire structure is attributed to the Windsor towers' concrete frame construction. The towers were not built this way. Their overall susceptibility in fire is completely different.

Your comparison is invalid. All your talk about the windsor tower merely demonstrates impressively that even a fire much much worse than the one at the WTC cannot bring a steel structure building down.

Invalid, Windsor tower was primarily built with concrete frame and a sturdy concrete core. You assume that the entire structure is made up almost entirely of steel like the trade centers and it is not. Reread the links I provided.

Did a "Mystery WTC Collapse" occur at the Windsor Tower? No. What happened was perfectly normal and expected. The thing burned like a torch but it didn't collapse.

Expected of a concrete frame construction. You clearly have no idea what the differences are between concrete and steel when dealing with fire.

Yes, parts of it failed - certain floor trusses collapsed - there was even pancaking -...

And my case in point, the failure occured on all of the steel components beginning at the 17th floor. The steel perimeter columns were the ONLY steel structural compnents of the building.

But the central structure stood steadfast.

Again, you're comparison between concrete and steel construction is laughable. I stated that the windsor tower did not collapse and stated WHY.

"Mystery WTC Collapse"

Ignoring the argument...

In a structure like that, the exterior columns hold actually only a small percentage of the weight - the sturdy, central core does most of the work. So while the exterior columns may fail and even pancaking *could* occur, there is no way the central columns could have failed. Destruction to the point of uselessness, yes. But not implosion.

Again what is the core of the windsor tower made of? Concrete, not steel. Hence there was no global collapse. Apples and oranges.

Argument from Ignorance. The WTC wasn't a "Tube in Tube" Design. It had a ridiculously sturdy central core with the exterior holding only very little of the weight.

It was tube-in-tube. It consisted of a series of core columns which beared most of the vertical building loads, whilst the perimeter columns carried the rest, and added lateral stability to the towers and the core. The same construction allowed for a very open floor plan throughout each floor whith no columns in between.

I'm going to clarify Myriad's figures. The core sustained 60% vertical loads, the exterior columns beared 40%. 'ridiculously strong' is irrelevent if the fire proofing is compromised. Any time you study steel construction that's a basic concept.

 

[Myriad]

Nope. I state that they could have supported six times the weight of the entire tower.

No, you said they could have supported six times their own weight.

Nevertheless, if what you meant was that they could have supported six times the weight of the entire tower, then you're simply wrong.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Whoever believes that either of the WTC buildings came down because of "fire" is either utterly misinformed, is paid or pressured to propagate this nonsense, or is so completely devout in sticking to a certain, hilariously irrational worldview ("durr Conspiracies are impossible") that it would impress even the most fanatic muslim or christian fundamentalist.

I propose that those who believe that others argue that fire was the only factor in the towers' collapses are similarly misinformed, devout, or hilariously irrational.

You're not one of those people, are you? That sentence I've quoted seems to indicated that you are, unfortunately...

 

[T.A.M.]

You have proven nothing, you have brought no evidence, you are attacking a strawman (because unless Mark has changed his pov, he does not believe that fires alone brought down the towers, nor does anyone but truthers on this forum).

I am not surprised though...

TAM

 

[kookbreaker]

You're making up things. The reality is that engineers pretty much all over the world, US-friendly or not, either don't care about the subject and buy into the 'official explanation' without doing any research (which really makes their opinions not count as they are as uninformed as any uninformed non-engineer's) or they actually have somewhat informed opionions on the subject and are in wild disagreement with each other.

You would be wrong. Engineers make a particular study of failure, be it the Tacoma Narrows bridge or the Towers. They learn from failure and the idea that some defective 'official story' could slip by a world full of engineers is laughable.

Engineers apply formulas to real life applications. That's why it's also called an applied science. Any engineer who performs some research into 9/11 can come up with valid (or bogus) conclusions. Plus, again, you're not refuting an argument but again pointing to other people and their (hypothetical!) opinions. NIST employs a bunch of structual engineers and they haven't come up with a satisfying explanation. Maybe their reasoning satisfies you, but it doesn't satisfy me.

NIST was not done to satisfy cranks, it was done to learn from the disaster and the weaknesses of the design. Many engineers already knew what the defects were already. I can point out how the tallest building in Philadelphia, started after 9/11 but before the NIST report came out, has a concrete core to prevent just such a disaster from taking place again.

No, it's not a "fallacy" to point out that authoritative figures with credentials disagree with me, or to point out my apparent lack of credentials. The fallacy that you commit is that you believe that any of this would suffice to refute my argument. It doesn't.

That was not what you were saying, you were trying to push away criticism by declaring it a logical fallacy and I called you on it. But the fact is, you do not have an arguement, but instead make up figures to support your claims.

Ludicrous? What do you believe is the average redundancy in a skyscraper the size of the WTC? Any figure below +100% would essentially make the thing fall over at the slightest gust.

Incorrect. You might want to learn about the difference between various types of loads, including the load based on wind sheer.

Much less of what even mild earthquakes would do to such a house of cards. Do you have any conception of the forces (and fires!) a skyscraper has to withstand in his lifetime? I can't remember the source for the perfectly reasonable 600% redundancy figure, and I won't even vouch for it's accuracy.

No suprise, because it is a total fabrication.

Instead: Come up with your own source. Find the accurate value.

Sorry. Your claim. Your burden. Get to work.

If you fail with that, you can try to look at other steel frame skyscrapers where the central structures have in fact failed catastrophically due to fire. Wait, there aren't any.

There are few skyscrapers with total steel frames like the towers. Plenty of steel framed buildings have failed due to fire, and if anything they had fewer load issues than the Towers.

Then at least find some skyscrapers where the central steel structure has in fact survived tremendous abuse, and make a qualified estimate at what the lower minimum of their redundancy would have to be.

As I have said before:

There are X number of buildings in this world.
Of them, a fraction are skyscrapers.
Of them, a fraction are steel framed.
Of them, a fraction have ever had fires.
Of them, a tiny fraction have had fires along with destruction of their fireproofing systems and protection, along with plane impacts.

You are committing the old game of 'find me another example'. Its a stupid game that never allows for precendent.

Spare me. Just admit you pulled the 600% figures out of your ass and get on with whatever point you were trying to make.

 

[gumboot]

Given that the steel core was the last part of the towers to collapse, who really cares how much redundancy they had?

 

[pomeroo]

I can't believe this thread still exists, much less is still stickied. Whoever believes that either of the WTC buildings came down because of "fire" is either utterly misinformed, is paid or pressured to propagate this nonsense, or is so completely devout in sticking to a certain, hilariously irrational worldview ("durr Conspiracies are impossible") that it would impress even the most fanatic muslim or christian fundamentalist.

Lets just, for a minute, look at the magical fairyland. In the magical fairyland, we have these buildings completely engulfed with fire. And not just fire, but also oxygen. Instead of having a couple small fires on a couple floors that burn at low temperatures and not posing a threat to anything other than the color of the wallpapers, we pretend the entire building is in flames. And even more, we let the thing burn indefinitely to make sure the massive steel structure actually heats up to the temperature of the fire. For that purpose, in this mystical fairy land, we constantly add kerosene and oxygen to these giant torches.

Now here's the question - Would these towers collapse?

The answer is no. Not even in magical fairyland where there would be a true and real inferno, not even there could the towers have collapsed due to the fire alone.

The Towers truly massive central cores were built for 600% redudancy, that means they could have carried six times their own weights. However, even in hypothetical fairy land, this perfect fire only reduces the structural integrity of the steel to about half of what it is - That means these buildings still have 300% redundancy with regards to their structural integrity.

Why were the buildings built with cores set for 600 percent redundancy? Not because of fires, that's for sure, because in the real world, fires in a building virtually never heat a central steel structure to anywhere near where the steel would lose half the structural integrity. Fire can be a problem in that it destroys individual floors and of course the interior when it bends steel, and when it does that, it is more likely to spread and cause even more damage still, which is why special heat-resistent steel is used in the construction of skyscrapers, and this heat-resistent steel is again fire- and heatproofed with foam.

The reason for the large amount of redundancy in the WTC buildings (and any other skyscraper to date) was winds, light-to-medium earthquakes and the such, and even the impacts of airplanes, which could considerably increase the load on the central structure, for a multiple of just the weight of the building alone for short periods of time.

Considering all of this, it becomes painfully clear that fire cannot possibly be the explanation for the collapse. Not in magical fairy land. And empirically we can confirm this - never in the history of structural engineering has a steel structure building come down because of a fire. If we look at the nature of the real fires in the WTC buildings, small, oxygen starved fires that burn off office supplies, there is little need to argue if the fires had anything to do with the collapse at all.

Now that we have conclusively ruled fire out as an explanation as to why the towers could have come down, we need alternative explanations. Controlled Demolition appears as the best guess, since no other real life, physical world mechanic seems to be able to take the buildings down the way they did.

That does not conclusively prove that it was CD so far, we just can very certainly rule out fire.

However, even with just a glance at a few videos on youtube, there's so much evidence pointing towards or even confirming the controlled demolition theory, that even idiotic alternative theories - like ones involving HAART or aliens heating the building up with "heat rays" or something similiarly absurd are not worth at all following up to.

If we wanted to disprove the CD theory the same way we can disprove the fire theory, we'd have to show that it is impossible for CD to have brought down the building. Which no one argues.

In fact, there is not a single, good counter argument against the CD theory. Fallacious arguments are of course plenty, for example "That would have taken a huge conspiracy to pull off" with the gravely fallacious implication that conspiracies cannot possibly happen in the real world. Of course they can - and do.

Now that we can reasonably argue that CD is by far the most likely scenario to explain what has happened, we of course (like with every good theory) are confronted with a bucketload of further questions:

- Who planted explosives there?
- Did they have the permission or cooperation of, or were they on the payroll of the authorities?
- Why the planes? Were they muslim hijackers that just happened to fly into the buildings at the same time in a huge coincidence, or are they connected?
- Could a related group of muslims have planted explosives? Or were there no muslim hijackers at all?
- What happened at the Pentagon?
- What about Flight 93?
- Were the same people that orchestrated this the same people that ordered the entire air force to go to Alaska that day?
- Is there *even* a possibility that the government wasn't involved in this?
- Why are the media so incompetently useless about covering any this?

These and more are real and relevant questions. The question whether the WTC buildings were brought down by CD however, is not a legitimate question at this point anymore. Not even in mysterious magical fairy land could fire have brought down any of these buildings.

Edited by Lisa Simpson: 

Edited to remove inappropriate remark.

Please keep in mind the Membership Agreement and do not use personal attacks to argue your point.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Lisa Simpson

 

[pomeroo]

Statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. Some 50% of NY's population alone don't believe that according to some ancient and well known poll, and NY probably hosts more than 0.001% of the world's population of engineers.

Haha. Right.

I don't expect you to argue. You don't have an argument to begin with. All you can do is to appeal to authority "Person X believes it, so it must be true" and ad hominem ("you are incompetent" etc)

Yawn. The evidence for explosives in the Towers is nonexistent. The evidence against your fantasy is overwhelming. No physical evidence of explosives--bits of wring, detonator caps, chemical signatures--was found. There is no seismic evidence of secondary explosions. The logistical difficulties of wiring two 1,300 ft. tall buildings without anyone noticing are insurmountable. The collapses proceeded, obviously, from the impact zones. The series of simultaneous explosions immediately prior to collapse characteristic of all controlled demoltions was conspicuously absent. Shaped charges could not have survived the fires.

You bring absolutely nothing but your irrational hatreds to the table. You have failed badly.