use of explosives to bring down WTC

[defaultdotxbe]

i was recently in a discussion in the comments section of the SLC blog with someone who said a few high yeild bombs placed every 3 floors or so in the WTC would be sufficient to demolish it (complete with free fall speeds, powderization of concrete and persistant hotspots under the rubble after 8 weeks) i am making this post to detail why conventional explosives are not effective in bringing down steel structures


sorry for the crappy drawings, but this is to represent the effect a conventional explosive (with a spherical blast) will have a concrete wall, the red represents the effective portion of the blast

this is the same blast on a steel column, note the much smaller effective portion, due to the lower profile of the steel column

this is why demolitions experts prefer RDX "shaped" charges, such as this

the produce a focused "cutting" blast wave, however since they are only effective over short distances and in one direction they must use at least one (often several) per column, per floor

the WTC consisted of 42 core columns and over 200 perimeter columns, over 110 stories, this would require over 25,000 linear charges to be placed

to further illustrate the ineffectiveness of conventional explosives in bringing down steel structures i present the 1993 bombing

a 1500 pound nitrate-fuel oil bomb was detonated in the parking garage, it destroyed reinforced conrete floors 30in thick, over 4 stories of the garage

note even 1500 pounds of explosives did not powderize the concrete, and the steel structural members remain intact, with no apparent damage

the fact that the building was cleared for re-occupation 3 weeks later indicates little or no structural damage

with this in mind, what amount of explosives would be needed to bring down the towers in the manner CTs envisions the explosives did? how could they be hidden in the building? how many people would be required to set them?

what i hope to show with this is the explosives theory does not explain many of the "smoking guns" CTers point out any better than the accepted version, which makes the theories pretty much useless

 

[Gravy]

with this in mind, what amount of explosives would be needed to bring down the towers in the manner CTs envisions the explosives did? how could they be hidden in the building? how many people would be required to set them?

I think a better question is, "Why is there absolutely no evidence that such explosives, in any quantity, were used?"

 

[CurtC]

I think that's a very good argument, but I don't expect you to be successful communicating it to the Loosers. They've rejected plenty of good arguments before.

 

[jhunter1163]

The thing I've always wondered is, how much physical space would the explosives require? Would there be any room in the WTC for people after all the explosives were planted? Or, at least, wouldn't they be obvious to people working there?

 

[roger]

I'm assuming we are postulating those new fancy "silent" bombs, because all we heard was the buildings falling, not 1million pounds of explosives going off.

And it's cool how these bombs managed to hide all their evidence. No windows blowing out, nothing, making it look like a structural collapse.

Magic bombs!

 

[Class]

I'm assuming we are postulating those new fancy "silent" bombs, because all we heard was the buildings falling, not 1million pounds of explosives going off.

And it's cool how these bombs managed to hide all their evidence. No windows blowing out, nothing, making it look like a structural collapse.

Magic bombs!

Untrue! Didn't you see those squibs shooting out 30 floors below the collapse point?