WTC Conspiracy Theories

[Dardedar]

DAR
I have a hard time even believing people take these World Trade Center conspiracy claims seriously. This one was forwarded to me and I roasted it this evening so I thought I would share it:

> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Sharilyn
> Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 12:16:47 AM
> Subject: FW: Bits and Bytes
>
> I can't figure out how to send only the very
> last news item on the bottom of
> this list so I am sending it all. I want Daryl
> to see it. He may have
> information on the nuclear bomb stuff
> mentioned. It does make sense.

....
View of a military expert: why did the towers of World Trade Center collapse

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/finn/5/soldier5.htm
....

DAR
The claim is that a "military expert" wrote this but no name or date is given. That's important. The article is filled with howlers and basic errors. Assertion after assertion is made but nothing is backed up with direct reference or evidence. I was almost going to say that every line in the thing is false but that would be going to far. It is really hard to write an article that is 100% false but this one really tries!

Let me check a couple claims:

Article claims:
"The towers took the impacts of crushing Boeing 767's. The towers were originally built to take impacts of Boeing 707's, which are approximately of the same size and was[sic] widely used in the 1970's."

DAR
I checked and found:

767 = 395,000 lb

707 = 257,000 lb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707

Not even close.

***
ARTICLE claim:

"Fires that kindled from the fuel in the planes were too shortlasting and weak to be able to severely damage the structure of the skyscrapers. Even in the extreme situation, the heat from a kerosene fire cannot threat the durability of a steel trunk. With the temperature of carbohydrate fires that reaches only 825 °C (approx. 1517 °F) steel weakens at 800 °C (approx. 1470 °F) and melts at 1585 °C (approx. 2890 °F)."

DAR
Popular Mechanics has an extensive article that deals with 16 of the most common conspiracy myths about 9/11. As they reference at the end of the article: "PM consulted more than 300 experts and organizations in its investigation into 9/11 conspiracy theories." They list them and link to them. It is not likely that all of those people are in on a conspiracy.

The article can be read here:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... tml?page=1

This is their response to this claim:

"Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

DAR
I also found:

"The 767-300ER and 767-400ER hold 23,980 gallons (90,770 l) of fuel - enough to fill 1,200 minivans."

That is a tremendous amount of fuel to start and sustain a fire!

ARTICLE claims:
"If either of the WTC tower had started to collapse because of fires the collapse would have been limited to only a few of the floors and then stopped."

DAR
That makes no sense. The Popular Mechanics article dealt with this one:

"Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."


The ARTICLE claims:
"As seen in the following pictures, the cores of the towers were not distracted by thousands of powerful cutting charges but by a modern thermonuclear explosive, a small hydrogen bomb."

DAR
This is absolutely ridiculous and shows a profound ignorance of hydrogen bombs. The last claim in the article is mostly incoherent but is:

"Radioactivity in air creates shades of brown. (The subterranean nuke in the picture on the right is 10 times stronger than the small nuke on the left.) This is the reason why the FBI did not search the crime scene. Ground zeros of nuclear weapons are a health risk and belong to the FEMA."

DAR
I had dinner with a physicist friend this evening and asked him if this is true. He said it was not. The picture shown is misleading. The bomb blast is brown because what it is blowing up is brown.

The FBI did not search the crime scene? A hydrogen bomb goes off in NYC and it wasn't detected?

This article is absolutely ridiculous! Thanks for sending it but it should be ignored.

cheers,

Darrel

[Dardedar]

Sharilyn responds:

***
Thank you, Darrel,
I do appreciate the information. It does seem a bit out there about
the hydrogen bomb because realistically, I see now, someone here or in a foreign land, especially Canada, would have detected such a scientific problem for all of us. I do not know the real answers when I hear or read certain things like this article and don't always know how to either discern
the truth or find it. It is comforting that you did the research.
Thank you,
Sharilyn
***

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hydrogen bombs don't come that small. Maybe they have wonderful new technology that doesn't require this any more, but they (or at least used to) require an "atomic" or fission bomb to ignite the fusion bomb.

The real "conspiracy" theory - at least the one I haven't gotten any believeable answers to - is where were our fighter jets? There isn't an inch of this country that isn't within the "jurisdiction" of some military air unit - Army, Navy, Marine, or National Guard - on 24/7 alert to "scramble" find within 10 minutes, fly parallel to, and, if corrective flight isn't attempted, shoot down ANY aircraft of whatever size that deviates from it's approved flight path. This has been true since WWII. I well remember the Air National Guard public service announcements of my youth that always ended with, "Sleep well tonight. Your Air National Guard is awake."

Somebody - and it sure wasn't Osama bin Ladin - either deployed ALL the Atlantic Coast air units somewhere too far away to respond in time - or ordered them to "stand down".

[Guest]

The only September 11th conspiracy came afterwards and it was to exploit the tragedy for Republican gain.

[Dardedar]

Put another way, Bush hijacked the nations grief and crashed it into Iraq.

[Dardedar]

The real "conspiracy" theory - at least the one I haven't gotten any believeable answers to - is where were our fighter jets? There isn't an inch of this country that isn't within the "jurisdiction" of some military air unit - Army, Navy, Marine, or National Guard - on 24/7 alert to "scramble" find within 10 minutes,...

DAR
This is the response from the Popular Mechanics article I referenced above. All that is required to believe it is to go along with the rather mundane claim that the military/government screwed up and were incompetent.

***
No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. "They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this," writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11."

FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.

Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.
***

[LaWood]

What happened to WTC Tower #7? No direct hit, yet it crumbled right onto its footprint? Radiant heat???

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

We're supposed to believe that our military is the greatest in the world AND they are so understaffed and incompetent they couldn't stop the planes that flew into the WTC? There were only 14 fighter jets on alert in 28 Air Force bases? (And the "Air Force bases" leaves out the Air National Guard bases.) The FAA didnt' know which "blips" were the ones that went off their flight paths because the transponders were turned off? So nobody is watching for possible electronic problems with the transponders? You really are talking about incompetence, aren't you? Can that much incompetence really be unplanned?

[Dardedar]

Can that much incompetence really be unplanned?

DAR
Yes. The human capacity for incompetence is astounding.

The FAA didnt' know which "blips" were the ones that went off their flight paths because the transponders were turned off?

DAR
Right. There are about 38,000 flights per day in and around the US. As the article notes, there were about 4,500 "blips" in the air at that time.

So nobody is watching for possible electronic problems with the transponders?

DAR
Apparently they can be turned off. Normally this probably isn't that big of a problem. When you are a hijacked jet liner heading on a short trip toward a skyscraper, it's a problem.

We're supposed to believe that our military is the greatest in the world AND they are so understaffed and incompetent they couldn't stop the planes that flew into the WTC? There were only 14 fighter jets on alert in 28 Air Force bases?

DAR
This response, from the article, addresses this by giving a little history of intercepts:

***
Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM: "It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."

FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation, setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.

LAWOOD
What happened to WTC Tower #7? No direct hit, yet it crumbled right onto its footprint? Radiant heat???

DAR
Consider this response, from the same article:

***
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
The collapse of both World Trade Center towers--and the smaller WTC 7 a few hours later--initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent studies have shown that the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes. That explanation hasn't swayed conspiracy theorists, who contend that all three buildings were wired with explosives in advance and razed in a series of controlled demolitions.

SNIP

WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

[JD Allen]

The only September 11th conspiracy came afterwards and it was to exploit the tragedy for Republican gain.

This was me. Apparently I got logged out while surfing

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It's my 1950s childhood showing. I have/had too much faith in the ability and competence of the Armed Forces to do their jobs.

[Dardedar]

DAR
WTC conspiracy theorists who are skeptical of the rather mundane claim that the burning jet fuel weakened the steel enough to cause the buildings to collapse got a prime example of this happening just last week in California:



A gas tanker truck wreck and fire weakened the steal in the highway enough to cause it to collapse. It's not a perfect analogy but... consider the miniscule weight of this section of road when compared to the weight of one of the tallest buildings in the world.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The main thing the hit on the WTC did was remind me not to fly. Riding bombs is not my idea of fun. I'm not crazy about surface transport (terrestrial rather than aerial bombs), but they do less damage and walking to work or grocery shop is not viable in Fayetteville (at least not without more time than I have at my disposal, better knees than I currently have, and a wagon or cart to transport my groceries in (complete with ice chest or some other method of keeping cold things cold, especially milk in the summer, during transport)).

[Savonarola]

The main thing the hit on the WTC did was remind me not to fly...

At this point we're well off of the topic of WTC conspiracy theories and instead on purely tangential babbling.

Let's get this back on the topic of WTC conspiracy theories.

--Savonarola, Science moderator

[Dardedar]

Someone caught the road collapse on video. You can watch it here.

[Tamara]

It's my 1950s childhood showing. I have/had too much faith in the ability and competence of the Armed Forces to do their jobs.

I am glad that you can see that. The amount of "we are the greatest super-power" propaganda in this country is so obvious to an outsider that it's laughable, but to those of you that have heard this blather from day one I can see how it may be harder to discern the truth. I think many people assume conspiricies over sheer incompetence because of a lifetime onslaught of the idea that the U.S is all-powerful.

I recently was watching a political show with Darrel and the moderator said "the U.S. is the greatest super power" within a paragragh about something or other. I could not believe that he said it like that, so blase, and with a straight face. That was the first time that I realised just how brain-washed many of the people here must be when a seemingly rational fellow can spout such nonsense without batting an eye.

brainwashing example