galanter wrote:Here is what I previously posted elsewhere on this board:

galanter wrote:A couple hundred charges is a very conservative estimate. Keeping in mind that the Jone's camp claims the vertical beams were neatly cut into 30 foot sections, lets call that 3 stories. Lets say the towers were 100 stories tall. Lets say the core had 30 beams. (I can't remember the exact numbers here).
Thats 2 buildings times 30 beams times 33 sections...or 1980 cuts. And that's just the core beams. The Jones camp seems to say there were also charges on the outer walls of the building when they point out "squib" puffs of smoke in the videos.

Thermite charges would have to be pressed up against the girders to do their work. This would require ripping apart walls, placing explosives, and then (presumably) fixing the walls to hide the charges. And then there is the matter of fuses. Would they run from floor to floor? Or are there a set of fancy radio controlled sequential triggers? (And recall the problems emergency workers had getting radio reception).

Could the above be done without anyone noticing?

Who knows? But how's this as an alternative:

Highly secretive military intelligence organisation (Military Industrial Complex types and Oil type buddies including prominent members of current Government (Dick Cheney at least). They do exist.) decide they want an excuse to cause war and reduce civil rights at home (been done before in various places and documents express desire for such an event to take place).
To do so they use 'former' CIA asset and member of oil rich family Usama Bin Laden (we know he was and it's not a stretch to think he still was then. It's circumstantial but there were reports of intelligence contact with him There's also the curious fact of his family being shipped out before questioning)). Plan is to get Bin to organise an attack on US soil (maybe they suggest attack on Trade Towers, maybe Bin Laden and chums come up with idea on their own). Secretive intelligence organisation decides to assist in what way they can. Note: only Bin Laden would need to know of the connection to Highly Secretive Intelligence Organisation.

Plan set in motion for hijacking of planes to fly into twin towers and date decided. Highly Secretive Organisation etc organises training exercises for the set date to assist by causing maximum confusion and providing groundwork for cover story. Note: very few people would need to know why that date was set for exercises. Maybe only one person.
Any attempts at investigation into terrorist organisation seem to be thwarted from above (evidence for that) and terrorists involved are helped into the country (evidence for that).
Day comes and planes fly. If there are bombs in buildings (presuming you consider the official theory plausible) then they only need to be on floors where planes hit. Let's be generous and say they're in the basement too. How many need to be involved with that?
Not as many as your 1000s of charges theory. But it's plausible - or the official one isn't.
They might need security access but brother of potential perpetrator is head of towers security firm so...

Presuming any intelligence service might need to conduct their operation from somewhere - Building 7 is a candidate. It is set to explode and does. Burying evidence.

Member of highly secretive organisation gives stand down order allowing plane to not be shot down before hitting Pentagon.

After the fact an orgy of evidence is presented (some, frankly, ludicrous) to nail a desired enemy (not implausible. Pigs have been doing it since there's been pigs) allowing for invasion of foreign nations for Oil (hardly a unique event) and Heroin (see CIA involvement in drug running since the 70s)

Investigations are hampered and commissions rigged and also hampered by authorities (surely not implausible) .
Authorities who happen to be potential perpetrators.

Note the above doesn't say anything about switching planes (though it might require remote control of them (not impossible - if the most tenuous part of this explic.) It doesn't require hundreds or thousands in the know (it doesn't even require all the hijackers to know they were going to their deaths). It doesn't require missiles into the Pentagon and it doesn't require thousands of explosive charges.

It leaves out some parts (Flight 93 - possibly as we're told - possibly shot down. Neither implausible) but is enough, I think, to see that it is not entirely implausible and is enough considering I realise I'm wasting my time typing this.

Note: I'm not saying this is what happened - but it is plausible.
As plausible (if not more so) than the official tale. Even if you take the explosives part out you still have a plausible tale of how a highly secretive military intelligence organisation could have been involved. There are enough 'coincidental' connections and events and possible motivations for eyebrows to be, at the very least, raised.

Certainly more plausible than a fucking flying Spaghetti monster (and you have the gall to criticise other people's use of logic!)

Anyhow, carry on.

Earwicker, we can talk about motivation and past acts till the cows come home, and it won't really prove much. I could point out that Al Qaeda also has a history and motivation.

I think the best way to analyze this objectively is to focus on the physics. That is to say the physical phenomena behind the collapse.

A big part of the Jones-camp argument is that a tower damaged only near the top would *not* fall in near free-fall time. They use the fact that the buildings *did* fall in near free-fall time to "prove" the standard theory couldn't possibly be correct. They contend that the only way the building could fall in near free-fall time would be if there were sequential explosions all the way down, releasing the lower floors so they wouldn't slow down the fall of the upper floors. Hence the presumed importance of smoke "squibs", explosions heard near the ground floor, and so on.

In other words, it's the Jones-camp that says that thermite was used, and they were used all the way down the building.

Now you might say "forget the Jones-camp. Here is a 3rd alternative. There was a bomb near the top of the building, and that caused the building to collapse, and oh by the way, a single explosion near the top *can* result in near free-fall times."

But then what have you done? You've improved the alternate theory by making it as close to the standard theory as possible. And you've erased the main physical argument for rejecting the standard theory.

So you might as well argue that the planes themselves were stuffed with explosives.

But my point is the alternate theory as proposed by the Jones-camp, and hotly defended by some here, just doesn't hang together. Either massive numbers of thermite charges were planted up and down the building, hidden, not noticed during installation, and *somehow* triggered in sequence OR their argument against the standard theory has to be abandoned.

I suppose we can talk about 3rd, 4th, 5th...theories. But only at the expense of rejecting one of the main arguments against the standard theory.

The real issue is that the investigations of what actually occurred on 9-11 haven't been very comprehensive or transparent. There are way too many unanswered questions posed by people who have a genuine grasp of the specifics involved. Some are probably opportunists, etc., but I don't think all of them are.

I think we deserve the right to a reasonable investigation. I am not really convinced that this investigation has occurred, and I am frequently disturbed by the fact that this view...a view shared by a sizable segment of our citizenry...is not adequately addressed by the various institutions (press, investigatory agencies, etc.) whose stated intent is to provide exactly this kind of information.

I admit I haven't read up on any of this stuff, but I thought I remember hearing that the outer steel structure is what supported the weight of the towers, and that the columns in the middle did not, and that was part of the unique design (at the time) of these buildings. no?

if that's the case, the "charges planted in elevator column" wouldn't be relevant, right?

scott wrote:I admit I haven't read up on any of this stuff, but I thought I remember hearing that the outer steel structure is what supported the weight of the towers, and that the columns in the middle did not, and that was part of the unique design (at the time) of these buildings. no?

if that's the case, the "charges planted in elevator column" wouldn't be relevant, right?

Most of what I've read says the core supported the weight of the building while the outer steel structure took all of the lateral loads, like wind. Here's wikipedia:

A very light, economical structure was built by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient area, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. The core supported the weight of the entire building and the outer shell containing 240 vertical steel columns called Vierendeel trusses around the outside of the building, which were bound to each other using ordinary steel trusses. In addition, 10,000 dampers were included in the structure. With a strong shell and core such as this, the exterior walls could be simply light steel and concrete. With the massive core and lightweight shell for structural integrity, Robertson created a tower that was extremely light for its size.

It sounds like the whole building was more or less hanging from the center core, so if the core went then the building went too, which is basically what the official theory says happened. What I have a hard time visualizing is how the core itself came down. I can imagine the floors pancaking around it while it remained standing or perhaps bending over, but for the whole thing to come down evenly seems wrong.

finally saw the History channel's little special about 9/11 conspiracies. lotsa interesting ideas on both sides.

a point they made was that conspiracy folks say that the fires were never hot enough to melt the steel. their engineering guy said that is completely true, it never got hot enough to melt steel, BUT, it did get hot enough to weaken the steel to 50% strength, which was enough to bring it down. interestiing idea.

the special was interesting. it basically made the "official story" people look pretty bad at defending the official story, and the conspiracy folks look like zealots. seemed about right.

I still feel like the only reasonable conclusion that could be drawn at this moment in time is "no idea what role the gov't had in making or letting it happen". no remotely conclusive evidence either way, really.

This seemed like the right thread to post this video alleging Hunter S. Thompson was working on a story about 9/11 being an inside job and was killed for it.

galanter wrote:Earwicker, we can talk about motivation and past acts till the cows come home, and it won't really prove much.

It can assist us in forming a judgement about a theory's plausibility. If an organisation has behaved in a particular way before it makes it perfectly plausible to suggest they might behave in that way again.
It doesn't prove anything but it should prevent you from dismissing certain elements of a theory out of hand.
The accumulation of coincidence that the official story would have us believe, to me, makes it implausible.

galanter wrote:A big part of the Jones-camp argument is that a tower damaged only near the top would *not* fall in near free-fall time. They use the fact that the buildings *did* fall in near free-fall time to "prove" the standard theory couldn't possibly be correct. They contend that the only way the building could fall in near free-fall time would be if there were sequential explosions all the way down, releasing the lower floors so they wouldn't slow down the fall of the upper floors. Hence the presumed importance of smoke "squibs", explosions heard near the ground floor, and so on.
...
Now you might say "forget the Jones-camp. Here is a 3rd alternative. There was a bomb near the top of the building, and that caused the building to collapse, and oh by the way, a single explosion near the top *can* result in near free-fall times."

I'm not in any camp. You asked for a theory that you could consider plausible. You believe that one floor collapsing could precipitate a total collapse. You consider the planting of thousands of explosives implausible. I've given you a theory which wouldn't require thousands of explosives. If you don't consider it plausible then how can you consider the official theory plausible?

However, it does add more than the official story. I threw in basement bombs for good measure which would help explain the total collapse.

galanter wrote: And you've erased the main physical argument for rejecting the standard theory.

Not so. Explosives do away with the steel weakening explanation.

galanter wrote:But my point is the alternate theory as proposed by the Jones-camp, and hotly defended by some here, just doesn't hang together. ...

I suppose we can talk about 3rd, 4th, 5th...theories. But only at the expense of rejecting one of the main arguments against the standard theory.

You asked for a theory you could consider plausible.
I've given you one and you say 'oh, that's not the one I want. I want the one I already consider implausible.'

You're shifting the goal posts of the argument to ensure you can't lose. You've rigged the game.

Sorry for the confusion. I'm not shifting the game. I just didn't completely state what I was asking for because I thought that was clear based on the surrounding context.

What I meant was I wanted to hear a plausible theory as to how the Jones-camp theory (that the building was brought down by controlled demolition and that's why there was a near free fall collapse) could have actually been accomplished.

I've allowed in the above that a third theory (enough explosives were used near the top to cause an upper floor failure resulting in sequential pancaking and near free fall collapse) is more plausible. It's also more similar to the standard theory. But it does *contradict* the Jones-camp theory, and it *loses* the ability to discount the standard theory based on rate of collapse.

In other words, yes we can go down your road, but that means the standard theories' account of the rate of fall becomes a strength of that theory not a killing weakness.

The steel weakening account is a different, more complicated, discussion. The standard theory does not depend solely on heat induced steel weakening. There is also the damage done by the physical impact of the jets. This has been studied in great detail by structural and forensic engineers. My reading is that the standard theory does account for the collapse due to that combined effect.

In theory a sufficient amount of explosives and/or thermite could have the same ultimate effect, but I've seen no detailed account quantifying the amount required. It would be interesting to make those calculations, and then consider the logistics required to set that up. My guess is that it would be *easier* than the Jones-camp theory, but not at all close to easy.

(I'll be away for awhile)