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WTC Demolition Conspiracy

Was the WTC disaster an inside job?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • No

    Votes: 10 66.7%

  • Total voters
    15

greenrd

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2001
Messages
103
Was the real cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers on Sep 11 something other than the plane crashes? Were in fact the towers demolished by controlled explosions? Was it an inside job? Judge for yourself:

http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wtc.html

"Obviously the towers did not collapse because of the plane impacts alone, because both towers stood for 45 to 90 minutes after impact. The official explanation, parroted faithfully by the mainstream media, is that the towers collapsed because burning jet fuel caused the steel girders supporting them to melt. First we must examine this hypothesis as to its credibility.

"Firstly, much, or perhaps most, of the jet fuel was consumed in the fireballs which erupted when the planes hit the towers. Furthermore, it is likely that the jet fuel which managed to enter the towers would have burnt fairly quickly (jet fuel does not burn slowly like wood). And finally there were sprinkler systems in place in the towers, and it can be surmised that these would have hindered the spread of the fire (by soaking combustible material) even if they had no effect on the burning jet fuel itself. The Twin Towers were giving off a lot of black sooty smoke, but there was little fire visible. But to melt steel you need the high temperature produced by, e.g., an oxy-acetylene torch. Jet fuel burning in air (especially in an enclosed space within a building, where there is much smoke and little available oxygen) just won't do it. And if the steel columns had melted, would this have produced the implosive collapse observed? If the columns had melted like toffee they would have bent (not snapped), causing the upper parts of the towers to buckle and tip to one side (probably the side where the planes hit). This did not happen. These considerations show that the claim that tens of thousands of liters of burning jet fuel produced a raging inferno and caused the steel columns to melt is extremely dubious, and does not account for the collapse of the towers."
 
Here's an example of a dubious explanation being banded about - from the BBC, no less:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1579000/1579092.stm

The diagram at the top of that page says that "fires burned at 800C - hot enough to melt steel floor supports". But according to this table of melting points:

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/teach_res/db/d0005f.htm

steel melts between 1300 and 1400 degrees C. Now, I'm not a physicist and not an engineer, but perhaps someone who is could explain the discrepancy there.
 
Don't forget that the physical impact of the planes would have seriously weakened the reinforced core, thereby lowering it's tolerance to heat. It also would not take all of the 420 meters of the column to be destroyed, but just a single floor.

Floor X collapses onto floor X-1, doubling the impact onto floor X-2 etc etc.

As for the differences in temperatures, theres not much difference between steel that melts into a liquid at 1200oC to steel thats softened at 800oC. Both are weak, but steel doesn't need to be completely molten to structurally fail.

One of the images shows the top part falling sideways, thus proving in some part that the steel hadn't melted completely. The reason why there wasn't a 200ft part of tower left on the floor is because the towers atomised.

I also don't see how explosives could be placed in both towers, have planes crash into them and a) Not go off immediately, or b) The firing mechanisms not be destroyed c) Someone noticing lots of c4 lying about the place

Sorry, but I don't buy it :)
 
What Schnor said. All the steel has to do is 'soften', not 'melt'....and with that much weight on soften steel supports I'm not surprised it happened and once one floor collapsed you have the entire weight of the upper building jack-hammering the rest of the floors all the way down.
 
New Scienist went into this fairly fully. WTC was a double cylinder design load distributed between the central core and the outer columns. The fire at 800C was plenty hot enough to soften the both the flooring cross members, the vertical beams, the bolts connecting the two and to fracture the concrete flooring.

As the fire fractured one floor it exposed the next to the same effect. Debris began to build up. Then the cross members began to sag stressing the weakened bolts even more. Then floors began to fall, perhaps only one or two but accelerating.

The vertical columns gave way catastrophically at their weakest point, where the fire had burnt longest and where the small bracing offered by the curtain wall and central well walls had been blown away by the initial impact. The collapses that followed are the classic failure mode for this type of design.

The collapse of WTC 2 before WTC 1 is sometimes given as a reason why a demolition charge might have been used. Not true. The extra load above the softened columns is more than sufficient to explain that.

The demolition charge theory has many faults.
1) The aircraft would have had to have been crashed with a tolerance of +or- 3m (10ft). The aircraft that hit WTC 2 banked steeply to make its impact. Banking that way makes it very difficult to maintain height tolerances.
2) The demo charges would have had to have survived the impact of the aircraft and subsequent fire, as would the wiring/fuse looms.
3) They could not have been exploded without visible effect a couple of seconds before the collapse. The smaller the charge, the longer the delay. Look at films of demolition.
4) Placing demo charges effectively is a long process that requires a lot of analysis and a great deal of wiring/fusing. Radio control is not an option. There is to much risk of random noise setting the one or more charges off prematurely

I'm not saying there was not a conspiracy and am am not saying there was just that the demolition charge hypothesis is not tenable.
 
"and the one to two million Iraqi civilians, two-thirds of them children, who have died in the last ten years as a result of the effects of the hundreds of tons of cancer-causing depleted uranium left over from the million or so exploded rounds of DU ammunition used in attacks by American warplanes in the 1991 American/British 6-week terrorist campaign against Iraq and from the subsequent U.S./British-imposed economic blockade (not to mention those killed by the bombing raids which occur every week). "

What is DU ammunition and why does it contain uranium?
 
phgnome said:
What is DU ammunition and why does it contain uranium?

DU stands for 'Depleted Uranaium'. Odds are the reason it's used in ammunition is to increase it's momentum as it's being fired.......that's just a guess of course......
 
phgnome said:
What is DU ammunition and why does it contain uranium?

They are used as Armour piercing rounds

DU shell contain a very dense DU 'rod', at high speed it will slice through a tanks armour.


I believe the British Military where recently stopped from testing them off the coast of the IOM, any of the members from over there know the details?
 
I'd have though you'd have heard of DU. It got a lot of coverage recently. Some blame Gulf War syndrome on it. They need to blame it on something I guess.

But it's true, the uranium is used for armor piercing bullets to give them more momentum. But since they are radioactive they could perhaps cause long term damage with splinters laying around.
 
Isn't DU only as radioactive as granite? From what I gather GWS could be from DU but only in the sense that DU is a heavy metal like lead or mercury, and that inhaling the fine dust of heavy metals (eg when a DU shell is fired) is causing the problem and not the actual radiation.

Slightly OT to the thread starter, but still interesting.

[edit]

Also, DU can travel very quickly, but the reason it's preferred is that it doesn't "blunten" when it hits, but for some reason gets sharper, and can penetrate greater amounts of armour

[/edit]
 
schnor said:
Isn't DU only as radioactive as granite? From what I gather GWS could be from DU but only in the sense that DU is a heavy metal like lead or mercury, and that inhaling the fine dust of heavy metals (eg when a DU shell is fired) is causing the problem and not the actual radiation.

Slightly OT to the thread starter, but still interesting.

[edit]

Also, DU can travel very quickly, but the reason it's preferred is that it doesn't "blunten" when it hits, but for some reason gets sharper, and can penetrate greater amounts of armour

[/edit]

I believe that the reason that DU is used is purely its density. I'm guessing is that this is the reason why it doesn't blunt much (though I think that you are confusing th DU with a particular type of anti-armour shell when you refer to the sharpening bit. There are systems where the penetrator part of the anti-armour round is explosively formed. You may be thinking of this.)

As regards its toxicity, I think that you are correct. The biggest concern is that it is a heavy metal. DU also has been used in the past to balance aircraft wings, and also as ballast for yachts.

Interestingly though on a very morbid topic) not only is there a campaign against the use of DU, but the military (the US I think)are also looking at alternatives to lead for bullets. Again this is because lead is a nasty heavy metal. I think that tungsten is being looked at.
 
It's been said more than once of characters shot dead in cowboy or gangster movies that "he died of lead poisoning..."
 
Found something on why DU is so good (so to speak): -
From here.

Hardened steel can shatter like glass, while other metals simply flatten against the armour plate. The trick is to concentrate as much force into as small an area as possible. Depleted uranium is great for this as it is almost twice as dense as lead, packing a big punch.

Depleted uranium also burns at the point of impact, so the projectile self-sharpens as it goes through the tank armour. In contrast, tungsten, the main alternative to depleted uranium, deforms and mushrooms as it goes through metal making the projectile progressively blunter.

The final advantage of using depleted uranium is, as always, cost. Tungsten costs a fair whack whereas depleted uranium is a waste product from the nuclear industry that are only too glad to be rid of it.

TBH I had no idea about DU being cheap, I always figured on it being very expensive.
 
schnor said:
TBH I had no idea about DU being cheap, I always figured on it being very expensive.

Oh yeah, here in the U.S. it's sold in grocery stores along with the flour and sugar.......it costs about the same too....:D
 
Thanks Schnor. I new that Uranium was pretty reactive stuff, but I wasn't aware of the self sharpening effect. (There are so many wacky things that occur in armour and counter armour, e.g. who would have thought that strapping plates of explosive to the side of an armoured vehicle would be a *good* idea?)

I think that DU is not terribly expensive as it is a waste by product of the uranium enrichment process. (Hence the "depleted" bit of the name. Its what is left over after as much of the "active" isotope has been removed.)
 
from what I remember from the time the DU story was around, and this is semi-confirmed by schnor, DU is used as a tank buster because it superheats on impact and bores thrugh armour because of the heat generated. As a by-product of this reaction, uranium dust is released into the atmosphere. Now I don't know about you, but this sounds a lot like radiation clouds.

How can the scientists be sure about the amount of radiation in any given sample of 'used' uranium rods, the source material for DU? Even if extensive geiger counter sweeps are done on any sample, they will only tell you the overall radiation levels, and there may be pockets of highly radioactive material left in parts used in manufacture. A telling indication of radiation risks would be to find out what preventative measures are taken at DU ammo factories.
 
As DU is noramly what's left over after the enrichment process, then the level of depletion will be well known, and hence the residual concentration of U235 will be equally well known. I think that the enrichment process itself will make sure that the distribution of residual U235 is extremely uniform throughout the uranium. (It is also possible to extract DU from spent fuel rods, though, and this will lead to a slightly different composition.)

I'm providing a link to a European Commission report on the use of DU, and its associated hazards. In one example that they quote, it is claimed that if one were driving a tank, armoured with DU, and carrying DU ammuntion, then 1000 hours exposure would be equivalent to the normal annual (~8766 hours) exposure from natural sources. (Note that this latter value will differ dramatically if you live over granite, and/or you do a lot of air travel.)

http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/radprot/opinion.pdf


And here's a nice Q&A page on DU from the IAEA...

http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Press/Focus/DU/du_qaa.shtml
 
So you get an annual radiation dose of nearly 9 times the background plus the normal background of course. What fun, and how safe that is :madeyes: .
 
Yup, doesn't sound like a vast amount of fun. However, this was basically sitting in a big box of the stuff (with perhaps some shielding on the inside due to whatever it is that they have on the inside of tanks.)

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1994/jan05/33567.html

The above website quotes the US occupational limit of radiation exposure to be 5000 millirems over a year. The natural background at sea level is ~300 millirems, and at higher altitude such as Denver, it can be ~400 millirems. That would imply that sitting in the DU armoured vehicle would not give you an exposure greater than the recommended annual limit, even if you lived in it full time for a year.

Mind you, if you were of a suspicious mind, you might suppose that the radiation measurements inside the vehicle might have been fudged to give you that answer.
;)
 
du

Isn't uranium dust highly poisonous and registered as a dangerous toxin...no need for radiation to be involved?
 
The link below gives info on the toxicity.

http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Press/Focus/DU/du_qaa.shtml#q10

If no DU is taken into the body, then the only path for harm is in the radiation emitted. (For which some ifo was provided in a previous post.)

If, on the other hand, DU is ingested, or inhaled in some form, then the primary harm is due to the chemical toxicity of the DU. (It is a heavy metal after all.)

Pinching a bit of the link quoted above...

"In sufficient amounts, uranium that is ingested or inhaled can be harmful because of its chemical toxicity. Like mercury, cadmium, and other heavy-metal ions, excess uranyl ions depress renal function (i.e., affect the kidneys). High concentrations in the kidney can cause damage and, in extreme cases, renal failure. The general medical and scientific consensus is that in cases of high intake, uranium is likely to become a chemical toxicology problem before it is a radiological problem. Since uranium is mildly radioactive, once inside the body it also irradiates the organs, but the primary health effect is associated with its chemical action on body functions."
 
du

Fortis tnx for the link, although the effects seemed to be played down in this report, it makes depressing reading that this stuff can be thrown around leaving potential hazardous waste for the future! I remember reading a report from an aid worker in Iraq ( it mite have been in the Independant ) in which he claims an enormous increase in birth defects in the country, which could be the result of multiple factors such as poor nutrition, bad sanitation, & possibly Du.
( can u tell me how to put in a hyperlink such as the one u offered? obviuosly useful)
 
Hyperlinks:
Just copy URL from the site (URL is in the Address bar), and paste it in your reply.

Or you can play with the "http://" button above the Reply window.
 
wtc

Just had a look at the link at the thread beginning, which is interesting. However, i saw a short interview on dig. tv just after the event in which an architect said that design policy on new skyscrapers was to arrange for them to collapse inwards on themselves in the event of a catastrophy, thus minimising the dominoe effect on adjoining buildings. This would be a controlled collapse on structural failure...exactly as it appeared. The Bin Laden bc. I saw on analogue tv direct from al jazeera, before the sat bc's brought them onto mainsteram digital. I don't see it being a fake. I still have analogue which as luck would have it I had the dish on arabic bc.s at the time
 
Fortis said:
"In sufficient amounts, uranium that is ingested or inhaled can be harmful because of its chemical toxicity. Like mercury, cadmium, and other heavy-metal ions, excess uranyl ions depress renal function (i.e., affect the kidneys). High concentrations in the kidney can cause damage and, in extreme cases, renal failure. The general medical and scientific consensus is that in cases of high intake, uranium is likely to become a chemical toxicology problem before it is a radiological problem. Since uranium is mildly radioactive, once inside the body it also irradiates the organs, but the primary health effect is associated with its chemical action on body functions."


Maybe the US learned its "bad PR" lesson from the Hiroshima bomb -- from what everyone has said, I think DU is just as bad, if not worse, because the immediate effects can't be seen and there are no consequences for the governments using these. It would be very difficult to prove the extent of the damage when it comes time that the US has to pay for damages that they caused. At least when they used the atomic bomb, it could be acknowledged that a really terrible thing was done. But it sounds like DU has more of a lingering effect and is more subtle, although just as lethal. (I don't even think that it's common public knowledge to Americans that such weapons exist that can do this level of harm). Amazing what your government can do in your name without your knowledge...
 
New report on why the Twin Towers fell

Fireproofing Blown Off Twin Towers
Report Details 9/11 Collapse in N.Y.

By Michelle Garcia
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 6, 2005; Page A03

NEW YORK, April 5 -- The hijacked airplanes that struck the World Trade Center hit with such force that the resulting explosions blew the fireproofing off the steel columns, accelerating heat buildup and weakening the structural core -- contributing to the towers' eventual collapse, according to a report issued Tuesday.

The process was hastened by fires outside that consumed the buildings' face and caused the exterior columns to bow in, according to the report.

Still, the study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that no amount of fireproofing could have saved the buildings.

Poor evacuation procedures, lack of communication and weak staircases cost the lives of civilians and emergency workers at the towers, as workers waited for directions and were slow to leave after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, the report said.

Only two of the 198 elevators in the towers survived the initial explosions -- forcing most survivors to escape down emergency stairwells, which had suffered extensive damage. The report found that building codes lacked requirements sufficient to protect the structure of emergency stairwells.

Had such codes been in place, said S. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator of the institute, "there would have been greater opportunity for people to evacuate."

Another federal report issued Tuesday found that the economic impact of the attacks was less than New York officials had originally estimated. After the attacks, state and city officials said the loss of tax revenue could approach $5.8 billion.

But the Government Accountability Office said the loss attributable to the attacks was closer to $2.9 billion and cited the city's recession, which had begun to take a toll before Sept. 11, for the rest of the loss.

The institute's report on the building collapse was long awaited by city officials. The institute based its analysis on extensive interviews with about 1,000 survivors, computer modeling, recovered steel and communications records.

The institute will use the findings in the 3,000-page report to formulate recommendations -- expected for release in September -- for changes in national building codes for office towers. A spokesman at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center, said local and state officials will review the recommendations and use them to guide reconstruction at Ground Zero.

"Whatever recommendations are adopted we will follow," said authority spokesman Steve Coleman. "Our engineering department has oversight over the buildings [and] will ensure the codes are followed."

In the past, city safety codes for office buildings often were a sort of informal compromise between safety and commercial imperatives. In 1968, New York City officials drastically reduced the number of required stairwells in skyscrapers, at the request of the real estate industry, to increase the amount of available rental space.

New York was, in fact, fortunate that the attacks took place in the morning, when most people had not yet reached their offices. If the building had been fully occupied, the report found, a full evacuation would have taken four hours and cost 14,000 lives.

The agency interviewed survivors and found that, although most had participated in a fire drill, nearly one-half had never used the stairwells in the buildings before the attacks. In fact, New York City prevents the use of stairwells during fire drills.
:shock:
"I've never heard of another jurisdiction having such a prohibition," Sunder said.

Source
 
looks like the same sad explantion we saw days after the planes had hit to me.

How many steel framed steele cored skyscapers have collapsed from fires ?????


answers on a post card please

;)
 
Techybloke said:
looks like the same sad explantion we saw days after the planes had hit to me.

How many steel framed steele cored skyscapers have collapsed from fires ?????

Steel is notorious for going floppy in fires. There is a photo shown to student architects of a burnt out building were the wooden beams have been charred but remained in place, but the steel beams have softened and draped over them like licourice! Well fire treated timber often lasts longer than steel in a fire because it keeps its strength.
 
why a building collapsing after an incedent that noone would have ever considered possible can be turned into a conspiracy seems a little odd, the collapse has been disected in great detail by various independant groups all of whom seem to have concluded that the design of the WTC made it inevitable that it would collapse having sustained the damage it did.

as far as i can understand, the building consisted 2 load bearing sections the central core and the outer skin, with the floors hooked in between them, damage either of these parts and the floor will fall, loading the floor below, given that several floors where damaged the floors above the damage will colapse overloading the floors below.
 
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