September 11th Conspiracies - Twin Towers

This is page four in the Twin Towers section of my series on the September 11th terrorist attacks. If you were linked here by mistake, please refer to page one in this section.

It Looked Like a Controlled Demolition

I have already discussed in various sections above that a fire did, in fact, bring down the Twin Towers, but there are some subsections and some sub-theories that should be addressed here, namely pre-planted explosives and the whole controlled demolition debacle.

Pancaking is Wrong

The pancake theory is not necessarily incorrect, but how it is presented is. The NIST said that heat from the fires sagged the trusses, which bowed the columns inward, causing the building to collapse. After it began to collapse the inevitable pancaking ensued due to the tremendous force from above. The force from above and the pancaking itself took the rest of the building down with it[51]. Regardless, pancake style collapses are not as rare as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe, a prime example is the L'Ambiance Plaza, which collapsed in 1987, before it was even completed[52]. 

Two other incidents happened, also during construction, in 1985 and 1973, where pancaking floors collapsed both buildings[53]. There is also the Lian Yak building in March 1986[54]. Civic Center of Pavia in 1989, Cathedral in Goch, Germany; Campanile in Venice, Italy in 1902[55]. Ronan Point flats, where a gas explosion on the 18th floor blew out the perimeter structural panels, resulting in the floors collapsing on top of one another[56].

As you can see, pancaking is hardly a rare occurrence only happening in terrorist attacks.

Suspicious Power-outage

Some conspiracy theorists claim that this provided an opportunity for explosives to be planted. However, there are some problems with this account. Firstly it is only sourced by a single person, Scott Forbes, and corroboration is not there. In an interview, he said[58]:

Only a single person? Where is this backup? The World Trade Center held the offices of many large, important companies, and to have their central computers turned off would have been extremely inconvenient. Thousands of people would have known about this, from local employees to staff in other parts of the company, so where are they? Actually there may be a clue as to this in another Forbes interview[59]:

Forbes does not appear to have any direct knowledge of conditions on floors below his own or even above it seems. If only one or two companies were affected, then this would make sense as to why one would not heard about it, however it brings up more issues and really comes together when you consider these tickets[60]:

Forbes says that the "power down condition was in effect approximately 12 noon on Saturday September 8, 2001...", yet it appears from the ticket that it was still business as usually for visitors heading to the top of the tower. These tickets are not fatal to Forbes's story, as he already has admitted he can only confirm the power-down condition on his floors. However, they do suggest that the original claim, "there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hours from floor 50 up", is completely false.

If only his floor was affected, it would not be much of an opportunity to add explosives the the other 109 floors of the building, if that was indeed the time to do it. Regardless, 50 floors without power for 36 hours is something you would probably hear about on the news, or at least from the web sites or employees there, considering First Commercial Bank (78), Fuji Bank (79-82), Fiduciary Trust, Atlantic Bank of New York, and others were above floor 50.

I also have a hard time believing that this could be a good time, considering most security systems have backup power, so it would make more sense to disable the security system, not cut the main power to the building. Even so, there is no mention of the North Tower or Seven World Trade power outages. The power down time was reported by Forbes as 36 hours, and later he stated it was 26 hours[61]:

In reality, preparing for a controlled demolition takes very much longer than 26 or 36 hours[62].

That is 24 days to prepare a smaller building (33 stories including basements) for demolition. Not to mention they did not have to hide the 4,118 charges or the 36,000 feet of detonation cord, either. I am also curious as to how they could have secured the charges and cables so that they would not fall off or explode when the planes hit later on.

Even so, we are told by the conspiracy theorists that it is suspicious that "all the concrete was pulverized". I find it hard to believe a "relatively small amount of explosives" can explain how concrete was pulverized. Then we are told that the towers collapsed "too quickly," that the only way that could have happened is if the resistance were removed. This might involve using explosives to blow them out of the way.

There seems to be a large fallacy in these arguments.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the condition, timing, pulverized concrete, and so forth of the collapse of the towers shows a controlled demolition, however if one points out to them that it would be difficult to hide all of the explosives required, they claim only a small amount were used. A small amount cannot bring down one of the world's largest buildings, much less pulverize all of the concrete to dust.

Accounts of Explosions Prove Demolition

Conspiracy theorists frequently take comments made by people and firefighters out of context. When someone describe something as an "exposition" or "sounded like a bomb", does not mean that what it was. For example, an exploding spray paint can sounds like a bomb to some and a shotgun to others, but that does not make the can a bomb or a gun.

When a controlled demolition takes place, the charges are extremely loud and follow each other. In this video[youtube.com] you can watch the Tencza Apartments, a 12 story building, being demolished professionally. The charges go off for 10 seconds before the building starts to collapse. This was not heard or described by anyone on 9/11, nor during the collapse of Seven World Trade. It is not in any videos or heard by any witnesses.

The logistics of such an undertaking, as demolishing the Twin Towers is something that conspiracy theorists have yet to explain. Demolition is done from the bottom of buildings, not the top, in order to take advantage of gravity, and there is little dispute that the collapse of the towers began at the top, where the airplanes struck.

A demolition project on such a scale would have required the tower walls to be opened on dozens of floors, followed by the insertion of thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses, and ignition mechanisms, all sneaked past the security stations, inside hundreds of feet of walls, on all four sides of the building. Then the walls would have to be closed up.

This all taking place without attracting the notice of any of the thousands of tenants and workers in either building, no witnesses have ever reported such activity. Then on the morning of September 11th, the demolition explosives would have had to withstand the impact of the airplanes, since the collapse did not begin for 57 minuets in one tower and 102 in the other.

As I stated earlier, conspiracy theorists claim that the condition, timing, pulverized concrete, and so forth of the collapse of the towers shows a controlled demolition, however if one points out to them that it would be difficult to hide all of the explosives required, they claim only a small amount were used. A small amount cannot bring down one of the world's largest buildings, much less pulverize all of the concrete to dust.

Pulverized Concrete

FEMA did not tell us how the figure above is calculated or what it does or does not includes. That is, the word "construction" suggests they are talking about the building structure and not including all of the office contents, desks, etc. Therefore, there really is no way that we can tell whether this key figure is accurate or not, and there are widely differing figures: an ACSE article reports[65]:

For example, the construction of WTC 1 resulted in the storage of more than 3 x 10^12 J of potential energy over the 1,360 ft height of the structure.

That is around 7 1/2 times the figure that FEMA provides in their report, and in a strangely nearly identical sentence. I would venture to say the official FEMA figure is correct, but as neither FEMA or ACSE show any calculations, nobody can be for sure. It does seem illogical and ignorant to take either figure as a meaningful maximum. Regardless, whatever the energy in the building, there were other sources of energy released as heat, such as the exploding airplanes, burning jet fuel, and so forth.

The conspiracy theorist asserts that most of the dust was concrete, but another source says otherwise[66]:

Microscopic analysis of WTC dust by Nicholas Petraco, BS, MS, DABC, FAAFS, FNYMS at The New York Microscopic Society lecture held at AMNH 28 May 2003

45.1% Fiberglass, rock wool (insulation, fireproofing)
31.8% Plaster (gypsum), concrete products (calcium sulfate, selenite, muscodite)
7.1% Charred wood and debris
2.1% Paper fibers
2.1% Mica flakes
2.0% Ceiling tiles (fiberglass component)
2.0% Synthetic fibers
1.4% Glass fragments
1.3% Human remains
1.4% Natural fibers
trace asbestos (it became illegal to use during the construction of the WTC)

Other trace elements: aluminum, paint pigments, blood, hair, glass wool with resin, and prescription drugs were found.

It is claimed that most of the concrete was reduced to tiny 10-60 micron particles, but there is no clear explanation as to where this figure was taken. Even so, there is some disagreement on this issue. While Dr. Steven Jones has described concrete being pulverized to "flour-like powder":

Jones' January 2007 "Hard Evidence" article suggests otherwise[69]:

As we examined the WTC-debris sample, we found large chunks of concrete (irregular in shape and size, one was approximately 5cm X 3 cm X 3cm) as well as medium-sized pieces of wall-board (with the binding paper still attached). Thus, the pulverization was in fact NOT to fine dust, and it is a false premise to start with near-complete pulverization to fine powder (as might be expected from a mini-nuke or a "star-wars" beam destroying the Towers). Indeed, much of the mass of the MacKinlay sample was clearly in substantial pieces of concrete and wall-board rather than in fine-dust form.

[...]

It seems that the 9/11 truth community likewise "has been slow to understand" that the WTC dust particles in greatest abundance are the "supercoarse" variety rather than "fine" particles, and that significant chunks of concrete were also found in the WTC rubble.

The conspiracy theorist's calculations on pulverizing then heating the dust miss one major point, and although he assumes the dust cloud expansion is heat-driven, there may have been other contributing factors, such as when velocity of the debris hitting the ground during collapse was 120 mph. Perhaps more interesting, what is going to happen when the chunks of concrete hit the ground? They will shatter, creating dust, shooting outwards. This also leaves out all the air inside the buildings being pressed out tremendously fast.[70].

If we assume for a second that the conspiracy theorist is correct, and his article reads 4 x 10^11 joules was the amount under a gravitational collapse, and according to him it is less than one 10th of the energy required. Following this, we need to multiply this figure by at least 9, giving us 36 x 10^11 joules of energy required from some other source, and keep in mind he is being conservative, so this is his absolute minimum.

Now, if we were to put this much energy into explosives, how much would someone need to create this much energy? A metric ton of TNT has 4.184 x 10^9 joules[71]. This is a lot of explosives, but not as much as we need to create the 36 x 10^11 joules. This suggests we would need 860,420kg of TNT to produce the collapse of the Twin Towers and the observed results. Incase you were wondering, that amount is 40.9% that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima[72]. Need I say more?

Mike Pecoraro

Just like the "Accounts of Explosions Prove Demolition", because someone says it sounds like an explosion, does not automatically mean that they are talking about a bomb. Mike Pecoraro is probably the most often quoted, saying[73]:

Being in the 6th sub-basement level, it is extremely likely he could not see an airplane crashing into the building, and the only thing he could conceive of or compare the situation to was the 1993 bombing. He also said he smelled kerosene, which is what jet fuel is made of. As explained earlier, jet fuel almost certainly poured down the utility shafts and caused explosions and fires on lower levels of the World Trade Center[73].

30 Foot Lengths of Steel

Interesting claim that never has any references or sources to back it up. Who measured each column after it collapsed? Are we sure that this applies to all the columns? Where is any evidence at all?

The picture to the left, which you can make larger by clicking on it, does not seem to show a great deal of consistency as far as length goes. There are small ones, large ones, and most seem fairly broken. Other places seem to have spots where large sections have fallen over after riding the rest of the debris down to the bottom.

For the sake of proper research and investigation, let's pursue the conspiracy theorists' hypothesis that there were more 30 foot sections after the collapse than any other length. If that is the case, why in the world would that happen? Perhaps we can look to the construction of the peripheral columns, as described in FEMA's report[74]:

The structural steel used in the exterior 14-inch by 14-inch columns that were spaced at 3 feet 4 inches on center around the entire periphery of each of the WTC towers was fabricated from various grades of high-strength steel [...] The cross-sectional shape of the columns can be seen in Figure B-1. These varied in length from 12 feet 6 inches to 38 feet, depending on the plate thickness and location.

So the columns were a maximum of 38 feet long in the first place. If they were to break at the point where one column met another, naturally they would have had a strong probability of being around 30 feet long. This does not require demolition to explain.

The Towers Collapsed at Free Fall Speeds

First let's establish how fast they actually did collapse. There are a lot of sources and most have different times (in seconds): ~8 and 10[75], 8.4 to 12[76], <= 10 [77][78], 10[79], 10 to <14 seconds[80], 14 to 16[81], and 15[82][83][84].

Most times listed are above "free fall speed", but that can easily be explained[85]:

The buildings are 70 percent just air in volume and all of the columns are not solid steel, they are steel boxes in which the thickness of the steel varies from 1/4 inch (at the top) to 1 1/2 inches (at the bottom). But they were properly designed to carry the weight of the steel itself, the weight of the partitions, the occupants, the furnishings... those are all things that the structure can withstand very well, but they are not designed to accommodate the failure of a 20 floor section in a dynamic impact on the structure below. If it's moving down in a dynamic fashion, the magnitude of the energy unleashed is so large that no structure can withstand that kind of force that is applied, and the building came down in essentially free fall.

Once the collapse initiated on the one floor, the kinetic energy of the top part of the tower impacting on the floor beneath was 8.4 times larger than the plastic energy absorption capability. At that point, the subsequent progressive collapse was inevitable. The amount of resistance or absorption capability that each floor beneath could provide was minuscule in comparison to the amount of kinetic energy from the above structure collapsing. This explains why the collapse happened as quick as it did -- not free fall speed, but perhaps twice the amount of time than free fall[86].

Explosive Force

The photo on the left, which you can click to make larger, shows what is claimed to be steel columns cut into pieces on the far right. The main problem with this claim is that one cannot tell where the debris came from. The bars on the right do not appear to have been ejected horizontally from the tower, because it still looks intact. Therefore, they probably came from above, but from where exactly? It matters if one is trying to determine the force required, and whether it exceeds that available from the downward momentum of the collapse.

However another issue must be raised. The Twin Towers had an extremely light aluminum face on them, and it is almost certain that is what is in the far right of the debris, at least it seems so when one looks at other shots before the collapse; you can see this in the picture to the right, you can click it for a larger size. In this photograph you can see strips of the face hanging loose, and it looks like they are about a floor high. It is not difficult to deduct by the size, this are the debris in question in the first photo. Of course, however, it is natural that during the collapse some steel might get propelled outward, this reason was explained in Pulverized Concrete section.

Puffs of Dust Show that Bombs were Detonated

As explained in the Pulverized Concrete and Pancaking sections, once each floor began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed area bore down with a massive force. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, again transmitting the force to the next floor below, thus causing a chain reaction, which does not require an explosion to begin.

Like any building the Twin Towers were full of air, and a lot of it, thus when the floors began collapsing the air was ejected below with a tremendous amount of energy, thus shooting out concrete, dust, and everything else it could. It may look like bombs going off, but that is hardly the situation.

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