Maybe the floors collapsed (completely or partially) earlier and we only saw the roof and maybe a few top floors going down?

This is factually suspect. He said to "pull" from the buildings. Nothing in his statement logically means to start some sort of controlled demolition. I interpreted it to mean that remaining firefighters should evacuate the building, given the obvious loss of life earlier in the day.

From here:

On September 9, 2005, Mr. Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, issued the following statement on this issue:

Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings. The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1.

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.


As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.â€

Thanks for the link; it was an interesting read. However, I wouldn't go as far as he did, calling that a paper; it's unfortunately not written very stringently, and if it was published as it is presented on the page, as the top of the page claims, I have to question the value of a journal that publishes papers containing results of apparently informal studies done with his students that were not properly recorded except by mentioning off-hand in the paper itself, and don't name any of the students participating. Further problems that might be an indication of general fact-bending can be seen in bits where he says "he and his students" times the WTC 7 fall as 6.5 seconds, but doesn't say how long it took for the towers to fall; he just says it's too short. His source for that statement doesn't contain a precise measurement either, instead dabbling with "about fifteen seconds."

I hate to go ad hominem, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones#Criticism provides some responses to his essay; the parts about his employers distancing themselves from it and lack of formal peer review stand out the most.

I'm not a proper freelance scientist, but the tower collapse seems quite genuine enough to me. I watched a documentary about its construction.

They were basically two big steel tubes, with the floors suspended in the middle. This was a cheapo way of constructing them. The floors were then pinned to the outer tubes with metal hooks, each set strong enough to hold only one poured concrete floor.

Now the hooks in themselves were always a risk, and this was risk was designed out, by coating them in lots of fireproof lagging. If there were a normal fire, the lagging was designed to keep the metal hooks from going soft. However the blast from the impact blew the (very fragile) lagging off of the structure, leaving the hooks exposed to the very intense fire. Once the hooks went soft, the first floor fell onto the next and so on. The combined weight grew as floor upon floor fell through, hence the acceleration we all saw on the day.

The tubes themselves were only strong when they were intact. Put a hole on them and they loose all of their rigidity. hence the fact that 2 metal tubes were not lect intact. This is something you can try for yourself. Take an empty toilet roll tube on its end and stand on it. If you balance your weight correctly it will hold you. The second someone prods it, it fold in on itself.

As for the pantagon. It was designed as a defensive structure, cant see why the fact the building did the job it was intended for should be a source of conspiracy theory. If it had sustained more damage than it did I would be suspicious.

Thats not to say that the whole event isn't mired in government cockups that have been covered up. Several questions will remain unanswered, because the american public might blame the current administration for being incompetent or more accuratley institutionally corrupt.

Such as...

Why intelligence budgets were being cut despite specific advance warning of an attack being in existance?

Why the Bin Laden family were in the only planes allowed to fly after the attack. And why they were spirited out of the country when the CIA wanted to interrogate them?

Why Donald Rumsfeld ordered his staff to find a link to Iraq imediately following the attack, when the intelligence had identified the most likely source of attack as coming from Saudi citizens before the thing even happened?

Why Saudi Arabia has never been put under close scrutiny following the attack, even though it was Saudis that planned, funded and carried out the attack?

And was the hijacked last plane shot down?. Logic would say that it should have been, if indeed it was suspected of being hijacked.

And why has Bin laden not been captured? This is the biggest scandal of the lot. This should have been top priority for the US, but they put in a budget force into Afganistan. Compared to the attack on a defenceless Iraq, it was small fry. This smacks of hidden agenda either way. Either they didn't want him captured or they wanted to hold the big guns back for an aready planned war somewhere more oil rich.

The latter is almost certainly true, the former is a distinct possiblity. Bush is financially linked to the Bin Ladens in a very big way... they virtually own him.

qviri, sorry he had an updated version at the top of the page.

In pg 58 he mentions that the Engineering College no longer has a statement distancing itself from him on their main site.

What finally convinced him was his analysis of high-temperature sulfidation of steel, previously molten metal, and dust.

He has a few videos of the molten steel dripping from the building, though that's not really up for question, though it is a puzzle what made the steel melt.

Also, see pages 52 and 53 for supporting info., but I don't see where his sources are listed.

page 81 says he's discovered the previously molten metal to be mostly iron as would be expected if thermate was used. pg 88 is about how he checked other sources.

84 has info on sulferised steel.

I just don't have enough time to read his entire report let alone check his facts. I'll have time this weekend though.

What makes me question this is that, if what Dr. Jones says is true, why wouldn't more tenured professors speak out? What would they have to lose if the facts were on their side?

EDIT: pg 100 mentions the anaysis of the WTC dust. 102 mentions how you'd be able to determine whether thermite was used.

He doesn't appear to be apolitical saying in your wikipedia article that he's a former Dubya fan.

http://www.8thestate.com/?page_id=17
http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/911-COVERUP-3.htm

I find the above interesting.

Source as much information from this guy Andrew Groove as you can. I'm pretty sure he's meant to be dead right now.

And the below is worth a look.

http://www.911blimp.net/prf_FreeFallPhysics.shtml


If dropped at the same time, which would hit the ground first?

Pancake theory or not, there was a lot of dodgy crap going down that day.

I feel a bit silly suggesting this, as no one else even brought it up, and it seems kind of obvious, so it may be wrong, but...

I believe that under high pressure, the melting point of a material decreases significantly. Seeing as the towers collapsed into the basements (I understand there were at least a couple of basement floors), there was a lot of material lying there. Perhaps the pressure on the lowest level, coupled with an - undoubtedly high - temperature from the fire, pushed the iron beyond its capability to remain a solid?

I can't believe this thread hasn't been locked, but anyway.....


About Steven E. Jones, whom Trip references above:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones

Qviri, you were looking for a comment from a qualified civil structural engineer, I believe?



http://www.netxnews.net/vnews/display.v ... 801bdadd6e



Well, let's imagine for one moment that the conspiracy theory is true, and 9/11 was a government cover-up or something, universities derive a lot of their income from government whether directly or indirectly, and anyone speaking out would likely be gagged/ostracised by their faculty (as BYU has done with Steve Jones). However in his case I think it is simply because they don't want to be associated with such a contentious issue.

Why would the thread be locked?

...

I don't see at all why this thread should be locked. It's just a random conspiracy thread. It's neither offensive nor am I advertising. If a mod wants to lock this, then that's fine with me. I'll do whatever is best for SPCR, but I don't see how this thread is a problem personally.

Nude dancing is... not free speech IMO but any statement regarding an issue like this ought to be fully allowed by the academic community. The appropriate response ought to be announcing an official rebuttal disproving all of his arguments. And if the guy is crazy, he shouldn't have been able to obtain his tenure. The same goes for questioning the Holocaust, the moon landing, the causes of Pearl Harbor, and whatever else professors want to pursue. We should be proud that we, unlike most of the rest of the world, allow full free speech. Err, actually, does Canada allow full free speech? By we I meant the US.

A thread on the Holocaust would be offensive though because so many died in it, but this thread only is about the cause of 9-11 not its existence. Holocaust questioning should not be allowed IMO on SPCR, but 9-11 is fine.

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That is a good find I hadn't read the whole article. Nevertheless, I've read stories of Christians and Jews proving their own religious views. Just because the guy's a member of a popular cult, which I imagine he was born into, shouldn't prove he's crazy. I've met atheists with crazy ideas as well (e.g. they believe in the entire theory of evolution - pond scum to human - despite certain problems it presents. It's certainly a possibility, but it's not proven.) Additionally, I have trouble seeing how atheists can find anything of value in life, and was I one I would pursue power and pleasure absolutely, but I digress. Most any individual is going to have odd religious beliefs though.

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Dr. Firmage's letter is welcome, but it doesn't rebuke all of the various claims. The structure ought not to have collapsed at near free fall and steel shouldn't have melted. Anyway, I'm still reading through all this stuff, and I'm not an engineer.

This is precisely my fear. University professors have tenure so that they can be free to express their views. Free from censorship. The federal government shouldn't have the ability to influence tenured professors. 9/11 isn't so important as free speech.

According to the professor, BYU has removed its disclaimers and is no longer pressuring him to be quiet. I'm only stating the other side; I really don't have an interest in convincing anyone this is or isn't a conspiracy.

That's a good explanation.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/collapse.html

You know what Trip, It seems 911 debate is endless.

And it seems, that if we bend physics, yes anything goes.

But I think the above site is very informative, to me anyway.

Personally, I think three buildings going down symmetrically, and exhibiting so many signs of demolition, is very suspicious.

Random explosions, don’t equate to perfect orderly obliteration. The two don’t work together.

If there is evidence the buildings were prepped for destruction, that would be the clincher for me. And that evidence is there sadly.

Also if I can be a little controversial for a second, professors are an odd bunch.

As a rule of thumb, if it has a beard and glasses, and is under instruction to explain why the towers fell, and that demolition is ludicrous and not to be considered because it implements white collar types in mass murder. Isaac Newton gets his head blown off, and you get “pancakesâ€

Yes,

ty for pointing out that page too.

Also, if you're interested in building a dead silent computer, this is the place. I'm a refuge of an infamous IBM HDD that was unusually bothersome. Removing the red noise allowed me to regain my focus at the comp.

You've stumbled upon a gem of a site. If it can benefit you, I hope you'll take full advantage.

Welcome to SPCR!

Well yes, in particular I was looking for a comment supporting the theories discussed here. I'm sure there are statements to the contrary (the official reports, to start with). At the same time, I sincerely doubt that the entire American Society of Civil Engineers was bought or made to keep quiet, so say nothing of similar bodies across the world.



Certainly not! Statements suggesting that the U.S. is in any way, shape, or form better than Canada are heavily scorned upon up here.

[quote="mr lahey"]As a rule of thumb, if it has a beard and glasses, and is under instruction to explain why the towers fell, and that demolition is ludicrous and not to be considered because it implements white collar types in mass murder. Isaac Newton gets his head blown off, and you get “pancakesâ€

And so you should be proud of your homeland

Speaking of NYC, I have to go up there, by plane, this weekend.

Your explanation of WTC 7 is quite good. However, weren't there people still in there at the time of its fall? At the least someone ought to look into whether there was an abuse of power I suppose.

Regarding WTC 1 & 2, there are still so many firsts in that. It was an odd event that we can't fully explain but like everything not necessarily a conspiracy I suppose. Mr. Lahey's very short article sums it up and links to a related short article

If you read through there WTC 3 crushed some of its floors and didn't crash into itself. WTC 4 had lots of gold and silver stolen from it - not necessarily a conspiracy, but that just adds to the story. Wow, that's a very good site; they have everything a conspiracy nut could want! Is it truthful? I dunno

I should hope an entire body of engineers wouldn't lie. As I said before, my concern is that if something is amiss, the implications that so many would just go with the flow are frightening. That the government might have been dishonest or immoral is everyday news. Power corrupts and attracts the corrupt; only a balance of power can keep them in check.

I just posted this topic to see what others thought. I just don't have the expertise to say this was or wasn't a demolition. These points ought to be debated. Engineers would watch the debates, and we would know if something was truly amiss.

# The fine powder into which the building was converted during the collapse is consistent with the demolition model and its associated explosives. There would have been some pulverization in the pancake model, but not to the extent seen in this case.
# Molten iron in the wreckage, weeks after the collapse, is consistent with military-grade demolition charges, which chemicals continue to react with the metal long after the initial implosion event.
# Numerous eyewitnesses described hearing explosions not associated with the planes hitting the buildings.
# The wreckage from the towers was quickly shipped off for scrap, contrary to laws governing removal of items from a crime scene.
# WTC buildings 1,2 and 7 had undergone unannounced security evacuations in the days prior to Sept. 11. A concurrent power outage disabled security cameras. Explosives-sniffing dogs were called off as part of that evacuation procedure. Martin Bush, brother to the President, was involved with the security company involved in this process.
# It would take 10 men ten trips to place the necessary explosives to bring the towers down by demolition.
# The 911 Commission report says that there were no central support columns, which is a lie. The WTC had the most robust central support columns in the world at the time it was built, and was designed to be centrally supported.

The pancake theory requires an unprecedented amount of “first time everâ€

As long as there is tinfoil to make hats from, there will be conspiracy theorists looking to make money off of every event of historical significance.

As for the buildings' collapse, I have a couple of points:

I was in grad school in 2001, and happened to be taking a structural design class that fall that was taught by a phd'd engineer. But besides being generally a pretty smart guy, Prof. Chung had a unique perspective on the WTC: he worked for LERA in the late 60's as a young engineer. Leslie E. Robertson Associates (LERA) was the firm that did the structural engineering on the twin towers. His take on the collapse in the days after it pretty closely matched what the official report theorized months later: If the building survived the initial impact (which it obviously did), and the impact itself didn't take out a large percentage of the core, you would expect it to fall basically vertically.

I think a lot of the non-engineering or non-building people would be surprised by how little it takes to collapse a building. Example: If you're ever around a construction site for a steel-framed building and can get up close to it, take a look at how the steel columns meet the concrete floor. The column will have a bearing plate on the bottom, with 4 leveling bolts. Between the bottom of that plate and the concrete slab will a "filler" of grout that looks different than the rest of the concrete. After the column is placed, and leveled via shims and leveling nuts, that grout is pumped in under the bearing plate. While it looks like plain old cement grout, the stuff under the plate is actually very special. It's "non-shrink grout." Regular cement products all shrink by a tiny amount as they cure, so if you put regular cement in the gap between the plate and the slab you would end up with a little tiny gap reopening after the grout cured. It would be tiny, on the order of a millimeter or less. The gap may be tiny, but its impact on the building could be huge. Without solid bearing the entire load coming down that column stack would bear in shear on the threads of the leveling nuts. At some point, probably during construction of the concrete floors above, those threads would shear off, and the column would drop the millimeter or less down until the bearing plate hit the top of the shrunken grout. Falling that far, and then stopping, imparts enough dynamic load on the rest of the structure to potentially cause collapse.

Now imagine that instead of falling a millimeter, that a floor fell 3 meters to land on the floor below it.


Like most of the nutjob conspiracies out there, these fail Occam's razor. Just think about how many hundreds of people would have to be in on it. And how much planning it would take. And what would be the motive? To invade Iraq? That's stupid. GW had only been in office for 8 months, hadn't even gotten his first budget through congress, and was generally having tings go pretty well for him. An operation like the theories propose would have taken years to plan and pull off.

According to the official story, the building has been measured as moving slightly, and firefighters were ordered out of it.



It would have been nice for you to quote your source: an article by Sterling D. Allan found, among other locations, here -- incidentally, Mr. Allan's website.

It would have helped if the article spelled Marvin P. Bush's name correctly, so I wouldn't have had to spend time tracking irrelevant hits for a nonexistent Martin Bush.

Now, the Marvin Bush / power down story is interesting, however, a couple of counterpoints, conspiracy style:

# Just because couple of people are saying the buildings were powered down and "engineers" walked all over, doesn't make it true. You're putting couple of people's words against the government. Which party is lying? How can we know?
# How do you imagine each of 30 or so people that would have to be directly involved with a structured demolition with premeditation of this scale don't have any moral qualms about what they have done? What about the many more people that had an inkling that something was going on? Do they all reserve themselves to posting articles on the internet about what really happened?
# How does a government cover up its involvement in an operation of this scale, and subsequently is not able to plant a couple of WMDs in Iraq so that they don't look like complete idiots? Why can the Clinton administration not keep down a little physical contact in a heavily-nerved area of the President's body, but the Bush administration can cover up its involvement in destruction of two of the largest towers on Earth?
# Why would you trust eyewitness accounts when most of the eyewitnesses were obviously traumatised by what was unfolding before their eyes? Could the explosion-like sounds not be caused by structural members buckling and snapping?
# Could the iron not have melted locally due to pressure, as I mentioned earlier? There is no evidence that I've seen of widespread melting, just pockets thereof.

[quote]The pancake theory requires an unprecedented amount of “first time everâ€

About the molten steel:

I just pulled this out of thin air, but would it be possible for burning aluminium to melt steel? I'm too lazy to look this up, but I bet that burning Al could do it. The plane was almost completely made of Al so there would have been plenty of pulverized aluminium around to get ignited.

Metallic aluminium does not burn, it simply melts. Very finely divided/powdered aluminium can auto-ignite, due to Pyrophoricity. Also, the melting point of aluminium is about 600 degrees Celsius lower than that of steel, depending on what type of steel we are talking about.

And as long as there are events of historical significance there will be fools unwilling to question them. As long as Americans have decent lives, they aren't going to want to believe anything is wrong. I don't know engineering, but I do know politics. Things don't always, or even usually, happen as they are recorded in history. Whatever side is in power writes its own history and portrays events as it likes. Of course... that would include myself as well: true objectivity isn't possible, but there's a difference between bias and propaganda.

The bigger the event, the more vital it is to our nation's myths. Had we truly provoked Japan into attacking us, had we known Japan was likely going to attack when it did, had we not needed to drop the 2 atomic bombs to defend ourselves from the Japanese navy, the US and its hero FDR (and his legacy the welfare state) would look much worse. Not to mention the US doctrine of preemption (they'll attack us if we don't prevent them).

Japan is going to have one story; we are going to have another. Each story is going to be in the best interest of respective nation. To believe that everything the US says about WWII, or most anything else, is true is just absurd. At the same time, what would be the benefit of taking on a vital myth? The reason people who perpetrate such myths are tin hat wearers is 1. academics are odd 2. normal people don't waste their time or of course 3. they are conartists / crazies or hired to discredit such theorists.

That's not to say I'm siding with the revisionist/conspiracy theorists this time. However, Pearl Harbor is in my interest (and has facts to back it) because I believe the US needs to stop meddling abroad. It's vital for the myth of noninterventionalism for the US to have likely known of the Pearl Harbor attacks. EDIT: and that the dropping of the bombs was wrong is vital to just war principle as opposed to total war principle.

It wouldn't have been GW who did the planning. He might have given the OK to a plan already in existence. There were plans for Iraq before he came to office as well. I could prob find the ones Wolfowitz had made if you like.

The way most of the conspiracy theories go, and I'm not trying to be offensive, is that the Israelis would have been behind it. Cui bono 9/11 attacks and the subsequent US involvement? Israel, al qaeda, Iran, US/British oil, and I suppose the popularity of the president though I haven't heard claims that Iran was behind it however.

That's what I've said in previously: how could so many experts have just gone with the flow? This makes the 9/11 conspiracy seem near impossible to me. I can't explain everything, but surely structural engineers wouldn't have just overlooked significant details.

The planes were all just taking off and therefore had full tanks of jet fuel which basically melted the support beams of the buildings. Also the Pentagon is well the pentagon. I wouldnt be surprised if a nuclear bomb did little damage to it. Ive heard that it has hidden elevators that go many many floors down into the earth to hidden bunkers. They have the money to do it. Hell they might even have laser cannons that pop out the shrubbery or something!

They are thought to have weakened the beams not melted. The fuel alone couldn't have melted the steel, though the terrorists also could have brought along something else I suppose.

That's the spirit I was looking for originally in this thread

Yeah, I know. Thats what I meant when I said that there should/could have been plenty of pulverized aluminium around.

Remember Occam's Razor: all other things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.

Which is more likely, that a bunch of Islamic terrorists finally "hit the jackpot" on 9/11 (after lots of failed attempts), or there was a massive cover-up involving virtually all of the higher levels of government, the security and intelligence forces, virtually the entire scientific community, the people who supposedly set the thermite charges, the post-9/11 investigators, etc. Like all conspiracy theories, it presupposes an implausible level of competence and secrecy which governments have shown time and time again they are not capable of. It only takes one person to "let the cat out of the bag" and their cover is blown.

However, the analysis is correct in that 9/11 has been a very convenient opportunity for the Bush administration to execute their "War on Terror" and demonstrate how they are tough on national security and the Democrats aren't. Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares" pinpoints this masterfully:

[quote]The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC series of documentary films, written and produced by Adam Curtis.

This documentary argues that during the 20th Century politicians lost the power to inspire the masses, and that the optimistic visions and ideologies they had offered were perceived to have failed. The film asserts that politicians consequently sought a new role that would restore their power and authority. Writer Adam Curtis, who also narrates the series, declares in the film's introduction that “Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmaresâ€

It wouldn't have taken many to pull this off, and what would be the motivation for one of them to reveal information? There was a failed attempt by Israel on USS Liberty for similar reasons as this, so this wouldn't have been a first.

However, we can see the aftermath, and it'd be impossible to pull off a perfect scam like this with so much attention. There are a few experts who claim the facts don't add up. So the bag has been opened and there's no cat, right? I guess that's kinda why I posted this thread: I was a little shocked that this journalist I like is pointing out that things don't add up. If such is true, why do so many experts say they do add up? Isn't that impossible? Hasn't he, like Rusty said, put on a tin hat, stripped off the rest of his clothes, and started arguing with his TV?

I don't think people realise that the degree of specialisation modern society provides not only in the government but in corporations allows many to take part in things they know nothing about. Only the guys on top know the whole plan. Take the building of the atom bombs; few knew what they were building.

Its been intellectually stimulating learning about pancaking. I hope it is proven building 7 suffered the same fate, because if it was demolished we have a big problem.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/nist_probe_bombs_wtc_7.htm

The result should be interesting.

In fact the above site is a good watchdog site, although it lays on the new world order stuff a bit too thick, I still can’t get my head around bohemian grove, do these global elite really frequent that place?

If you believe Islamic fundamentalists are the sole terror perpetrators, then that’s cool, everyone needs to draw there own conclusions and I respect that.

I just have a different angle on what mass terrorism is, how its used, and how objectives are achieved through it.

Dude, you rock

On official source of info!

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

It's an answer.

The pancaking question is answered too: they came up with a new theory.

This link is so good I'm posting it on the first page

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Mr. Lahey, that site looks at first glance akin to the John Birch Society which prints the New American and occasionally gets a bit carried away. However, looking at it more closely that info war site is nuts no offense

NTIS's website is interesting.

Yes it seems the original pancake collapse was not their conclusion, and they now have a more complex but feasible model given the extraordinary collapse.

They seem to have ruled out demolition because a standard demolition model didn't fit with the collapse.

For demolition to have been possible, it would require the perpetrators to know at what elevation the towers would be hit, and would require a hell of a lot of thermite, and a non standard top down procedure.

I can understand why they wouldn't consider demolition for those reasons as they go beyond what most people would except.

But the fact that they didn't have the materials to conclusively debunk it, is frustrating, given that from appearances that day, and the aftermath, demolition at least looked plausible, especial given WTC 7.

The decision to remove the steel and ship it out of the county, without analysis of it to rule out foul play, is a decision that is troublesome to me. Did we not want to treat ground zero as a crime scene for some reason?

Also is this accurate? “In Popular Mechanics' infamous 9/11 hit piece, they quote a FEMA building performance study as saying there were no firefighting actions undertaken in Building 7 and yet WTC complex owner Larry Silverstein's explanation of his "pull it" quote was clarified to mean removing firefighters from the building. The two statements contradict each other so they both cannot be true.â€

I'm back from NYC; just flew in from La Guardia.

That professor from BYU had claimed thermate was used not thermite. Dunno if that's relavent.

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Yea internationally I think it is divided but not in America alone. SPCR's membership spans the globe. Also, you can't take these polls as representative. By nature, internet geeks hiding in front of their computers all day tend to be paranoid

Let's not get OT on other conspiracies though. I suspect that's a con - I notice you can buy his secret video for "only" $25

I get most of my info from books and mainstream media. I follow a few websites and magazines that would fall under paleoconservative as well.

Greetings,

The Nova program on PBS shown last night has a revised conclusion about how the WTC towers fell, and it goes into a lot of detail on how new skyscrapers should and are getting built.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/

Basically, the floor joists did not fail -- they sagged, and this pulled on the exterior columns, deflecting them, causing the columns to fail. Then the top of the building fell down through the floors below.

They have a lot more info on the problems with the stairwells, and the lack of redundancy. In the World Finacial Center, in Shanghai, they are designing in "floors of refuge" every 12-13 floors, that have heavy girders around the outside, and steel plates in concrete in the floor and the ceiling. The stairways are considerable wider, and surrounded by concrete. The elevators are much more robust, and there are two external elevators that can stop at each refuge floor, too.

You owe it to yourself to watch the show; it is very informative.

I think they should equip all skyscrapers with Goalkeepers