Raymond > I don't put much credence in the hearsay evidence in a bull session in a fire house.
Sure, but it is interesting to hear from guys "in the business" who were actually there. One thing is a fact, and that is the collapse of the buildings was a dramatic event which is not easily explained by the physics of burning fuel and the melting of steel. As with everything associated with the events on 9-11, the official story does not hold up to scrutiny. Unfortunately, without being considered a "conspiracy nut", one cannot easily come up with a satisfactory explanation.
Here's an erudite dissertation and critique on the possible use of thermite as the agent which could have assisted in the demolition of the structures and which could possibly have accounted for the strange appearance of the steel.
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>>>....122% of the gravitational collapse energy was necessary just to pulverize the concrete (let alone create the dust cloud), that is, more energy was needed just to pulverize the concrete than was generated by the collapse. This, of course, means that explosives, thermite or some other energy source must have supplied the extra energy.
As Mark Loizeaux of Controlled Demolition, Inc., commenting on the pools of molten steel he observed at the bases of the towers' elevator shafts, said: "If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure" [Ref. (9)]. Controlled Demolition, Inc., incidentally was the company contracted to remove the debris from both the WTC and from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah building in OKC.
....the implications are clear: such a melting of a section of all the inner core box pillars is possible, using relatively simple technology. Such compounds could have been applied to the interior or the exterior of even the largest of these columns in a surreptitious manner, to accomplish the task of melting and collapse. The amount necessary for complete melting of a segment of even the largest box column was calculated, and found possible. Of course complete melting was not necessary to cause total failure: a lesser amount of a thermite-like compound could have been used to raise the temperature of the steel to a point where the columns would fail before melting, although some melting must have occurred to account for the steel pools.
It is pure speculation if, how, and when this was done. The columns would have been most easily filled during the initial construction phase, but this requires belief in a foresight and 30-40 year "master plan" that may be difficult for many to think possible.
However, there have been undoubtedly a number of opportunities under the guise of maintenance: many stories exist about problems with the "insulation" adhering to the steel support structures of the WTC towers. Also, the first attack on the WTC towers in 1993, in the basement of the complex, offered an opportunity for access and "repair" to demolition experts and construction personnel. Thermite is a relatively safe compound, requiring high temperature to initiate reaction - a magnesium fuse is commonly used. We will probably never know exactly what sequence of events unfolded to culminate in the WTC collapses of 11 September 2001. <<<
I'm not a civil engineer, demolition expert or anything like that, myself, but it seems conceivable that explosives (or thermite) placed around the two central cores of the buildings, at their bases, would have caused them to implode and thus collapse inward and from the top down which is as we all saw on TV. Of course, it would still have been a helluva job to plant all the explosive material, and then, without people knowing what was going on.
From the article, a cross-section of the building showing the two central cores:
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