Don > The whole idea of a controlled demolition is to use the least amount of explosives possible, in order to cut key points of support. Most of the job could have been done with a few hundred pounds of detcord, but I think support for a controlled demolition begins to break down once one begins to speculate about a car bomb sized device on every floor
I am not a demolition expert so I have no idea how the job was done or what explosives were used. I merely attempt to understand what took place, rather than what should have taken place.
Indeed, I can see (from videos and pictures) that the building exploded. In fact, it disintegrated. You, yourself, have remarked on the showers of shiny, reinforcing steel fragments which were produced. To my understanding, this can only have come about as result of a considerable explosive force --- a force other than gravity or fire -- being applied to the reinforced concrete.
Possibly, in terms of an argument, an "excessive" amount of explosive was used? That may be so. But we do know that a seismic event of considerable proportions preceded the collapse of each building. We also know from eye witnesses who lived that explosions were taking place even while people were running down the stairs.
And I do accept, on the basis of the pools of molten metal and the enormous amount of heat coming from the basement for weeks afterwards, that a great quantity of explosive or similar material was used there. (Some think it was thermite, Gus feels it a was mini-nuke) But there is also no doubt that the explosions of what one has to believe is a controlled demolition took place in the towers themselves. Indeed the conclusion of Jim Hoffman justiceforwoody.org indicates that an energy source of considerable magnitude (> 10X gravitational) was used:
>>The amount of energy required to expand the North Tower's dust cloud was many times the entire potential energy of the tower's elevated mass due to gravity. The over 10-fold disparity between the most conservative estimate and the gravitational energy is not easily dismissed as reflecting uncertainties in quantitative assessments.
The official explanation that the Twin Tower collapses were gravity-driven events appears insufficient to account for the documented energy flows.<<
I very much doubt that this enormous amount of energy could be produced from the detonation of "few hundred pounds of detcord", as you suggest. |
