RE: "I wonder if you have any idea of the kind of explosives, or whatever, that could have been used to turn thirty-eight,
thousand plus feet long, four-inch thick, steel frames into, effectively, "mashed-potato"?"
The usual disclaimer applies that I don't know enough about explosives to be considered any kind of expert. Not that I don't have opinions, of course.
I think there may be some confusion that "conventional" explosives aren't much. From what I understand, things like RDX produce one honey of a bang. It's been awhile since I did any research along those lines, but there's plenty of information available online. As I remember, explosives are measured by the velocity they are able to produce.
Here are a couple brief articles I picked off a quick search more or less at random. The second one looks like it comes off a survivalist site, but I'm guessing boning up on explosives is something they spend a bit of time on, and may know something about.
en.wikipedia.org
survivalguide.com
I may be wrong, but my impression is a very small amount of the stuff, like maybe a pound or so, is plenty powerful enough to cut through big pieces of steel like it was butter. A person dressed up like a maintenance worker could pack enough of the stuff in a toolbox to blow 20 columns before having to go back to the truck for another load. A dozen such maintenance workers could probably rig the whole building in a few hours. Being a fairly small package, I doubt it would be that hard to hide or disguise as something innocent.
As I mentioned some posts back, the demolition experts only use a few hundred pounds to bring down quite large buildings. The towers were unusually large, so it probably took a little extra, but it still wouldn't be beyond what a few people could pack in without causing undue attention.
At the same time, a few hundred pounds of RDX going off is going to create quite an explosion. If I've given the impression it wouldn't cause much of a bang, I didn't mean to. The point I was trying to make at the time is I don't believe it would require a device of the size most speculation I've seen appears to be centered around; 80,000 pound ANFO bombs, mini nukes, etc.. A little plastique in all the right places goes a long way. |
