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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9115)	12/2/2004 10:59:08 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

RE: "I am not a demolition expert..." Neither am I. What little I know is from doing a few research projects online. I was trying to find the site I'd found some time back, which mentioned the amount of explosives used on different building implosions. I found this instead, which I think you'll find more than a little interesting: howstuffworks.com It could probably be titled, "Building Demolitions for Dummies", but it's very informative in spite of verging on patronizing in it's literary style. Not mentioned in the article is some of the more recent technology developments in detonators. There are also remote controlled devices which can be timed by computer, and devices that are set off by the actual progression of the collapse. If I can find the link that mentions the amounts of explosive used to demolish various buildings, I'll post it later. It stuck in my mind when I first ran across it because I was surprised at the relatively small amounts used to bring down rather large buildings. Not that it would rule out using more than needed to bring down the towers, as safety was never a consideration, but I think it would be a lot easier to explain 10 guys making two trips with 25 pounds of RDX each, than it would moving several boat loads of the stuff without being noticed. I also think the seismic spike could be accounted for by the core slamming into the bedrock, as standard operating proceedure appears to be taking out the central column supports as the first step. Anyhow, go through the several pages starting at the above link. I think you'll catch yourself saying, "Ah ha!" at more than a few places.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9115)	12/3/2004 1:44:22 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20039

Searle, Re: 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. As a former general contractor who has worked in high rises, I would like to clear up some imprecision in this discussion. First of all, it is important to understand that it would have been highly unusual for their to have been any reinforcing steel (rebar) in the concrete floors at the WTC towers. Generally the way that the floors are constructed is that there are bar joists overlain with sheet steel pans into which about 4 inches of lightweight concrete are placed. Frequently, there is a six inch by six inch mesh of 1/8" steel wire which is incorporated in the pour in order to prevent minor cracks from spreading in the floors. The concrete is made with vermiculite as one of the aggregate components and the compressive strength is very low, on the order of 300-500 psi, as opposed to normal concrete which ranges anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 psi compressive strength. I've got some fairly high quality photographs of the WTC towers as they are collapsing: erichufschmid.net The steel which is ejected from the building appears to be much larger than rebar segments. In fact, some of the pieces being ejected appear to be on the order of several hundred pounds in weight. This would be consistent with the sort of steel components that went into the structure. I don't have a good scientific explanation for the pulverization that occurred on 9/11 in those three buildings. Having demolished or witnessed others demolishing dozens of cubic yards of concrete in my career, I have never experienced anything remotely similar to the pulverization that we witnessed at the WTC complex. This pulverization cannot be explained by mere gravitational forces, I've seen far too many concrete demolitions that yielded results that were nothing like what we saw at the WTC. Controlled demolition is my best guess, but my real question is when, if ever, will we get a testing agency to try to replicate the results that we saw on 9/11. My guess is that the U.S. government will absolutely refuse to pay for or authorize any such testing. Sadly, we've already seen what happened when an Underwriter's Laboratory manager attempted to alert a NIST manager that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.