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

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9153)	12/6/2004 11:38:10 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20039

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.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9153)	12/7/2004 5:17:09 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

Searle, Here are a couple of pictures showing one of the WTC towers under construction. I pass these along in order to help quell the confusion that has been spread about the construction of the core columns. As you can plainly see, they are constructed of heavy steel plate welded into box columns, with the corner columns heavily diagonally reinforced. There is no "reinforced concrete" anywhere in this structure supporting gravity loads. home.comcast.net home.comcast.net Hope this helps. :) -Ray