tanabear
Critical Thinker
I have noticed that 9/11 debunkers appear to become irritated when truthers point out the fact that all they do is regurgitate government propaganda, regarding the events of 9/11. The debunkers pretend that they have investigated all the issues themselves and have come to the same conclusions that government investigators did. Gumboot summed it up best, "My favourite is the argument that basically runs 'we should be questioning the official story because governments are evil liars'. Bravo. Nice objective reasoning there. It's the same tired 'accepting the official story' line. No one here that I've seen "accepts" the official story. They've independently researched everything and come to the conclusion that the official story is accurate." Investigating all aspects of 9/11 would seem to take quite a bit of time. I wonder how many debunkers have actually done this?
Nevertheless, I hope some confusion can be cleared up over the collapse of the towers. NIST, in their investigation, does not go beyond the point of collapse initiation. NIST states their investigation, "does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached..." So if the debunkers are not dependent on the government to explain things to them, then they should have no trouble explaining what happened to the towers after collapse initiation. Here is a list of some official and non-official explanations. Feel free to choose from the following or offer your own.
A) The jet fuel fires melted the steel. This was the first popular explanation given for why the towers collapsed. This hypothesis was supported by various experts soon after 9/11.
Hyman Brown, "This building would have stood had a plane or a force caused by a plane smashed into it. But steel melts, and 90,850 litres of aviation fluid melted the steel. Nothing is designed or will be designed to withstand that fire."
Chris Wise, "The columns would have melted, the floors would have melted and eventually they would have collapsed one on top of each other."
John Knapton, "The 35 tonnes of aviation fuel will have melted the steel... all that can be done is to place fire resistant material around the steel and delay the collapse by keeping the steel cool for longer."
Eduardo Kausel, "I believe that the intense heat softened or melted the structural elements--floor trusses and columns--so that they became like chewing gum, and that was enough to trigger the collapse."
Though this explanation was soon discarded as the "official" explanation, it is still accepted by some. Lee Hamilton, Co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission, stated that the jet-fuel fires melted the steel in an interview in August of 2006. "What caused the collapse of the buildings, to summarize it, was that the super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure of these buildings and caused their collapse."
B) The Pancake Collapse Hypothesis. This explanation was supported by FEMA's WTC Building Performance Study, Thomas Eagar and became popular through the NOVA documentary and Popular Mechanics. Truss failure is considered to be the initiating event for the pancake collapse.
FEMA, "As catenary action progresses, horizontal framing elements and floor slabs become tensile elements, which can cause failure of end connections and allow supported floors to collapse onto the floors below...In addition to overloading the floors below, and potentially resulting in a pancake-type collapse of successive floors."
Thomas Eagar believed that the failure of the angle brackets explained how the pancake collapse began, "The problem was, it was such a widely distributed fire, and then you got this domino effect. As if the columns of the building were merely balanced on top of each other, Once you started to get angle clips to fail in one area, it put extra load on other angle clips, and then it unzipped around the building on that floor in a matter of seconds."
Popular Mechanics reports, "Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air — along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse — was ejected with enormous energy. 'When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,' NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. 'Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition', Sunder adds, 'but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.'"
Mike Williams from 911myths, "A pancake-style collapse isn’t quite as rare as some sites want to portray. Here’s what happened to the L'Ambiance Plaza in 1987, for instance."
Some individuals within the debunking community seemed rather confused when they are attempting to explain exactly what happened to the towers. "Debunking911" and Brent Blanchard are good examples.
From Debunking9/11, "The building didn't pancake CAUSING the collapse but evidence is strong the building pancaked AFTER the collapse was "inevitable".
Brent Blanchard uses the word "pancake" to describe the collapse, but states that the buildings did not pancake. "One primary difference between two collapses and a typical building implosion was the initial failures was that the initial failures occurred very high up on the structures, which lead to an extended-duration 'pancake-like' effect down to the ground...A Protec Comment addressing Assertion #2 has been modified from 'an extended duration effect to the ground' to 'an extended duration pancake-like effect to the ground.' As many are aware - and as we go on to explain later in Assertion #2 - the buildings did not actually 'pancake'. Our use of the word is not intended to be taken literally, rather it is used to represent a general visual description that helps readers conceptualize the more advanced points that follow."
C) The Pile-Driver Hypothesis. This seems to be the explanation that is currently in vogue. Just as truss failure leads to a pancake collapse, column failure is said to be the initiating event for the pile-driver hypothesis. This hypothesis was expressed soon after the attacks, though it never became as popular as the pancake collapse.
Ronald Hamburger stated, "Think of the impact of dropping a 25-story building straight down. It was like a pile driver, which is why it collapsed as it did."
The column failure explanation was promoted by Zdenek Bazant soon after 9/11, "The analysis shows that if prolonged heating caused the majority of columns of a single floor to lose their load carrying capacity, the whole tower was doomed...Can the fall of the upper part be arrested by energy dissipation during plastic buckling which follows the initial elastic deformation?"
Lead NIST investigator, S. Shyam Sunder, now seems to support the pile-driver explanation and disavows the pancake collapse theory, "When you did it previously, you showed that the floors actually pancaked, and we did not see any evidence of pancaking in the videos or photographs we have. Suddenly the columns snapped, and, as a result, the entire top of the building came down, pretty much in freefall, because kinetic energy that was unleashed was just huge."
This explanation has become more refined through the work of Zdenek Bazant and others. "The gravity-driven progressive collapse of a tower consists of two phases—the crush-down, followed by crush-up." This explanation has the top block crushing the lower block, with only negligible damage to itself, then once this upper block hits the rubble pile, the crush-up phase of the collapse begins.
As well, there still seems to be some disagreement within these forums regarding what happened after initiation. Ryan Mackey offered his explanation for what happened after initiation, "After a few floors collapse, the upper block is riding on a cushion of debris, and relatively smooth behavior is guaranteed...It will quickly become larger than the upper block, and it is responsible for most of the crushing."
Prominent 9/11 Debunker Ronald Wieck, however, still seems to support the pancake collapse hypothesis, "Are you suggesting that there is someone outside a mental institution who doesn't think the floors pancaked? What would that mythical person say about all the videos showing the floors, uh, pancaking?...Once the global collapse ensued, the floors necessarily pancaked. What else could they be expected to do?"
So Ronald Wieck believes that Shyam Sunder, the lead NIST investigator, belongs in a mental institution? Interesting.
Since the people here at JREF believe in consensus science as opposed to the experimental method, maybe now they can come to a consensus regarding what happened to the towers after collapse initiation. So offer your best explanation for what happened after collapse initiation?
Nevertheless, I hope some confusion can be cleared up over the collapse of the towers. NIST, in their investigation, does not go beyond the point of collapse initiation. NIST states their investigation, "does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached..." So if the debunkers are not dependent on the government to explain things to them, then they should have no trouble explaining what happened to the towers after collapse initiation. Here is a list of some official and non-official explanations. Feel free to choose from the following or offer your own.
A) The jet fuel fires melted the steel. This was the first popular explanation given for why the towers collapsed. This hypothesis was supported by various experts soon after 9/11.
Hyman Brown, "This building would have stood had a plane or a force caused by a plane smashed into it. But steel melts, and 90,850 litres of aviation fluid melted the steel. Nothing is designed or will be designed to withstand that fire."
Chris Wise, "The columns would have melted, the floors would have melted and eventually they would have collapsed one on top of each other."
John Knapton, "The 35 tonnes of aviation fuel will have melted the steel... all that can be done is to place fire resistant material around the steel and delay the collapse by keeping the steel cool for longer."
Eduardo Kausel, "I believe that the intense heat softened or melted the structural elements--floor trusses and columns--so that they became like chewing gum, and that was enough to trigger the collapse."
Though this explanation was soon discarded as the "official" explanation, it is still accepted by some. Lee Hamilton, Co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission, stated that the jet-fuel fires melted the steel in an interview in August of 2006. "What caused the collapse of the buildings, to summarize it, was that the super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure of these buildings and caused their collapse."
B) The Pancake Collapse Hypothesis. This explanation was supported by FEMA's WTC Building Performance Study, Thomas Eagar and became popular through the NOVA documentary and Popular Mechanics. Truss failure is considered to be the initiating event for the pancake collapse.
FEMA, "As catenary action progresses, horizontal framing elements and floor slabs become tensile elements, which can cause failure of end connections and allow supported floors to collapse onto the floors below...In addition to overloading the floors below, and potentially resulting in a pancake-type collapse of successive floors."
Thomas Eagar believed that the failure of the angle brackets explained how the pancake collapse began, "The problem was, it was such a widely distributed fire, and then you got this domino effect. As if the columns of the building were merely balanced on top of each other, Once you started to get angle clips to fail in one area, it put extra load on other angle clips, and then it unzipped around the building on that floor in a matter of seconds."
Popular Mechanics reports, "Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air — along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse — was ejected with enormous energy. 'When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,' NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. 'Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition', Sunder adds, 'but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.'"
Mike Williams from 911myths, "A pancake-style collapse isn’t quite as rare as some sites want to portray. Here’s what happened to the L'Ambiance Plaza in 1987, for instance."
Some individuals within the debunking community seemed rather confused when they are attempting to explain exactly what happened to the towers. "Debunking911" and Brent Blanchard are good examples.
From Debunking9/11, "The building didn't pancake CAUSING the collapse but evidence is strong the building pancaked AFTER the collapse was "inevitable".
Brent Blanchard uses the word "pancake" to describe the collapse, but states that the buildings did not pancake. "One primary difference between two collapses and a typical building implosion was the initial failures was that the initial failures occurred very high up on the structures, which lead to an extended-duration 'pancake-like' effect down to the ground...A Protec Comment addressing Assertion #2 has been modified from 'an extended duration effect to the ground' to 'an extended duration pancake-like effect to the ground.' As many are aware - and as we go on to explain later in Assertion #2 - the buildings did not actually 'pancake'. Our use of the word is not intended to be taken literally, rather it is used to represent a general visual description that helps readers conceptualize the more advanced points that follow."
C) The Pile-Driver Hypothesis. This seems to be the explanation that is currently in vogue. Just as truss failure leads to a pancake collapse, column failure is said to be the initiating event for the pile-driver hypothesis. This hypothesis was expressed soon after the attacks, though it never became as popular as the pancake collapse.
Ronald Hamburger stated, "Think of the impact of dropping a 25-story building straight down. It was like a pile driver, which is why it collapsed as it did."
The column failure explanation was promoted by Zdenek Bazant soon after 9/11, "The analysis shows that if prolonged heating caused the majority of columns of a single floor to lose their load carrying capacity, the whole tower was doomed...Can the fall of the upper part be arrested by energy dissipation during plastic buckling which follows the initial elastic deformation?"
Lead NIST investigator, S. Shyam Sunder, now seems to support the pile-driver explanation and disavows the pancake collapse theory, "When you did it previously, you showed that the floors actually pancaked, and we did not see any evidence of pancaking in the videos or photographs we have. Suddenly the columns snapped, and, as a result, the entire top of the building came down, pretty much in freefall, because kinetic energy that was unleashed was just huge."
This explanation has become more refined through the work of Zdenek Bazant and others. "The gravity-driven progressive collapse of a tower consists of two phases—the crush-down, followed by crush-up." This explanation has the top block crushing the lower block, with only negligible damage to itself, then once this upper block hits the rubble pile, the crush-up phase of the collapse begins.
As well, there still seems to be some disagreement within these forums regarding what happened after initiation. Ryan Mackey offered his explanation for what happened after initiation, "After a few floors collapse, the upper block is riding on a cushion of debris, and relatively smooth behavior is guaranteed...It will quickly become larger than the upper block, and it is responsible for most of the crushing."
Prominent 9/11 Debunker Ronald Wieck, however, still seems to support the pancake collapse hypothesis, "Are you suggesting that there is someone outside a mental institution who doesn't think the floors pancaked? What would that mythical person say about all the videos showing the floors, uh, pancaking?...Once the global collapse ensued, the floors necessarily pancaked. What else could they be expected to do?"
So Ronald Wieck believes that Shyam Sunder, the lead NIST investigator, belongs in a mental institution? Interesting.
Since the people here at JREF believe in consensus science as opposed to the experimental method, maybe now they can come to a consensus regarding what happened to the towers after collapse initiation. So offer your best explanation for what happened after collapse initiation?
