Thursday, September 5, 2013

9/11: How it Was Done, the Science of Demolition

By "James Madison"

#howtheydid911

NOTE: CLICK RED "YOUTUBE" BUTTON ON VIDEOS IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE VIEWING


As public awareness grows about the truth about 9/11, it serves to point out that many features of the towers' destruction fit perfectly with standard patterns of demolition.  Evidence which at first seems puzzling is in fact consistent with known demolition techniques. 


WTC 7 differed from Towers One and Two in that WTC7 was a traditional "bottom-up" implosion.  The Twin Towers, on the other hand, exhibited the more unfamiliar pattern of a "banana peel" demolition, which starts at the middle or the top of a building and progresses downward.  The below demolition in China shows the pattern of streamers of arcing debris that we see coming from the Twin Towers, as the cutting of supports begins high above ground level and works its way down.


Banana Peel Demolition in China next to Twin Towers


Banana peel demolitions are used for taller, narrower buildings, where there is danger of the building tipping over should the bottom be cut and the rest of the sequence not execute perfectly.

But first, just how does a demolition work?  Students of the truth about 9/11 will not be surprised to learn that it is essentially the art and science of causing to happen what cannot happen without careful engineering: all structural supports in a building must be cut at essentially the same time, so that all pieces are falling at free-fall acceleration through thin air.  It is a difficult undertaking to remove all supports nearly simultaneously in redundantly engineered modern high-rises, with extensive cross-bracing which transfers load from compromised members to sound ones.  Even then, failed demolitions are not uncommon. 

In the below images we see the principle support columns in the "core" of WTC 1, an extensively cross-braced steel assembly which served as the backbone of the towers, and held 70% of the weight.

Twin Tower core backbone under construction




Illustration of main support columns




One standard technique is the use of "cutter' and "kicker" charges, in which the first set of charges, the cutters, cut the steel beam supports at precisely timed intervals, and the kicker charge "kicks" the cut piece outward.  In all the film evidence of the Towers' destruction, straight, cleanly cut pieces of steel beam can be seen spinning outward from the Towers at explosive speeds, across an area at least three times as long as the Towers are wide.  Thirty foot, multi-ton pieces of steel beam and perimeter assembly were found nearly three football fields away from the nearest tower, and windows were blown out across the WTC.  These startling facts cannot be overstated.


Cut Steel Being Hurled Laterally at Speeds up to 80 MPH

Photo: debris field width
photo of debris field width - See more at: http://busharchives.org/#sthash.CHejJbvU.dpuf



Width of Debris Field



Photo: debris field width
photo of debris field width - See more at: http://busharchives.org/#sthash.CHejJbvU.dpuf



Photo: debris field width
photo of debris field width - See more at: http://busharchives.org/#sthash.CHejJbvU.dpuf
 Physicist David Chandler Narrates North Tower Demolition


Using this technique, the pattern of debris one would expect to see lying on the ground after the destruction would be cleanly-cut, straight steel pieces, rather than twisted, heat deformed pretzels of steel as implied by the official "steel got soft and buckled" story.  Exactly as predicted, an aerial photo of the debris field shows a thick carpet of arrow-straight, cleanly-cut lengths of steel beam, flung hither and yon.



Aerial View, Steel Debris, from largest detail photo HERE.




Wider Aerial View, Steel Debris, from largest detail photo HERE.




Use of Thermite

In its famous attack on skeptics of the official 9/11 story, Popular Mechanics held that the melting agent thermite had never been used in a demolition before.  Ironically it had, on the Chicago Sky Ride in 1935.  It was reported in Popular Mechanics.

Thermite works by melting through steel like a hot knife through butter, illustrated in the video below.


Thermite vs. Car


Reaching temperatures of 5,000F, thermite can be expected to produce large pools of molten steel and iron.  This is exactly what was found, to the puzzlement of rescue workers, in the basements of the Twin Towers.

Relatively slow burning thermite would have been used to weaken strong points in the structures, such as mechanical floors, prior to demolition.  So it is of interest that in WTC 2, molten steel seen dripping at around floors 80 and 81 corresponded somewhat, but not exactly, to the mechanical floors at floors 75-77, below.


WTC2 South Tower on 9/11 Molten Metal North-East Corner 



In the following video demonstrating the use of thermite, the characteristic dripping of molten steel can be seen which exactly replicates, in color and consistency, that seen coming from the towers on a larger scale.


Thermite vs. Steel Plate


Another interesting use of thermite can be seen the moment just before each demolition when the perimeter columns around the impact areas seem to bow outward, giving the impression of overload.  Thermite melting the core columns so that all load is transferred to the perimeter columns would give precisely this effect.

Another spectacular coincidence is the "fireproofing upgrades" which took place a year before 9/11, but only on floors of or near impact in both Towers, floors 92 - 100 in WTC1, and 77 - 78 of WTC2, which required the vacating of tenants during the work (page 42, NIST NCSTAR1-6A.)

Molten iron and steel was not observed dripping from the building until about ten minutes before destruction.  This would be when firefighters were reporting that the fires were under control and almost out. 

One thing which stands out about the presence of molten steel in the basements is that it stayed molten for so long, reported for weeks and even months afterwards.  This would require a powerful exothermic reaction, hot enough not just to melt steel, but to raise its temperature considerably above melting point in order for heat to be stored, in the same way that water brought to near boiling cools down into the solid state of ice far more slowly than water at room temperature.  With the melting point of steel at 2800F, and the thermite reaction reaching temperatures of 5,000F, the reaction would produce enough heat-energy to keep steel molten -  i.e. in liquid state -  for long periods of time.

Thus the evidence again fits what we would expect to find in a demolition that was a combination of thermite, and cutter and kicker charges.

On 9/11, cutter charges would simply have been much bigger versions of the steel beam cutter charge (linear shape charge) demonstrated in the video below:



Linear Shape Charges




A video simulation of the Towers' inner structure posted at Youtube includes an illustration of a cutter-kicker sequence.





Demolitions Expert Tom Sullivan

A demolitions expert formerly with Controlled Demolitions Inc. (CDI,) which was contracted to help with the clean-up phase at Ground Zero, said in an interview:
"Fire cannot bring down steel-framed high rises — period."
Tom Sullivan grew up with the son of Jack Loizeaux, president and founder of CDI,and a pioneer in the controlled demolitions industry.  In an interview with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Sullivan stated:
"that he knew from the first day that the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11 was a classic controlled implosion. Asked how he thought it might have been done he posited, “looking at the building it wouldn’t be a problem — once you gain access to the elevator shafts…then a team of expert loaders would have hidden access to the core columns and beams. The rest can be accomplished with just the right kind of explosives for the job. Thermite can be used as well.”

Sullivan said:
"I mean, come on, it was complete destruction. I've seen buildings fall like that for years -- that was the end game for me."
The means of igniting and controlling the demolition suggested by Sullivan, interestingly, coincides with the one proposed in an early hypothetical blasting scenario by Jim Hoffman, an artificial intelligence engineer.  In the section "Control Architecture" of the scenario Hoffman posits:

Control Architecture

Ignition of the incendiaries and detonation of the explosives is controlled through a wireless network using RF repeaters on every floor of the Towers having pyrotechnics.

Each of the Stage-2 pyrotechnics units -- the kicker charges and explosive sheets -- has an integrated wireless detonator card that includes a 2-channel RF receiver, an accelerometer, logic, dual wafer batteries, and a micro-detonator...

The detonator cards are programmed to respond only to RF signals on the network's broadcast frequencies that have specific codes. The cards are manufactured in batches of cards with identical codes, where each batch has a unique code and is destined for a specific floor of one of the Towers.

Of a detonator card's two channels, one provides the arm signal, and the other provides a detonation signal. Once the arm signal has been received, the detonator will be triggered by either of two events: rapid acceleration detected by the accelerometer, or receipt of the detonation signal.

Below is an image of this kind of system currently on the market for CD companies, published at ae911truth.org (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.)


Wireless Detonation System




Conclusion

Once 24/7 access to the towers' interiors and the rest of the WTC complex has been established, the planned destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 becomes a task for which all technology is well-developed and available.  Access is established through Marvin Bush, the youngest Bush brother, who was on the board of Securacom, the company which held the security contract for the World Trade Center complex.   According to Barry McDaniel, CEO of Securacom, the company held the contract for security “up to the day the buildings fell down.”

The nexus which seems to connect many of key players in the 9/11 plot is the neoconservative think-tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC.)  PNAC, whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Zalmay Khalilzad, Scooter Libby, and Richard Armitage, had been openly advocating for an invasion of Iraq since the Clinton administration.

Dov Zakheim, another member of PNAC, had been awarded the contract for the first WTC bombing investigation in 1993.  The investigation was done by a fully-owned subsidiary of Zakheim's company SPC, Tridata.  The contract assured that not only access to the towers was secured, but also floor plans, blueprints, and all other intimate technical knowledge of the buildings.

Zakeim, who was appointed Comptroller of the Pentagon by Bush upon taking office, was also in charge of the Pentagon's finances at the time $2.3 trillion was announced missing from the Pentagon, on September 10 the day before 9/11.  Needless to say, after 9/11 "the day the world changed," the story was dropped from the media.

In another coincidence involving Zakheim, his company SPC (of which he was CEO and main shareholder) also invented remote 'anti-hijack" technology, by which an airliner's controls could be seized from the ground to foil hijackers.  This technology has obvious ramifications for misuse in the wrong hands.

In a city like New York, the world's most dynamic metropolis, the "city that never sleeps," extra work crews, maintenance crews, technicians, and delivery trucks working round-the-clock would not be noticed.  Nevertheless, some people did notice certain unusual events, such as a series of "power downs" and a generally unusual amount of activity in the months before 9/11.  In the below video a worker describes a "power down" condition days before 9/11, which would have disabled security cameras and alarms.



Worker Describes "Power Down" Days Before 9/11




One favorite contention of defenders of the official story is that the aircraft impacts would have set-off or destroyed explosive charges.  But the loss of a number of charges would be of no consequence in a redundantly "wired" impact zone, since only specific encoded signals could actually arm and trigger the entire detonation sequence. 

As Air Force Col. Bob Bowman once said: "If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding everything?"  The immediate, illegal destruction of 99.5% of the steel evidence, shipped to and melted in China, ensures that the vast majority of the steel can never be examined and tested to either confirm or disprove the presence of the above demolition techniques.  This alone, said Bowman, is evidence of guilt.

Some kinds of thermite can be applied in a "sol-gel" solution, which can be rolled on like paint, or fireproofing.  Think how inconvenient, then, to have steel beams examined and found to have layers of residual thermite paint.  It is no wonder that putting the steel onto ships bound for China, immediately, was of the utmost importance, even if it represented felony destruction of evidence. 

In the end the testimony of firefighters and other responders, like Firefighter John Schroeder below, stands as the most powerful indicator of what happened that day.  Schroeder, who says he does not believe the official story, and who was on the 24th floor of the North Tower, reports explosions rocking the building from the inside, as it seemed to "disintegrate" from the core and the stairwells.  This is precisely the part of the structure which would be most critical to weaken before a final demolition sequence.


Firefighter John Schroeder



There is no shortage of testimony corroborating Schroeder's description of explosions throughout the morning, which might correspond to the preliminary weakening of the buildings' strong points.  Not one of these reports of explosions was included in the official 9/11 Commission report.

One such explosion is captured on video below.




The audio evidence includes footage of what is clearly an accelerating demolition sequence, below.


Explosive Sequence, South Tower

Finally, there is the plethora of other puzzles beyond the scope of this essay, the scheduling of multiple war-games on the fateful day which sent much of the air defense force outside the nation's borders, the fantastic sudden flying skills of incompetent pilots, and of course the impossibility of the official explanation relying on a notion of mass accelerating in proportion to its increasing weight, which is a physics chimera (all mass of any weight accelerates to the ground at the same rate, and can only go slower as it meets resistance, not faster, as it was shown by Galileo.)

It is important to know that jet fuel is only kerosene, with no hotter burning temperature in open air than store-bought kerosene or barbecue lighter fluid.  With most of the fuel blown out in the impact fireballs anyway, it is patently impossible for mere kerosene and office furniture to have burned any differently from standard office fires, at temperatures of rarely more than 800F before flashover.


It is also important to understand the impact of the planes could have caused no appreciable weakening of the lower three-quarters of the structures below the impact zones.  Essentially hollow aluminum tubes except for the engines and landing gear, the planes were mostly shredded on impact with the steel latticework, as shown below.  Moreover, the towers were designed to specifically withstand even multiple impacts of jumbo jetliners.




Other anomalies and coincidences in the evidence of 9/11 continue to arise, and together with the above demolition hypothesis continue to provide clues as to just how it was done. 

This essay is dedicated to U.S. Air Force Colonel Dr. Robert Bowman, (1934-2013,) without whom the movement for 9/11 truth would not be where it is today.

Important further reading and resources

U.S. Military Officers and Patriots Question 9/11

9/11 Skeptics to Mark Anniversary with Vigils, Lawsuit

Who Did 9/11: Technology of Autopilot/Remote Flight.  Motive, Means, Opportunity

9/11Evidence.org

9/11 Truth Action Project

9/11Research

Pilots for 9/11 Truth

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Documentary: 9/11 The New Pearl Harbor



James Madison is a pseudonym in the tradition of the American Revolution's Publius, in order that arguments must be judged solely on the merits.