About Rocky's observations regarding the twin towers. I too, have been labeled a nut, a 'conspiracy theory' advocate, an X-Files kind a guy, at first. Where I work, we have a company lunch area in the shop. We have large screen tv's around our lunch area, which happened to be on that fateful morning.
As I walk up and stand there, mesmerized by the first tower in flames, not sure what was happening yet, to my horror and amazement, I see the second plane hit. Like everyone, I could not stop watching. I did not even eat, choosing instead to stand close to the screen and watch this impossible scene take place. I'm still watching close to an hour later, when the impossible just got more impossible!
I blurted out loud and clear for all around me to hear, screaming at the screen, 'That's not possible! This is a lie! That tower could not possibly come down because of that plane! That's CONTROLLED DEMOLITION!!! I just kept standing there, shouting, oblivious to everyone around me, locked on to the screen and trying to attract everyone to see this, even though I had no idea if anybody was even near. Thats how intent I was, I kept going on in a loud voice, cursing, yelling, giving my unknown audience a complete primer on the art and science of not only the architectural reasons why this was not possible, but also of the aspects of the fall that could only be explained thru the science of modern demolition techniques.
As a former Architectural Drafting instructor, teaching young detailers the art of visually describing the intricate details of multi-story buildings and the principles that apply to both small building as well as gigantic sky scrapers, I held many discussions on how the design of buildings differed and how tall structures were engineered to withstand many types of physical loads. From wind side loading, to weight bearing and static loads, we studied many examples of differing solutions to accomodate them and even to allow for additional unknown loads by applying a 'safety factor' into the calculations of the structural members, their connections, and their anchorage utlimately to the earth.
Coupled with this experience, and the knowledge I had acquired in this profession, I am also an ex-military veteran, serving in the Army during the years 1969 - 1977. I have served in many top secret assignments, from duty in a once classified ICBM site in S Korea to The Berlin Brigade, when that city was still 110 miles behind the Iron curtain. Some assignments, allowed access to knowledge about high explosives, its deployment, its power, and the many uses for it.
Shape charges were used to great effect in Vietnam, because if you were being overrun, you could use these explosives even when the enemy was close, as long as you were behind the device your chances of injury were slim. The 'Claymore' anti-personell mine is not too distant a cousin to the types of modern shape charges used to slice structural members of a condemed building structure. Advances in the chemical composition of high explosives has rendered massive increases in destructive force. Smaller amounts, thus smaller size, can have equally devestating effects as much larger devices of years past. The point is, there are explosives that are state of the art, that require very little physical space, can be 'shaped' or targeted force type configurations that could be remotely operated, quickly and easily placed, and can in great numbers, be used to bring down quite large structures in a very systematic 'controlled' way.
Since leaving the military in '77, I have been involved in many aspects of the construction industry, and have continued my interests in architecture, structural design and engineering, and have always been fascinated by the continuing advances in technology and military weaponry, particulary explosives. I have studied and witnessed many controlled demolitions, learning how the science has evolved to allow for the implosion and collapse of a large structure into a narrowly confined 'footprint' space. Learning the management of the process, the coordination of manpower and time necessary to prepare the object for it's fate, while still allowing for life safety issues, for the workers and ultimately the nearby public, kept to a safe distance.
This could not have been done, I told myself, unless many people were involved, and unless they were not observed in their preperations. How would they get past security? How could they get at the structure that would not have been accessable to the general public? How could they have the number of charges and related equipment necessary to fell two towers, and never be detected or observed? All these questions and more were racing thru my mind as I replayed hours and hours of the scenes witnessed thruout the day, and recorded by many quick thinking people. I knew what I had seen was real, I knew I was in a type of mental shock, yet I refused to believe the lame excuses that started creeping out as official responses.
Where was the critical analysis, why weren't fundamental questions of physics addressed, who were these govt spokesmen who suddenly had it all figured out as to the cause of the collapses, when no forensics had yet to be performed on any of the structural remains. Why weren't conferences convened by experts in the architectural field addressing what should have been a major concern, that of the trademark symbol of our finest engineering feat in creating such structures, failing catastrophically, and calling into question the founding principles of high rise design. No steel structure in known existance has ever collapsed due to fire damage, no matter how severe, and secondly no building of this type, which was a steel structure, augmented by enormous re-inforced concrete core structures extending the height of the tower, would have behaved as these buildings did.
Every floor of a high rise is designed to not
only carry it's own physical weight and that of it's normal live loads,
like people and furniture, but of all the weight of the floors above it!
Let that sink in a minute. In the case of the south tower, which was hit
in a glancing blow off center from the core structure, and whose fire
was mostly consummed in the massive fireball
of jet fuel ignited on the exterior of the building as the plane exited
the adjacient corner face, was the first to fall. How could this be, the
north tower had sustained much more direct impact and had burned longer?
More importantly, what should have transpired, had this been real, was that the listing top of the south tower would have been the only part of the building to have fallen over and seperated from its undamaged lower floors. The north tower should have only collapsed a few of the intermediate floors where the plane hit the core structure allowing its top section to settle downward and crushing the damaged floors and maybe a floor or two below would suffer some collapse. But that would have been that, and it could have been demo'ed at a later time after the fires had been put out and the area cleared. We all witnessed what happened.
When the north tower started to fall, you can
see the upper floors above the damage already collapsing on themselves
even as the lower portion is itself collapsing. This effect is akin to
a glass straw, acting as the core of the building, shattering like tempered
glass into many small pieces, taking the 'knees out from under
body' of the building and allowing it to pancake.
The speed of fall approached that of gravity, meaning little or no resistance
to the fall. To anyone who is familiar with re-inforced concrete, with
its mesh of steel netting and numerous pieces of interlaced steel rod,
knows that even bulldozers have a tough time knocking it down or tearing
it up. Imagine that wall or slab several feet thick and with all that embedded
steel, surrounding some of largest known steel columns and beams of that
era, thickness measured in many inches, with diameters of area larger than
some pick-up trucks are tall, bolted with hundreds of bolts larger than
your arm is round.
The historical database of construction photos
of the towers clearly refute the 'official' line of 'skinny' trusses running
from the shell skin of the building to the center core. Massive steel members
can be seen forming a skeleton on which these 'skinny' trusses got their
support. Why have the architects involved in the design not been allowed
to talk or divulge the structural plans for peer review? Even more curious,
why the day of the fall, did the dean of a university in New Mexico, who
also taught courses relating to controlled demolition,
publicly say it was his professional opinion
that the towers could only have been felled as they were by means of controlled
demolition, only to recant the very next day and will not offer an explaination
as to why he changed his mind or if he had been influenced to do so?
Until these and hundreds of additional questions
regarding this issue are critically reviewed in a public legal setting,
designed to get to a factual, forensic, engineering oriented solution to
the disaster, we can only look at the pattern of physical and documented
data as well as the actions and motives of key individuals who took it
upon themselves to declare themselves expert judge, jury, and historians
in telling us what happened, how it happened, and that the case is closed.
Too many professional organizations like the Fire Engineering body that studies the physics of fires and how they relate to the engineering of structures to help architects design to prevent disasters have tried to raise issues. UL scientists bringing up questions about the lack of sufficient heat generated by jet fuel to melt even un-fireproofed steel of the type used in the towers, and who were involved in the certification process for that exact steel have been silenced or fired for daring to question the official line. Stories from experts in physics, construction, architecture and other scientific fields have seen little main stream air play, or have been relegated to less read journals and faded from memory. Physical evidence from the towers was quickly shipped overseas to be recycled and to hide signs of controlled demolition which could be forensically determined from molecular changes to the metal made during the explosive episodes.
Damning still are the eerie transcripts of the
brave firefighters and police trying valiantly to do what they expected
to be their job, unaware of the fate in store for them, from forces they
could never expected. And indeed you read numerous bits of dialog from
intense professionals confused about why there is so little damage on the
floors they expected to be in flames, or how high up in the towers they
had actually gotten in the short time they were there, all the way up to
and above the actually impacted floors in some cases, their
confidence expressed in their ability to contain
the fire and shore up the more minor damaged inner structures. More disturbing
are those fragments from the men fleeing a confusing scene created
when others start reporting explosions heard, shouts for confirmation of
those messages, more and more fragments of conversation relating to mysterious
sounds like explosions, warnings to evacuate because of possible bombs
or boobie traps. These street smart men were
instinctly putting two and two together and realizing their situation was
not by the book, something was clearly wrong, they would never get the
chance to escape and figure it out.
And then bldg 7 comes down, this clearly an implosion of a 47 story bldg, caused by a fire in the corner of the second floor!! GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!
Rocky, you are right, this whole mess doesn't
hold water. It is a leaky bucket of govt cover-up that truth is spilling
out of daily and that shocked people stirring from their haze of horror
are starting to puzzle over. None of it makes sense unless there was a
'conspiracy'. It only takes two people to conspire. Conspiracies
have and always will occur when a group decides
it has the power to stifle any questions asked and to deny
others the knowledge to prove its abuses.
Many people are now starting to think I was not
so crazy after all when I present all the evidence that is there and can
explain why the official lie does not make sense, common sense. I can not
give up trying to get people to see the truth and the lies. I'm still standing
in front of that tv screaming "That's not possible"!
Peace, out!
The Mad Vet from Coconut Creek