So what is really going on with the spire?

[plaguepuppy]

At this point the single most striking anomoly of he WTC collapses is the bizarre disintegration of a portion of the Building 1 core that somehow survived the initial collapse. New video of the disintegration of the spire has become available (US TV footage, by way of Christian Czech, a German researcher) that shows this mysterious process in better detail than previous footage. Here is an analysis of what it shows:

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/New_Spire/

Much as I would prefer to avoid having to consider "black technologies" to explain what goes on in this event, there comes a point where hypothetical "conventional" scenarios become less and less tenable.


This is Dallas, November 22, 1963 REDUX...The CIA and the US Intelligence
community, working hand in hand with powerful commercial interests, have given
us yet another "civil-war-if-revealed" conspiracy. Wasn't it Goebbels who once
said (about propaganda): The bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe
it.... - Pierre-Emile Dulong

[gmoney]

1. Gee, think a few thousand gallons...

of superheated flaming jet fuel and tons of collapsing steel, concrete, etc. might have had an adverse effect on this spire?

As paranoid as I fear I am becoming, I'm not going to latch onto this shady notion.

[plaguepuppy]

2. Try picking the other nostril

...the truth is In There (somewhere)

As to the jet fuel, it all burned off in a few minutes, about an hour and fourty minutes before this collapse - see the FEMA report if you don't believe it. And this disintegration is happening some 15+ seconds after the collapse of the building. The spire has survived the ravages of the collapse quite nicely, and stands there looking quite solid:



So you're saying that all those tons of stuff cause some kind of instant metal fatigue that makes it wait 15 seconds and suddenly turn to dust? Do you have some documentation of any metal anywhere in the history of the world behaving like this?

[LARED]

3. Huh?

The picture below is the first frame following this hiatus and catches the spire at the end of its fifteen seconds of stability.

What 15 seconds?

[plaguepuppy]

6. Your eloquence stuns me

But then, you're the guy who argued that careful use of language is a sign of bad thinking, so at least you're consistent.

Did you watch the other video clip? If so the "15 second" reference explains itself.

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/spire/spire_collapse_from_north.avi

The original spire article also discusses this 15 second pause:
http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/spire/The%20Strange%20Collapse%20of%20the%20Spire.htm

[LARED]

7. Huh?? Huh???

What 15 seconds is a pretty simple question. I'll try it again

What 15 seconds?

BTW. when did I argue that careful use of language is a sign of bad thinking?

[plaguepuppy]

9. Can't you read?

"What 15 seconds is a pretty simple question."

I'd have to agree, and if you had bothered to read/look at the links I provided you would know the answer. But since you can't be bothered, I'll explain once more that it is the (approximate) time between the spire's first appearance as the dust cloud settled and the time the spire begins to fall. Is that really such a difficult concept?

As to your warning about the dangers of eloquence, try:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=269#395
"4. Being articulate is very important. Sounding like you know what you are talking about is almost as good as actually knowing what you are talking about. Being articulate comes in very handy when you need to fill in some inconsistencies in your argument with utter BS."


My experience is just the opposite - writing clearly is a discipline, not something independent of content that you can "pour on" a topic to make it sound convincing. Writing clearly and articulately forces you to look critically at what you are trying to say, and to clarify your reasoning processes. Far from covering up shoddy reasoning, good writing shines a light that will make fallacies more evident.

[LARED]

12. Thanks for the response

It cleared up what you were stating just fine.

I do have one question for you regarding the "spire."

Why do you reject the mundane explanations for what is seen, and pretend that the only viable explanation available is covert technology?

The video clearly shows an intact spire falling. It clearly shows dust from the spire leaving the steel and floating as the steel moves down. (The notion that the dust cloud scoured the dust off the structure is ridiculous) The only part of the videos that appears to be unusual is the last moment where the steel becomes obscured or vaporized as you believe.

I can think of a number of mundane reasons for this. I am not a video expert, but certainly one or more of these could be reasonable explanations.

1. The videos are not high quality. All are taken from a considerable distance. As such details are missing or artifacts are created by the camera.
2. The dust simply obscures the steel.
3. The speed of the steel moving down creates a blur.
4. add you own.

So what gives? You're a smart guy that knows there is a host of legit reasons we see what we see.


Regarding your comment on being articulate. All of what you said is correct. The problem is two fold.

One can have evil intentions and use the ability to be articulate to further those intention.

And being articulate and reasoning or thinking critically have nothing to do with each other. One can state with great clarity the most ridiculous stuff in the world. The issue is that if someone is listening that does not know the topic they will automatically lend credibility to someone that sounds like they know what there are talking about. Something like 80 percent of our elected politicians comes to mind.

[Endimion]

15. You don't have to be an expert

But stating such funny opinions makes me think that you were born yesterday.
As you have those things on your eyes that keep the horses from looking away from path.
(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)


1. The videos are not high quality. All are taken from a considerable distance. As such details are missing or artifacts are created by the camera.

Why are then the same "artifacts" on other cameras?


2. The dust simply obscures the steel.

Mighty thick dust. Covers -all- of the steel. I'll have to buy it to cover myself when I don't want to be seen.


3. The speed of the steel moving down creates a blur.

Hahahahahaha! I see now that you are not even close to a beginner. Every normal computer user knows something about videos.
Then why is the ground trembling? If moving creates a blur, why don't we see blurry object borders? No, we see shaking. As a matter of fact, every god damn camera trembled!


4. add you own.

This is the source reason for all disinfos. Creating false reality to make things more tolerable.
You see, I never included black technology in my theories. I hate to bring that up, and whenever it is possible, I substitute it with more common ideas. But if PP has something to say about scalar weapons/other black tech., you shouldn't immediately jump at him, and "bite" him to death.

Few days ago I experienced something awful. For the first time in my DU history, one of my posts had been deleted. Its contents were much more tolerable than some posts I get as replies. This makes me think that you and others have something in common with admins. I used "disinfo giraffes" term, and it was deleted. Wow. Will I get executed for calling someone a giraffe?
I could say much worse things, I was that angry.
This stupid forum really gets more and more blatant each day. Scum posts are everywhere. Child-like people confuse everyone. Mess.
Puke...

(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)
(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)
(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)
(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)
(admins, is this to much for you to handle?)
.......

[LARED]

17. Caught me again

Creating false reality to make things more tolerable.

Man, all those years of training as a disinfo agent, and you let the cat out of the bag just like that. Shame on you. It was a secret.


:yourock:

[Endimion]

22. Still off the track?

I suppose you never found the time to look at my post.

btw, cool animation.

[LARED]

23. I looked and even read your post

?

[Endimion]

26. Did you?

Whatever....
Forget it.

by(e) gone

[LARED]

27. OK

What part of your post merits a comment?

Ok I'll Bite

Why are then the same "artifacts" on other cameras?

Why? I'm not a video expert. And nobody said all the artifacts are the same and the point is that the videos are of very low quality and practically useless if used to determine any details, yet folks want to claim the see steel vaporizing.


Mighty thick dust. Covers -all- of the steel. I'll have to buy it to cover myself when I don't want to be seen.

As pointed out a number of times a little dust goes a long way in making things opaque. It does need to cover all the steel. It only needs to be in a quantity that's enough to disturb the transmission of light, causing the object to be even less visible than it already is in the low quality video. Also it only needs to have a relatively low terminal velocity in relation to the falling steel to seem to float. Most the dust generated in the collapse was of a size with a low terminal velocity.

Hahahahahaha! I see now that you are not even close to a beginner. Every normal computer user knows something about videos.
Then why is the ground trembling? If moving creates a blur, why don't we see blurry object borders? No, we see shaking. As a matter of fact, every god damn camera trembled!

Which may explain the poor quality of the videos. Also as you seem to be an expert in these matters, at what speed does an object start to blur in a stationary camera?

Scum posts are everywhere. Child-like people confuse everyone. Mess.Puke...

I'll just leave that statement to stand on it own.

[Robb]

4. "black technologies"

"I cannot begin to speculate on the kind of technology needed to make this happen...."

But if pressed, I bet we could convince you to, mm? :)

[plaguepuppy]

5. Look wiseguy

The world doesn't get any simpler because you want it to be. So what exactly is your "conventional" explanation for this?

And no, I won't speculate because I don't have any access to what all those billions of our tax dollars actually bought. You seriously believe they bought nothing??

[ramblin_dave]

8. I can't get those avi files to play...

I get some kind of failure to download codex error with Windows Media Player. Real Player says one or more streams is an incompatible format. QuickTime tries to download some stuff needed for avi playing but then says it is corrupted. Any ideas? Is there an mp3 version?

[plaguepuppy]

10. codec problems?

It might just be that you need the Divxx codec, which the AVI file uses for compression:
http://www.divx.com/divx/

It's free, and very widely used these days. Let me know if that doesn't fix it.

[DeadBroke]

11. Well, for what it's worth

The collapse of the Trade Center has been a topic of great and sometimes heated discussion among tradesmen like myself who had opportunities to work there. The spire usually isn't often discussed. Only a few tradesmen that I've spoken with actually saw it on 9/11, and only a few have seen the videos or paid attention to the newspaper articles about it.

One conversation I had about the spire a few months back was with a union carpenter who on 9/11 was working in a building on Hudson Street, which is north of the Trade Center. In all honesty I probably should prefix this by saying that our talk took place in a pub up in The Bronx where bottles of the finest brews were being consumed, but I should also say that I have never found him to exaggerate, or to speak about anything he doesn't know about or didn't experience.

The spire he saw was quite tall, 20 or so floors, made of core columns that had wall studs, pipes and elevator rails still attached and hanging from it, and after it swayed in a circle, it folded towards the bottom and dropped straight down. He pulled 5 or 6 matches out of a matchbook and lined them up vertically between us on the table. Then he used the matches to show how the columns near the base of the spire, those within his vision, began folding. He made the straight verticle line of matches become Zs, like a run of stircases.

He also has described how large sections of exterior walls, each several stories tall, fell intact, hit, split apart or folded, or were bent by another section hitting it from above.

The dust cloud spread eventually blocking his vision entirely. The duration of the cloud coupled with hail-like sounds of things hitting the windows of walls of his building caused panic inside the building, a publishing house, and he too was soon in the stampedes down in the street.

Clearly this message can be attacked as hearsay. I've been reluctant to post it because of that, and because of the virulent criticisms. Seems that sometimes only links you can click on matter, nothing else. This is just a something I heard from someone very reliable. Take it for whatever you think it's worth.

[plaguepuppy]

13. Interesting account

What your friend described sounds like it could be another remnant of the core, but unless he's way off on his estimate of the height it may have been something other than what I call the spire. Comparing the two pictures below it looks like the spire is more than half the height of the original tower, say about 60 floors. The top of it is close to level with the top of the Woolworth Building in the foreground, which is 792 feet tall.





There may have been some z-folding at the bottom, but in all the pictures that I have been able to find the spire seems to drop straight down with no folding or crumpling. As for Lared's "host of legit reasons" to explain away the evidence, the question is not whether you can make up plausible-sounding explanations, it's whether those explanations are actually valid. The "dust falling off the spire" and "motion blur" ideas just don't fly based on a careful examination of this video, no matter how plausible they may sound in the abstract. Those 1/30 second frames whold not show significant motion blur unless the columns were suddenly accelerated much faster than gravity. The fact is that the initial sharp outline of the columns vanishes rather quickly soon after the collapse starts, so that we can no longer even say exactly where the top is. How could a huge amount of dust cling to the vertical sides of the columns, especially after being scoured by the very energetic and turbulent dust clouds of the collapse, only to pour off in large quantities in the much calmer environment of a free-fall?

The spire did have stuff hanging off it as your friend described, especially what looks like the stubs of the vertical plates that interconnected the core columns. The picture in post #2 shows these the best. And actually the appearance of these things raises more questions for me: how could any collapse mechanism shear off those plates without also tearing down the column they were attached to? The top 200' or so of the spire consists of a single column - wouldn't the force of shearing off all those plates put some very large forces on that column, enough to bend or break it off?

As far as first hand accounts go, I don't disparage them at all, even though human memory is never perfect, and certainly there is nothing sacred about links. In fact they can be distracting and confusing if used to excess, and they are no better than the information they link to. Two good friends of mine have told me first-hand stories indicating that there was a formal military stand-down on 9-11. These are people that I trust and who have no axe to grind (in fact they don't really know what to make of this information, and are not inclined to pursue it further), but what they say fits with what we know about the events of 9-11. Truth is where you find it, and doesn't always come neatly packaged with links and footnotes.

[DeadBroke]

14. A clarification

I apologize for my communication skills. I tried to say that only about 20 floors or so of the the spire were visible to him. He and I agree the spire was much taller. Near the bottom of what was visible to him is where those Z folds began.

I certainly can not explain the spire; but I do recall seeing something similar when apartment houses were demolished by Robert Moses to make way for the Cross-Bronx Expressway. They were mostly concrete and masonary walled buildings with timber floors. The stairwells were concrete, sometimes marble on steel or iron stringers, treads and risers. The buildings were sturdy, but usually fell after being hit just 5 or 6 times with the well placed wrecking ball. The buildings would fall into a cloud of dust leaving the only stairwells standing. Didn't happen all the time, just now and then, but it was strange to see a whole building smashed into a dusty cloud of rubble but then see the stairs poking out the top of the dust cloud.

Eyewitness accounts are funny things sometimes. An example; a woman who sometimes rides the bus to the city with me was on her way to a temp position on Water Street that day. She and other people sharing a street corner were interviewed as to what they saw, and also what they heard, for a newspaper. Each woman used her own terminology or vernacular to describe the sounds they heard and the resulting article was titled "Bing, Bang or Boom?"

[LARED]

16. Can you clear things up for me?

As for Laredo's "host of legit reasons" to explain away the evidence, the question is not whether you can make up plausible-sounding explanations, it's whether those explanations are actually valid.

Well they are clearly more valid than covert technology did it. Which bring up the issue of how exactly does this mystery energy only effect the core. Why didn't the rest of the tower's steel vaporize?

The "dust falling off the spire" and "motion blur" ideas just don't fly based on a careful examination of this video, no matter how plausible they may sound in the abstract.

Take a close look at these videos that categorically removes any plausible reasons in your mind. There are of very low quality, shot at a great distance and filled with digital artifacts. For crying out loud the buildings in the foreground are so fuzzy it's hard to make out any details at all. Based on this evidence you believe the spire vaporized? You need to do a lot better than this.

Those 1/30 second frames whold not show significant motion blur unless the columns were suddenly accelerated much faster than gravity.

What insight is that based on? Even motionless objects like the buildings are blurry in the images, yet you have deciphered that motion blur requires speeds unobtainable via gravity.

How could a huge amount of dust cling to the vertical sides of the columns, especially after being scoured by the very energetic and turbulent dust clouds of the collapse, only to pour off in large quantities in the much calmer environment of a free-fall?

First off. It does not take a huge amount of dust to become visually opaque. Second off there are plenty of horizontal steel members for dust to collect on. And third. How does a dust cloud scour clean the dust on the steel. It's sort of like saying the violent rain storm drained all the water out of the pond? Or the sandstorm left the sandbox empty.

[plaguepuppy]

18. "are clearly more valid" - but why exactly?

I think you're making the mistake of assuming what you've set out to prove. From a purely scientific perspective, the validity of a theory or model (i.e. an explanation of the causality of observed events)depends only on how well it agrees with the observed data. Your "more valid" assertion implies the impossiblity of black technology, that's the implicit assumption that makes all non-BT explanations superior to invoking some kind of advanced electromagnetic weapon, regardless of which one fits the observed events. But if we allow no prior assumptions of impossibility, it may well turn out that none of the mundane explanations fit the facts well enough to satisfy a careful observer.

That assumption of impossibility ignoes the fact that tens of billions of dollars have gone into black budget high technology since WW-II. All that money could buy a lot of research on advanced weapons systems, stuff based on technologies several generations more advanced than the publicly acknowledged stuff. And if there is any group in the world that has access to such things, it would be easy to imagine Rummy and his military-industrial buddies as the ones.


"Why didn't the rest of the tower's steel vaporize?"

Good question - there are numerous pictures and videos that show exactly that. Not vaporization, but disintegration into a coarse powder that can be seen trailing behind large pieces of the outer walls in many views. It would be nice to explain this away as dust clinging to the pieces before they fell being blown away, but it is really much too thick for that. The volume and thickness of the dust are very consistent through the whole trajactory of the pieces, as if there is a continuing source of the dust. And these large pieces can be seen to erode as they fall, losing their sharp outlines.

The picture below shows large pieces from WTC-2 about to hit WTC-3, almost cutting it in half:






To be continued...

[plaguepuppy]

20. One more brief point

Why don't we try to work with your model of the sand storm, but let's try something other than a sand box to make it more realistic. In fact let's use the spire itself: a bunch of vertical steel box columns with short pieces of spandrel plates every 12 feet or so, each plate maybe an inch thick. The sides of the columns may be a little rough from fireproofing, but I don't see any projections the size of sandboxes, even little ones, so they don't look like they'll hold much sand on the vertical surfaces.

OK, cue the sand storm, and let's see what we have.

Hmmmm, looks like little piles of sand less than an inch high on each plate.

Now we pull out the ground level of the whole structure and let it fall straight down...

Gee, the sand and the columns are falling at about the same speed - must be that Newton guy's fault. Eventually it get's going fast enough that the air flowing past begins to carry away the little piles of sand. But it sure isn't hiding much of the columns.

That's a pretty good semi-quantitative model. What happens as we reduce the particle size from sand to dust? Not much... the dust will blow away sooner as the columns fall, but the total amount will ba about the same and comes nowhere near being enough to obscure the columns.

[RH]

24. So the camera shook

but the sand/dust stayed still?

No kidding?

[plaguepuppy]

25. No, that's just the point

During the main collapse there was a lot of shaking going on, in addition to the turbulent flow of the main dust cloud. Both those things will act to prevent any significant accumulation of dust on the spire.

And consider just where all this dust is supposed to hide. The spire is made up almost entirely of vertical surfaces which nothing will cling to. The small pieces of lugs or bits of spandrel plates are thin (~1") vertical plates that under ideal conditions could only support small amounts of dust. This stuff was not dropped gently from directly above onto the edges of the plates, it was part of a fast-moving dust cloud whipping aroung the core, hardly an effective way of making big piles of dust on those narrow horizontal surfaces.

[RH]

28. So

notwithstanding a whole lotta shaking going on, and the further collapse, no more dust was created?

Seriously?

[plaguepuppy]

29. Created from what?

Sure, that's the problem: dust was created, but from what?

It wasn't sitting there perched on the edges of steel plates, and it wasn't created from chunks of concrete or gypsum clinging to the core columns. The core columns can be seen to be pretty clean when the spire first emerges:



The dust that appeared as the spire dropped was never thick enough to hide the outline of intact columns. What can be seen as it starts to fall is that the sharp outline in fact becomes the dust cloud, it broadens and becomes less dense. This is just the opposite of what we would see if the dense outline of the steel was hidden by an even denser dust cloud.

If the dust cloud was not at least as dense as the steel of the columns it could not hide the intact columns, and the top would have been clearly visible as it fell. And for dust somehow shaken loose from the columns to be optically denser than the columns themselves would have taken some pretty remarkable dust.

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/video%20archive/collapse%2001_spire_clip.avi

[RH]

30. from

the disintegration of whatever the wall studs, pipes and elevator rails were still attached to and hanging from, presumably.

Looks to me like there is already a dust cloud at the lower end of the spire, here


which the spire then fell behind.

"If the dust cloud was not at least as dense as the steel of the columns it could not hide the intact columns" is ludicrous.

:silly:

Are rain clouds therefore at least as dense as the sun they obscure?

[plaguepuppy]

31. Wall studs - as in 2x4s?

Pipes and elevator rails turning to dust? And this happens because of what exactly? Can you describe some other physical setting (short of nuclear blasts) where that has ever been observed?

Steel buildings don't use studs, and the core certainly didn't contain any, but the same problem applies: whatever bits of stuff might be clinging to the columns, there has to be both an energy input and a mechanism that could turn them to dust, and to do it very soon after the core has begun to fall.

As for the dust cloud seen in the frame above, that is the initial dust cloud from the collapse you are seeing. It dissipates long before the spire begins to fall.

As for the density of of the dust cloud, it is the optical density I am referring to. It is no problem for several thousand feet of rain cloud to block the sun, but for a column of dust only a few feet wide to completely block out the columns means that this has to be a very (visually) dense dust cloud.

Again, there is no substitute for actually looking at the pictures. You can argue all you want (which is apparently quite a bit) about what might have happened in the abstract, but you have obviously not gone through this clip frame by frame and watched what goes on. There is no pre-existing dust cloud that the columns disappear behind, and the "pillar of dust" that replaces the columns is translucent, i.e. not dense enough to hide the outline of a solid object.

[RH]

35. Wall studs as in message #11.

"The spire he saw was quite tall, 20 or so floors, made of core columns that had wall studs, pipes and elevator rails still attached and hanging from it"

My preference would usually be to heed those who really did watch what went on. How many who saw it happen for themselves subscribe to black technology explanations?

With a camera shaking about it would not surprise me if the focus was affected. I would also be interested to hear from somebody fully conversant with the effects of file compression.

I think you're making the mistake of assuming what you've set out to prove.

[plaguepuppy]

36. "assuming what you've set out to prove"

Well, that's actually an unprovable charge that you can accuse anyone of, sort of a "when did you stop beating your wife?" question.

And in a sense it is always partly true because of the way the mind formulates hypotheses. Theories don't just fall from the sky: they are created according to one's perceptions of phenomena and sense of plausibility. Once a theory is formulated and seems to fit the facts it becomes invested with a certain emotional energy which will make us weight favorable evidence more strongly and prompt us to push aside data that doesn't fit.

And since it is only our own integrity that can keep us honest about what we choose to ignore and how we deal with conflicting data, there is no real defense. If we don't "assume" something we have nothing to prove - the facts don't assemble themselves into a theory, there's a creative act involved. What matters is how well it explains reality.

But the issue here is not really proving a particular theory of the events, it's a question of asserting that specific events can be observed that mundane eplanations cannot account for. Bits of pipe, wire and elevator rails don't suddenly burst into a thick dust cloud. To claim that is to accept something no less strange than the columns themselves turning to dust.


As to the wall studs, I'm willing to believe that there were framed walls attached in some places, but only on the outer faces of the columns. But that is beside the point: whatever bits of pipe, wire, whatever will not suddenly turn to dust just because the bottoms of the columns have failed ane the top begins to fall. The tallest part of the spire is a single core column, and other than pieces of steel plate severed from the cross braces it wasn't covered with enough of anything to create all that dust.

Camera shaking? There is a little early in the collapse, mostly in an up-down direction at a fairly low frequency, and is easily isolated from the events of interest. It's easy to say that no image is ever good enough and appeal to the imaginary "guy who really saw it" as the only valid judge of all theories.

"How many who saw it happen for themselves subscribe to black technology explanations? "

So do you claim to have some kind of psychic power that lets you poll everyone who saw it for their opinions? And if I chose to believe you, would it prove anything? When did the truth become a popularity contest?

[RH]

37. unprovable

Further to the "unprovable charge", please review message #16.

What is or is not provable would otherwise indeed be moot but no, I would most definitely not claim to have any kind of psychic power to poll everyone who saw it. Child-like people confuse everyone.

My question was merely posed in the honest expectation that having taken an interest in the affair, you would have been on the look out for anybody at the scene with any doubts of any sort about what took place.

I have spent many a long hour, for instance, trawling the net in search of anybody actually involved at the scene of the Pentagon event who has since expressed any doubt at all as to what actually hit the building. I found none. Not one of them.

With or without prejudice to the merit of whatever argument and with respect to the Twin Towers, simply as a matter of fact, would it be safe to assume that you have discovered nobody involved and therfore willing to subscribe to a 'black technology' explanation?

[plaguepuppy]

38. Child-like people confuse everyone

Yeah, and real children are even more confusing - but I digress.

I think you misunderstood my ironic comment about psychic powers. The point is that nobody knows what "everybody" on the scene, or even a significant percentage thought, and there is no way even in principle to ever find out. But the fact is that people on the scene have claimed very strongly to have heard and seen explosions, and others have remarked on how bizarre the whole collapse seemed (http://ontario.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/discussion_in_firehouse.mpg)

So the "what did everybody think" question is really a bogus thought experiment: you imagine the people on the scene and project your notion of what they should have thought onto them, using their imagined assent to validate your assumed viewpoint. Every person seeing the collapses firsthand saw only a small fragment of the whole event, and saw it through the filter of mortal fear. Like the blind men feeling an elephant everyone saw their own piece of the beast, but the mere fact of being there did not confer any special understanding of the event or its causes. In an event so massive and violent the tell-tale details that could later prove to be evidence of a controlled demolition would have little chance of being noticed under the pressing demands of physical survival.

[RH]

39. "what did everybody think"

was not my question.

My question was
"How many who saw it happen for themselves subscribe to black technology explanations?", the difference being that "subscribe" would imply that they have made themselves known.

Ergo nothing do with any bogus thought experiment, nor any sort of imagining, just a simple enquiry as to a pertinent matter of fact.

Are any at all thus known?

[LARED]

33. Question

Were core columns connected with spandrels plates or beams?

[plaguepuppy]

34. Maybe DeadBroke could tell us

I've never come across an exact description of the bracing between the core columns. From the pictures I've seen they look like vertical plates, but some of them might be rectangular box beams for all I could tell.

At each floor the columns were interconnected by these cross-braces, and additionally four columns in each corner of the core were tied together with vertical diagonal braces. These corner structures were used to support the big cranes during construction. The detail view of the spire in post #30 shows what appear to be remnants of these diagonal braces.

[DeadBroke]

40. Semantics

In all honesty I have become a little confused by the semantics or terminology being used here and have become somewhat lost - just temporarily, I hope.

In ironworker lingo - the only vernacular I am accustomed to, the four (4) parts to a steel frame structure are; 1. columns, the verticle units (that must be perfectly plumb), 2. beams, the horizontal units connecting between columns, (a truss, or a series of trusses, may be used instead of or in place of a beam), 3. braces, the diagonal units connecting between columns. NYC slang has braces sometimes going the name "suspenders" or "chevrons." These 3 parts are connected by nut and bolt through "lugs" (that are bolted and welded on at the fabrication site), plumbed by hand with cables and turnbuckles, and then later welded. The 4th part would be the decking. Terms such as "plates" or "spandrels" have not appeared on any working prints for structural steel jobs I've been on.

That said, I am certain - based on seeing construction era photos and videos, and from conversations with ironworkers employed during the construction, that the core was common steel frame construction - columns, beams, and suspenders with corrugated decking. It was typical throughout the structures except for the motor room floors. In photos available through links offered in these threads the braces mostly appear as X shaped pieces of steel fitting between columns.

From my observations, interviews, and conversations there were no box beams utilized in the core. From those same sources the corner core columns only "cribbed" the crane supports. "Cribbed" would mean that the "boxes" formed by the core columns and beams encased and stabilized the supports for the cranes but did not actually hold them up.

As for the "wall studs" my witness described as seeing I should point out that the studs he was refering to were the thin guage galvanized type used in drywall or sheet rock construction. I do not disbelieve his accounts or memory - but I have seldom, probably never actually, seen studs mounted directly to columns, beams, or trusses - especially to those that are suppossed to have fireproof coatings. Considering his vantage point several blocks away I believe his "studs" may actually have been smaller beam-like steel units such as elevator rail brackets, pipe supports or hangers etc. He did say "wall studs." Later that night I wrote my notes and wrote down "wall studs." While I may have some doubt I still go with "wall studs".

[plaguepuppy]

19. What your friend saw

I fully believe that your friend really saw what he said he saw, and that it probably was the spire. I have no problem with the idea of the bottom z-folding, and the earlier video shows it waving around before it fell. The original video clip gives a good sense of the top gyrating, and the collapse definitely starts at the bottom:

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/spire/spire_collapse_from_north.avi

There's an animated GIF just below it on my first spire page ( http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/spire/The%20Strange%20Collapse%20of%20the%20Spire.htm )that shows it waving, probably gyrating actually. You can see some shorter columns to the left of the tallest one that are waving around independent of each other, and it sort of looks like the collapse starts as one of the shorter columns hits the tall one near the bottom.

The fact that the columns aren't tied together seems very peculiar too. It implies that all the spandrel connections betwen them at each floor had been sheared off. What collapse mechanism could possibly cut down so cleanly between those core columns, slicing through all those thousands of pieces of steel plate without tearing down the columns they were attached to?

[DeadBroke]

21. Other threads

One of the better links in these threads has tons of information about 7 WTC including excellent details of the column and beam connections. Excellent details of how columns, beams, cross braces and trusses are connected in steel frame buildings.

The spire is the last remnant of the core of the tower which was comprised of columns and beams that were connected in the same very typical way as it's neighbor across the street 7 WTC.

Very few beams will connect directly to a column. That aforementioned link shows the "splices" (their term) or what we here in the city call "lugs, clips or flags" that are used to connect the beams to the columns. Every connection needs 1 or 2 of these lugs. The lugs are often fashioned from the ends of the steel beams, or more often are just welded or bolted, or both, to the ends.

Those connections, even afer welding and bolting are the weakest link. The steel used for the lugs may be the same that's used for the columns and beams, but it's just flat stock, not shaped like an I-Beam, and it's punched full of holes. (Often times where a beam ties into a corner column the lugs are also bent 90 degrees. Intermediate beams and cross bracing utilize 45 degree lugs).

Ironworkers very seldom attach shackles, chokers and etc to lugs whenever hoisting columns. Three reasons, 1) lugs twist real easy and it's hard to get anything to line up and connect to a bent or twisted lug, 2) they're usually off center, attached to the side of a column, so a column suspended from a lug will not hang plumb - straight up and down, and 3) they're weak.

If you're looking for the opinion of an old ironworker, I believe that the dynamic forces of a collapse could shear away anything connected by these lugs; and I am confident that those columns of the spire managed to stand because the lugs between the columns - those that connected the top of one column to the base of the one above - are substantially larger, also having more bolts and much more welding. The spire may have stood had the swinging and swaying been dampened, but there appears to be too little remaining to do it.

[plaguepuppy]

32. Connections between columns

I have no trouble with the fact that the lugs holding the columns together are stronger than the lateral tabs that are used to connect crosspieces Where I still fail to see a plausible mechanism is for a force being generated within the core that could shear off the lateral connections between columns.

Granted that the force of the collapse outside the core, where there is a lot of material falling, was substantial, there is very little falling within the core and a large network of cross braces at each floor tying the columns together. Remember that most of the core is taken up with elevator and utility shafts.

Even if the connections between the columns were not extremely strong in the overall scheme of things, they were basically vertical plates welded to the sides of vertical columns. That gives them a lot of resistance to vertical impact. It's one thing to talk about the overall violence of the collapse, but what was there falling inside the core that could have sheared off essentially all the horizontal connections between the columns, and done it delicately enough to leave this group of columns standing?

[DeadBroke]

41. I get what ...

... you're saying, but if there's a weak link in steel framing it's those "lugs." I've seen them bend almost completely over when hit by a spud wrench dropped from above. While they may be the same class of steel that the columns and beams are made from they are just flat stock. They have no web or added strength gained from shaping.

Back in 1983 I was working at "Tower 49" on 49th Street between Madison and Fifth. An apprentice hooked a column and tag line, but the cable was twisted and column slipped out when it spun; so it fell straight down and crashed into the floors below. It took - or sheared every lug off on the way down. The same thing happened a few years earlier at 55 Broadway aka Exchange Place Towers but that coulumn also struck and decapitated a welding inspector.

I don't mean to insult - I hope this comes across okay, but I think one of the obstacles you have encountered trying to understand the core is that you are viewing it as a seperate entity from the rest of the structure. At least that is the feeling I'm getting, especially when you speak of forces 'within' the core. You speak often about the forces within the core as if it was seperate from the rest of the structure. I think that you are overlooking the fact that the core was connected to the outer walls through the trusses. So ... whatever happened to the outer walls was transfered to the core. Whatever happened to the trusses was transfered to the core and outer walls. Whatever happened to the core was transfered to the trusses and then to the outer wall. Because these units - core columns, trusses, and outer walls - were all connected whatever happened to one unit was transfered onto the next. I don't think anything extra had to be happening 'within' the core.

It may be an oversimplification, but I think that most people participating in these forums have given steel far too much credit and have overrated it's performance. (Especially it's reaction to heat. Remember my cool shady morning and sunny hot afternoon recollections and explanations of how steel fits, expands, contracts, and twists during the course of an ironworker's work day?) Steel IS strong, no doubt about it, but steel framing ultimatley depends on the units around it. It is without any embellishmnent TOTALLY dependent on the units around it. Loose one beam, no problem; loose one column, no problem; loose a few more - run! A couple of long trusses instead of a lot of columns and beams? Run fast, real fast!