Even a blacksmith could give you the facts

William Rees

In the 10/2 issue Gary Kohls asks for at least the third time, ³Why Do Good People Become Silent about the Documentable Facts That Disprove the Official White House Conspiracy Theory about 9/11?²  I think I know the answer and it is very simple. It is because most good people have a lot more common sense than Kohls and the people he uses for sources. The basic proposition of ³9/11 Truthers² like Kohls is that the World Trade Center towers were brought down not by terrorist-controlled airliners flying into them, but by pre-installed explosives, an inside job. 

Of course, insiders in the G.W. Bush administration, such as Cheney and friends  organized the operation.  WOW!!!!  What fantastic organizers they must have been! Bringing down buildings with controlled explosions is a very-highly technical business, in both personnel and explosives and also the related equipment.  It would have taken hundreds of highly trained technicians weeks if not months of exacting work to plant the necessary explosive charges.
They would have had to break off the concrete covering of steel beams in hundreds if not thousands places in order to place the explosives properly, and they would have had to link hundreds if not thousands of detonators by wire with a very sophisticated and reliable central control system.

Now think a moment ­ There were many thousands of people working in those buildings, many in shifts on 24/7 operations.  People were moving at all times throughout those buildings.  Many were building maintenance people who had access to all the inner spaces.  Very few of the explosive-planting operations could possibly have been done in a way that could certainly evade discovery.  Discovery would certainly have doomed the plot, and also all its organizers and leaders.

Now think again ­ About all those necessary technicians, mostly experts on explosives and building structures, and also about their less skilled helpers.  These people could not have been unaware of what they were doing. Where can one find people willing to do such a project who can also be trusted to keep a monumental and deadly secret?  One simply cannot. 
For rational people, such an idea is not even thinkable. One person can keep a secret.  When two know it, it is only closely held information.  When a third knows it, then it can be leaked without either non-leaker knowing for sure who leaked it.  The possessor of a dark secret can trust only him/her self to keep it.

Our ³Manhattan Project,² the effort to create an atomic bomb, was perhaps the most secret large project in our history.  But Stalin, the Big Boss in the Soviet Union, knew about it two or maybe three years before our President Truman did.  Truman knew nothing about it until he was sworn in as President.  He told Stalin about it shortly before Hiroshima and was amazed that Stalin didn¹t seem much interested.

In support of the notion that the World Trade Center buildings were actually brought down by pre-planted explosives there is a claim that fires from the jet fuel of the airliners were not hot enough to melt structural steel.  This is true, but not remotely re evant. Steel melts at about 2,730 degrees F.  Jet fuel is a mix of kerosene and gasoline, which burn at about 990F and 1026F respectively.  The important fact is that structural steel begins to seriously lose its strength in exactly that temperature range.  At 900F steel loses about 40% of its strength and at 1,000F the loss is more than 50%.  Plus, there was a significant wind when the 9/11 fires were burning and that doubtless increased the temperatures, like in a blacksmith¹s forge.

A blacksmith blows air onto burning coal or coke in order to increase the rate of oxidation and thus raise the flame temperature high enough to make iron or steel workable.  ³Workable² means soft enough to hammer into shape, meaning, much softer and weaker than when at normal temperature. Steel changes color when heated and blacksmiths generally work it from ³Blood Red (1,200F)² to  ³Orange (1,705F).²  At 1,200F steel has lost more than 70% of its strength and at 1,700F more than 80%.  At 1,000F, roughly the temperature of a jet fuel fire without a wind, the color of structural steel is ³Black Red/Red grey,² not even glowing, and it has lost about 60% of its strength. 

Of course, the steel structure of the WTC buildings was protected by fireproofing.  But this was mostly concrete and much of it was broken away by the impact of the aircraft.
From that moment, the collapse of the buildings was a matter of time and the weight above the damaged floors. WTC 1 was hit at 08:46 and collapsed at 10:28, an hour and 42 minutes.  But WTC 2 was hit at 09:03 and collapsed at 09:59, only 56 minutes later. 

Why the difference? Logic says the main difference was the height of the impacts.  Floors 94-98 in WTC 1 were damaged by impact and there were 12 floors above.  Floors 78-84 in WTC 2 were damaged by impact and there were 26 floors above.  That means that there was more than twice the weight above the damaged area in WTC 2 than WTC 1, and thus that the weakened steel in the damaged area of WTC 2 would give way at a lower temperature than that at WTC 1. WTC 7 also collapsed, but nearly seven hours after the plane impacts.

Part of collapsing WTC 1 fell on it and set it on fire and the fires cooked the steel structure until it gave way. Kohls relies much on soft-science academics for his information. On subjects related in any way to physics he should go to hard-science people.  Even a blacksmith who had never been to college could have told him that much he thought he knew was wrong.