World Trade Center Conspiracies
So Jesse Ventura came out as an Atheist. I thought that he always was known as one, but another atheist site got their panties all in an excited bunch. Someone noted that he's a kook, like him or not, and listed the reasons why he's a kook. Thinking that the US has a weather controlling machine in Alaska for example. Link The one that got me to respond was the World Trade Center and that being a controlled demolition.
I find the argument humorous. You take out a 110 story building with 30 stories on top and how do you expect it to come down? Don't forget that this was an exoskeleton building so the columns would have been pushing as much material to the middle as possible. One guy put up a link to an Architects and Engineers site saying engineers agree with the collapse problem. They claim 1341 engineers have signed on. Only 52 have contributed, but let's accept the 1341 sign on. There are 1.5 million engineers in the US. So your argument is that .000894% of engineers agree (not counting the architects mind you) so it must be a problem? Why don't you believe in creationism then because I'm sure that many "scientists" (general term) also would agree with Young Earth?
The core point is, why would skeptics buy such outlandish and unsupportable stories? Do they want to believe life is a movie? Does that make life more exciting? How do you come about rejecting God when reputable people all around you claim that he exists yet fall for this type of thing? We could be talking about ghost hunters, I don't care, but nonsensical gibberish in general. I might be able to be sold the story that Kennedy was killed by Sal Giancana due to a biography by his brother. What sort of unsupportable shenanigans do you buy and why? And why do you think that people buy any of these stories?
Tags: Conspiracy, Skeptics
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gaytor on -
Aside from the WTC story, do you have anything that you think verges on nuttery that you have an inclination to buy? That's where I was hoping to go with my admission of kind of buying the Mob/Chicago Vote payback stories on the Kennedy assassination. I have no reason to buy it, but I fall for the claim.
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Permalink Reply by Galen on -
eh, I'm not familiar enough with all their shit to come up with an example off the top of my head (other than the aforementioned Building 7 coming down when there was no reason at all that it should've budged an inch). But rather than making up answers to questions, I'd rather wait until we have REAL answers.
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Permalink Reply by Gaytor on
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I think that I'm not communicating well. Are there any things that you buy that are unfounded in general. UFO's Sasquatch, umm, just generally unfounded things that seem real to you? It's not an effort to start a line of argument, just a curiosity. The real reason for the post was this question and not really a WTC question.
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Permalink Reply by Galen on
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Ah, I see. Just unfounded beliefs in general? No, I don't think so. I mean, I can't think of any. With the WTC thing, I don't believe any of that conspiracy crap, but at the same time, if it all turned out to be true, I don't think I'd be all that surprised. Well, I'd be surprised that anybody managed to pull off something like that. The other examples you mentioned are all things I'm agnostic about. They *could* be real, but I don't really see any evidence for them. I mean, UFOs could be real. Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster could be evolutionary throwbacks or some species we just haven't discovered. I'm willing to believe in all of that stuff, if there's convincing evidence (which there isn't).
So no, I guess the answer to your question is that I don't have unfounded beliefs of which I'm aware.
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Permalink Reply by Gaytor on
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Thanks for considering the question. The nail in the coffin for Loch Ness has to do with the lake itself. The lake is only 10,000 years old because it was formed by glacial movement. I've certainly wished that sasquatch was real when I've been out hiking. It would be cool to see something new and my 3 inch knife would scare off a 7 foot tall monkey... right?
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Permalink Reply by Becky Glynn on -
Gaytor I didn't mean to get us off topic! ;) It's just that my brother has fallen prey to believing in falacies rather than varifiable facts these days, and when I saw WTC it hit me between the eyes!
As for UFOs, monsters, ghosts, etc. is it possible to be a realistic thinker and believe in those kinds of wishful thinking? I think it would be pretty cool if any of these critters proved to be real. I just tend to believe folks can't deal with reality very well and it's easier to find "boogie monsters" to deal with instead.
Thank you so much for the topic! Peace.
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Permalink Reply by Gaytor on
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Here comes the blabbing! :)
Well, let's illustrate it for your bro. The WTC was an exterior steel column, interior steel core high rise.
The middle was tied together with joists (Halfway down the page). They supported the floors (decking with lightly reinforced concrete on top. The floors would be designed to take say 150 lbs per square foot. It's a common number. Yeah, it's made of out steel, but what happens when you overload steel? It bends to the modulus of elasticity then rips or shears. The material is irrelevant other than calculating the point of yield. Additionally, joists are only designed for vertical loading. If you allow them to bend during heat or induce forces other than vertical or in this case, tensioned loads, they are likely to fail. They are light and work great as light building materials, but they are not meant to be side loaded, at all.
So you put all of that into a simple concept. You have an hour of fire at around 1500 or more degrees. Normally Monokote would help keep the heat away, but a plane has just blew through the building, bending the joists, taking out a good section of columns. The heat is cracking the concrete, making it spall and weakening it. As soon as you have a floor fail, it will fall and overload the floor below, Eventually when you have one or two fail little to nothing is holding up the 30 story (let's call it 100,000 tons) building above. The top shifts to the point of failure (notice the top of both buildings leaned at the top during failure) bending the steel which now is overloaded because it isn't designed to hold 30 stories cantilevered into space. This is a failure that takes less than half a second. I don't know the number, but it's small. Now you have 30 stories falling straight down because gravity has taken hold. 100,000 tons falling unimpeded for 10 feet, hits a floor designed to hold up150 lbs per square feet = immediate failure. Every time this falling structure hits the next floor the mass increases, so what would slow it down? What is strong enough to stop it? The floor wasn't designed for it. Let's say I can lift 100 lbs over my head. Great! Now drop that from 8 feet and let's see how I do.
Perspective that we get to see often, here. This train hits a semi, drives it into multiple cars at 40 mph and doesn't even seem to slow down with the brakes on. This is analogous to what I would expect, maybe he should come up with a better explanation as to why my explanation is wrong?
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on -
Considering that the very photograph that began the specualtion about a strange creature was likely a hoax, there is little reason to even speculate about it.
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Permalink Reply by Ryan E. Hoffman on -
Building 5 came down too I believe.
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Permalink Reply by Lindsey on -
There's nothing logical about conspiracy whackos. They want the government to be some sort of all-powerful organization that has the power to implement and cover up these grand conspiracies while at the same time being so incompetent that they can't keep it secret from a few fringe nut jobs with no real investigative or critical thinking skills. You can't have it both ways. I'm sure there are plenty of things the government is keeping secret, but I doubt they have the power to keep something as huge as some of the WTC conspiracy theories (or "chemtrails" or, my personal favorite, "the-government-is-putting-mind-control-agents-in-our-tap-water") a secret for long. Big secrets have a nasty habit of getting out.
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