How Skeptics Confronted 9/11 Denialism, page 15

Originally posted by Seymour Butz
1- there were 3 elevators that ran the full distance.

Wrong.

From the very company that maintained the WTC elevators:

In addition to normal freight service one freight elevator in each of the towers will serve a total of 112 stops from the fifth basement to the 108th floor. It will rise 1,387 feet (422.8 meters) – 400 feet (122 meters) more than the former record rise in the Empire State Building.

Car 6 also ran from the impacted floors in WTC1 to the basement, and it was an express elevator, and the only other elevator to do so.

NIST says this, NIST NCSTAR 1-7, page 122, trying to explain basement events themselves:

Cars 6 and 50 could have fallen all the way to the pit in the sub-basement level, and car 50 in WTC 1 was reported to have done so.

And what was "reported" to them was demonstrably false by the operator of that very elevator:

[The Griffiths] were both operating elevators in the north tower on Sept. 11. Arturo was running 50A, the big freight car going from the six-level basement to the 108th floor. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m., Arturo and a co-worker were heading from the second-level basement to the 49th floor.

www.usatoday.com...

He lived, only broke his leg. No fireball.

That leaves car 6 open theoretically, but like you guys always say, where is the proof? Because I have absolutely no reason to believe that this happened, because there is no evidence of it, only your assertion. (Proof that it fell all the way to the bottom without its brakes catching, by the way, not that it's shaft was destroyed by an FAE going all the way down, because that's physically impossible anyway.) NIST was already shown completely wrong on car 50.

What "massive overpressure"?

I thought it was common knowledge that jet fuel explosions, while impressive, don't cause a huge overpressure.

Jet fuel explosions by definition cause very destructive overpressures; they're even used as bombs. That's what a "fuel-air explosive" is.

The problem is that jet fuel does not explode in liquid form. It has to be mixed in the range of 1.3% to 6.0% vapor to air (not just here and there, but consistently!), which isn't going to happen simply by dropping liquid through the air, let alone through shafts where physical obstructions are also in the way. I don't care whatever you say, unless you give me specific sources, because I know you aren't a walking textbook on this stuff (I had to look all of this up myself) and you obviously haven't been trained to think critically about these kinds of physical situations like an engineer would have to be.

Put simply if you think a fireball is going to be flying down an elevator shafts to the basements, you don't know what you're talking about.

If it does explode, at all, the drywall shafts are gone. It doesn't get to the basement. End of story. It would have to be a freaking miracle for the fuel to land down there and then explode.

The fireballs that the planes caused weren't even fuel-air explosions. They were deflagrations, which are slower expansions than true explosions. You'll notice not even all windows were blown out on the impacted floors. The aluminum claddings on the outer columns were still attached. Nothing to suggest that the same event is going to travel 1000+ feet down and blow out massive reinforced concrete doors, etc., as reported by eyewitnesses. Do you understand what decompression is, and the fact that as an overpressure travels, it dissipates and loses force?

But NIST did in fact have the structural docs.

So what, when they don't provide any of it to support their theory? And they just keep them locked up? How in the hell does that support their case, from my perspective? It only reinforces what I already believe. Do you not see that? I thought you were trying to convince me that I am wrong?

Yes, I see it fine. It says to test your hypothesis. The visual evidence isn't a hypothesis. It's hard evidence.

Hard evidence of what? NIST's hypothesis?

Maybe you see where this is going.

And your whole response to my post about the buckling avoided the main two points: you cannot see the trusses pulling the exterior columns inward, and you do not know how much buckling it would require to initiate global collapse from that mechanism alone, or what other mechanisms would have to coincide. NIST never elaborates or "shows their work."

Have you ever taken any engineering classes in your life, Seymour? It kind of helps, to get an idea of where these guys are coming from and what they were supposed to do in their report.

Valhalla doesn't post here much anymore, but she delt professionally with reports like the NIST WTC team's, as par of her job (she is also an engineer), and I'm sure Griff remembers her thoughts on it. She bought it until she actually read it, then agreed that it was a sham. She even argued with me and Griff up until the day she actually read it. Then she sent me a u2u.

I'm telling you, you have blind faith in something that you do not really understand. If it can happen to Val then it can certainly happen to you, because from reading your posts it doesn't even sound like you're technically familiar with the phenomena we're discussing.

[edit on 15-6-2008 by bsbray11]