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[William Seger]

12. Hmm, good point -- except for being wrong

In fact, quite a bit of debris fell to the north and damaged the Verizon building, which is certainly NOT "exactly what you'd expect a competent demolitionist to arrange":



In fact, the NIST hypothesis explains what the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis fails to explain: Whereas a "competent demolitionist" would have taken out the lowest floor or two in a way that the entire building fell to the south, the NIST simulation showed the building shell buckling between the 7th and 14th floor following a progressive horizontal collapse across those floors, sending debris in all directions, including the parts of the north wall that caused that damage to the Verizon building. The building above the 14th floor then tipped toward the south as it fell.

In fact, this is just one of many details that the NIST hypothesis explains but the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis does not. Another is the collapse of the east penthouse six seconds before the building shell fell. Another is the 1.5 seconds of less-than-freefall of the building shell that happened before the 2.25 seconds of freefall that the "competent demolitionist" hypothesis focuses on. Another is WHY that freefall was 2.25 seconds, which agrees well with the 8-floor buckling in the NIST simulation, whereas there would be no need for a "competent demolitionist" to blow out 8 floors to bring down the building, and certainly not after the building was already falling. Another is why there was nothing remotely resembling the sound, window-shattering shock wave, and seismic disturbance that blowing out 8 floors with explosives would have produced.

In short, when ALL the details of the collapse are considered, it's completely absurd to claim that it's "exactly what you'd expect a competent demolitionist to arrange." Yammering about stiffener plates and shear studs doesn't come close to making controlled demolition a plausible theory.