The Progressive Top Down Collapse Challenge
You've heard that the Twin Towers pancaked, crushing themselves completely. The experts gave us a fancy-sounding term for this: progressive collapse. If you search with the phrase "progressive collapse" you will find numerous articles, most of them written since 9/11/01 about things like assessing and retrofitting existing structures against progressive collapse. It seems that the only examples of progressive collapse of buildings cited are the Twin Towers, Building 7, and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
A TV documentary which purported to explain the collapses of the Twin Towers featured a demonstration in which a house-of-cards like structure representing one of the towers was supposed to collapse from the top down. The documentary showed only the beginning of this simulated building collapse, since the producers were apparently unable to achieve progressive total collapse. This raises the question: If this newly discovered mode of structural failure is so likely to happen, why is it so difficult to reproduce?
THE PROGRESSIVE COLLAPSE CHALLENGE
The challenge is in 5 parts, from the easiest to the most difficult.
All five require building a structure that will undergo top-down progressive total collapse -- i.e.: when disturbed near the top, it will collapse from the top down to the bottom, leaving no part standing. The disturbance can include mechanical force, such as projectile impacts, and fires, augmented with hydrocarbon fuels. Explosives and electromagnetic energy beams are not permitted.
Your structure can be made out of anything: straws, toothpicks, cards, dominoes, mud, vegetables, pancakes, etc.
The designers of the Twin Towers were able to meet all 5 challenges using steel and concrete.
CHALLENGE #1:
Build a structure with a vertical aspect ratio of at least 2 (twice as tall as it is wide) and induce it to undergo top-down total progressive collapse.
CHALLENGE #2:
Build a structure with a square footprint and a vertical aspect ratio of at least 6.5 (6.5 times as high as it is wide), and induce it to undergo top-down total progressive collapse.
CHALLENGE #3:
Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which, in the process of collapsing, will throw pieces outward in all directions such that at least 80% of the mass of the materials ends up lying outside of the footprint, but their center of mass lies inside the footprint.
CHALLENGE #4:
Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which is capable of remaining intact in 100 MPH cross wind.
CHALLENGE #5:
Build a structure that meets the requirements of both CHALLENGES #3 and #4.
There IS no precedent for what happened on 9/11 to the twin towers.
So why are so many people here so god-danged bent on declaring it a pure structural-failure "collapse"?
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT ANY TOWER CAN UNDERGO GLOBAL PROGRESSIVE COLLAPSE BESIDES WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11?
posted by spooked at 8:22 AM
3 Comments:
Are you serious, or just SERIOUSLY NUTS? There seems to be a conspiracy theory for every conspiracy and every theory. I think you guys need serious help. The fact is, like it or not, that Elvis IS DEAD, Oswald did act alone, we really DID land on the moon, and the WTC towers did suffer progressive collapse. If you want to argue otherwise, go ahead but make sure you put in 'this is work of fiction.' Then guys like you, Dan Brown, L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, and Mohammed can find a nice rock to crawl under and compliment yourselves for fooling a bunch of innocent and niave people; if that's what people like you need to do in order to get your rocks off.
Are you serious, or just SERIOUSLY NUTS? There seems to be a conspiracy theory for every conspiracy and every theory. I think you guys need serious help. The fact is, like it or not, that Elvis IS DEAD, Oswald did act alone, we really DID land on the moon, and the WTC towers did suffer progressive collapse. If you want to argue otherwise, go ahead but make sure you put in 'this is work of fiction.' Then guys like you, Dan Brown, L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, and Mohammed can find a nice rock to crawl under and compliment yourselves for fooling a bunch of innocent and niave people; if that's what people like you need to do in order to get your rocks off.
This is brilliant; I love the 80% projectile requirement and the virtual impossibility of such requirements. But the psychology is also fascinating: if you were to succeed you will have proven something which you probably wouldn't accept... ofcourse the chances of anyone succeeding are nil. I think you should also ad requirements that the simulation will cause basement explosions, prophetic news coverage and generate enough heat to have FEMA show up before it happens! :)
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