9/11 World Trade Center "Demolition" claims

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Someone recently brought up the claim, by many "9/11 Truthers," that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed NOT due to the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, but due to "controlled demolition" via explosives that had previously been placed, hidden, in both the Twin Towers and WTC building 7.

The collapses of these three buildings did indeed superficially resemble controlled demolition. But they were NOT controlled demolition. The point of controlled demolition is to prevent damage to surrounding buildings while the target building is being demolished. But there was plenty of damage to surrounding buildings, for several blocks around.

There's no reason to assume there was even uncontrolled demolition via explosives either. Explosives are not necessary to explain the collapses of WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7.

In WTC 1 and 2, the floors where the planes hit were weakened both by the plane crashes themselves and, even more so, by the resulting fires. The fires were not hot enough to outright melt the steel structural beams, but were indeed hot enough to soften them, eventually to the point where the top parts of both buildings began falling. And then the bottom parts were crushed by the falling top parts.

In WTC 7, a fire was caused on the lower floors by debris from WTC 1 and 2. Eventually, that fire too weakened structural beams, causing WTC 7 to fall.

All 3 buildings collapsed in ways that might seem counter-intuitive to people who have watched the collapse of much smaller buildings.

But tall buildings are much heaver than smaller buildings, which is why the collapse of the WTC towers was much more downward than sideways, relative to the ways that much smaller buildings would tend to collapse. Tall buildings also have much greater rotational inertia, another reason why a collapsing tall building tends not to tip over very much as it falls (unless it is being knocked over by a major earthquake, or by something else which exerts very strong horizontal forces).

Personal note: I myself gave some credence to the WTC demolition theory for about a year or so in 2007 to 2009. I found it disturbing enough that I spent about a year studying, in my spare time, the writings of both proponents and debunkers. Eventually I concluded that the debunkers were correct, although some of them did not express themselves very well.