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buybuydandavis comments on What is the most anti-altruistic way to spend a million dollars? - Less Wrong Discussion

-4 Post author: Punoxysm 24 March 2014 09:50PM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 25 March 2014 09:24:37AM 0 points [-]

Wasn't their crew full of doctors and engineers?

My recollection is that the building collapse came as a surprise to everyone, and there news programs with structural engineers discussing this fact.

After a cursory search, the few articles I saw indicated that Al Qaeda didn't know, and Bin Laden was surprised the towers completely collapsed.

Comment author: mwengler 25 March 2014 06:20:46PM 3 points [-]

Its an interestingly difficult question to answer, who would have known ahead of time that you could bring down a skyscraper with a guided gigantic fuel bomb.

I looked up and found this:

In 1993, John Skilling, lead structural engineer for the WTC, recalled doing the analysis, and remarked, "Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed," he said. "The building structure would still be there."[11]

On the other hand, on 9/11/01 being interviewed by Peter Jennings (start listening 1:40 into this) Guiliani says he was told minutes before the collapse that the building would collapse. Considering how obvious in retrospect it is, there could well have been engineers looking at the fire and what else was going on who realized the steel was softening and that the building could not possibly stand with a fire of that intensity and duration inside it.

But finally, we have Bin Laden himself. Transcript of a translation from videotape:

BIN LADEN: (...Inaudible...) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 25 March 2014 07:20:39PM *  3 points [-]

Nice job! Thanks.

Guiliani says he was told minutes before the collapse that the building would collapse

From youtube autotranscript, [ed. ] by me:

I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters 75 Barclay Street which was
1:44right there with the police commissioner the fire commissioner (they had [ed. the head of]) emergency
1:47management
1:48and we're operating out of there when we were told that
1:51the World Trade Center was gonna collapse and it (it collapsed [ed. did collapse]).
1:54before we can actually get out of the building so we were trapped in the
1:57building for (it's just a minute [ed. ten fifteen minutes])
1:59finally found at Exit got out walk north
2:03took a lot of people with
2:07headquarters into which you put enormous

IMO, they certainly didn't know up front that the building would collapse, as they wouldn't have gone to 75 Barclay if they had. Minutes before the collapse, they were told it was going to collapse. I'm guessing that this was figured out using some of their observations of the fire, seeing how the fire was playing out, and then realizing that the building would collapse. Nobody knew up front. Guiliani didn't know. The lead structural engineer didn't know. Not even Bin Laden knew, "the most optimistic of them all".

Thanks again.

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