Fell Over Or Collapsed
This slide was a part of the original slideshow. A mistake in sorting pictures was corrected in the March 2008 slideshow.
Examine The Buildings
Without exception, every one of the buildings pictured in this slide is dwarfed by the 3 WTC buildings. The tallest here is about 15 stories (the one in the lower left). Building 7 was 47 stories high, and the twin towers, at 110 stories each, were among the largest human structures in the world.
So the forces at play in these collapses are not equivalent to the WTC buildings.
Also, look at the general structure of these buildings. They all appear to be buildings we are familiar with, small rooms with bracing throughout the building.
All three of the WTC buildings under Gage's microscope are unique designs. Their structure allowed for large amounts of floors space unimpeded by bracing. This gave tenants a lot of flexibility in how their offices were designed.
This also means that the buildings on this slide can't be fruitfully compared to how the WTC buildings fell. Different structures will fall in different ways. Because there is so much less mass involved in these collapses, the structures didn't experience anywhere near the stresses involved in the WTC collapses.
Also, at least three of these pictures (if not all of them) depict buildings in which concrete was using as a structural element. The WTC buildings did have concrete, but it was only used for the floors. It was not used to reinforce the steel framing. Keep that in mind for future reference.
Finally, all of these pictures are the victims of earthquakes. Earthquakes exert immense dynamic forces on buildings in a lateral direction (side to side). This is why they toppled. The main force at work in the 3 WTC buildings is gravity, a vertical force. Something would either have to convert that downward force to a lateral force, or a separate lateral force would need to be applied to those three buildings to get them to topple. Neither situation happened on 9/11.
"Following Path Of Least Resistance"
Gage is misapplying this principle of physics dreadfully. Let me illustrate this. A hammer, according to Gage's logic here, could never drive a nail into a piece of wood because the nail offers more resistance than the air right next to the nail. Of course, the paltry resistance offered by the nail isn't enough to stop the hammer in any appreciable way. Down goes the nail.
The same is true of the WTC buildings. Each of these buildings had an immense amount of mass above the areas where collapse initiation took place. That mass quickly built up enough momentum to crush individual joints within the building. Since the structure itself provided grossly inadequate resistance to this juggernaut, down through the building WAS the path of least resistance.
This also explains why the WTC buildings weren't "recognizable as buildings." The momentum achieved by these masses after falling only a single floor was greater than the structure's ability to resist it by an order of magnitude. The structure had brought a knife to a gun fight. The buildings Gage pictures in these slides are much, much smaller and couldn't develop immensely destructive momentums in the time it took them to fall.
"Thick, Billowing Smoke"
A very important thing to realize about all four of these pictures: They were taken after the smoke and dust of their collapses had cleared.
Gage has this very bad habit of controlling just how you get to see the evidence. On the next slide, he's going to make the point that controlled demolition makes huge billowing clouds of smoke and dust, but he doesn't let you compare the inevitable dust clouds from these collapses.
| Slideshow Date | Previous Slide | Current Slide | Next Slide | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2008: | Slide 19 | < | Slide 20 | > | Slide 21 |
| March 2008: | Slide 16 | < | Slide 17 | > | Slide 18 |
| January 2008: | Slide 17 | < | Slide 18 | > | Slide 19 |
| September 2007: | Slide 11 | < | Slide 12 | > | Slide 13 |