Overheard a guy at the gym saying 9/11 was an inside job and I actually think he was onto something

I was on the treadmill next to the squat rack at Planet Fitness in Arlington last week, and this older dude was explaining to his friend how Building 7 fell at free fall speed and how no office fire could do that. He mentioned NIST's report had some numbers that didn't add up, like WTC 7 dropping in 6.5 seconds. It made me go home and read a few pages of the report myself, and now I'm not sure what to believe. Has anyone else looked into the collapse speed data and come away with doubts?

2 comments

2 Comments

barbaragarcia6d ago

Building 7 coming down at free fall speed is actually the thing that gets me too... but then you look at the full physics of it. A building collapsing isn't like dropping a rock in a vacuum - there's energy being released from the floors smashing into each other, and the core columns failed unevenly. NIST used high-speed cameras and computer models that showed the collapse sequence matched a progressive failure, not a controlled demolition. Plus think about it - if someone was going to fake a whole building demolition, they'd have to plant explosives in a building nobody was watching, then get away with it for 20+ years while engineers and firefighters who worked there never said a word. The simpler explanation is that steel softens at high temps and the fires burned way longer than standard office fires because of the diesel in the emergency generators.

foster.ruby6d ago

and yeah you know it's funny you mention that because i feel like this is part of a bigger thing i've noticed. like how people will believe something really complicated and sinister before they'll believe something boring and ordinary. i remember when my dad's old truck wouldn't start one winter and he spent three days checking the fuel pump and the alternator and all this stuff before he finally noticed the battery cables were just loose. it's the same thing here. everyone wants the dramatic story with secret plots and hidden explosives but the real world is usually just a bunch of random stuff going wrong at the same time. like the diesel generators thing you mentioned, that's exactly the kind of boring detail that explains everything but nobody wants to hear it.