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Explosions or Collapse?

The Semantics of Deception and the Significance of Categories

by C. Thurston

Language vs. Perception

I would like to raise and bring into focus a semantics issue that I believe may be compromising our ability to see what happened to the WTC Towers. This includes an analysis of why people often say that the Towers "collapsed", or "fell", and how this use of language influences our perceptions and beliefs.

At the onset of destruction for each Tower, we do see the top part of each building begin to fall, and this, no doubt, is what gives the initial impression that a collapse is taking place. In both cases, however, this upper block of floors somehow quickly disintegrates and is lost in the growing cloud of dust and debris. There are no intact portions of either building that survive the wave of destruction that moves down each Tower, spewing debris like a giant fountain. These global features of the destruction are NOT typical characteristics of a true collapse.

North Tower at 8.5 sec and 9.5 sec after top began to fall

Early Reports Compared to Later Reports

N. J. Burkett, an ABC News correspondent, is standing more than a block away from the WTC Towers on 9/11 when the South Tower destruction begins. He interrupts his live TV commentary by shouting as everyone runs for cover: "...A HUGE EXPLOSION NOW — RAINING DEBRIS ON ALL OF US!  WE'D BETTER GET OUT OF THE WAY!" By now, anyone who has looked into 9/11 issues has probably seen compilations of news clips from early in the day with numerous commentators and eyewitnesses all talking about the sights and sounds of explosions going off in the buildings.

After the first few hours of spontaneous reporting had passed, all talk of explosives mysteriously vanished from mainstream media channels and instead we were told over and over again about how the Towers had "collapsed" and why they "fell". The NOVA and Discovery Channel specials that soon appeared on American television continued this campaign of emphasizing that the Towers had "collapsed". Using grave authoritative language and seemingly sophisticated computer simulations (along with false and misleading statements and graphics), these programs "explained" to a traumatized and gullible audience why it was "inevitable" that the Towers would "fall".

This then became not only the starting premise for the various official investigations, but it also became common usage among ordinary folks and many 9/11 researchers for describing the destruction of the Towers.

A Quick Look in the Dictionary

There's a problem with this, however. "Falling" and "collapsing" are both categories for gravity-driven events. Everyone knows what it means to "fall", and according to Merriam-Webster, the word "collapse" means: "to cave or fall in or give way <the bridge collapsed>". But, if one considers ALL THE EVIDENCE, it quickly becomes apparent that the Towers DIDN'T cave in, fall or give way -- they were systematically and progressively EXPLODED from the top down, starting from the impact zone in each Tower.

South Tower at 5 sec, 5.9 sec, and 7.5 sec after top began to fall

Here's What I See

The falling debris from above blankets over the continuing explosions to some extent, but the building structure below the advancing wave is intact. I don't see any part of the structure "falling" or "collapsing" prior to the arrival of the wave of explosive destruction — and there's nothing left afterwards. I also don't see any part of the building "crumbling", "imploding" or folding in — I only see an ever-expanding cloud of dust and debris.

As the wave of destruction moves down each Tower, it encounters stronger and heavier structural materials (the perimeter and core columns were much heavier in the lower part of the building) and the power of the explosives very likely also increased progressively in order to guarantee total destruction.

Categories Tell Their Own Story

If one compares the meanings of the words "collapse" and "explosion" outside of the confusing context of the destruction of the Towers, it becomes clear that they are in fact opposites, and represent entirely different categories of events. Collapses "pull things down", whereas explosions "blow things up". A true collapse, like falling, is a self-fulfilling event that needs only the help of gravity to reach its completion.

A Hypothetical Scenario for Illustration Purposes

Now, imagine for a moment a hypothetical world where, upon the first noticeable appearances of air pollution, leading atmospheric scientists and weather professionals are enlisted (with adequate incentive) to insist publicly that this is simply part of the weather. The same message is repeated consistently by the media. A government agency is even assigned to look into the problem and they arrive at the same conclusion.

It doesn't take long before this belief that the brown stuff in the air is a weather phenomenon becomes generally accepted by the population. The occasional brave researcher who tries to say that it is actually something else — pollution introduced by industry and auto emissions — is immediately branded as a conspiracy theorist and is ruthlessly discredited and marginalized.

Since the general public tends to trust the media and their government, they are content to believe that the brown stuff is part of the weather. But, in so doing, they become effectively disabled from thinking that anything can be done about it because everybody knows you can't control the weather.

This would be an example of a strategically engineered category error, cleverly designed to intellectually disenfranchise the general public from the possibility of an effective understanding — or even a true perception — of the event in question (the brown stuff in the air).

The Relevance to 9/11

While this may seem like a wildly improbable scenario, it is not so different from the situation we now face, with a large portion of the general public still believing that the Towers "collapsed" and that they "fell". Remember the titles of those two highly produced PBS specials that came out shortly after 9/11? "Anatomy of the Collapse" and "Why the Towers Fell". I do not believe the highly funded promotion of this use of language was merely incidental.

Sometimes We "See" with Words

As long as the destruction of the Towers is firmly planted (even unconsciously) into a person's mental category for gravity-driven events, that person can be effectively disabled from "seeing" that total destruction was NOT inevitable. He or she will have a difficult time "seeing" the explosions, because explosions belong to a different category of events, and the categories represented by the very language that is used to think about the question do not include this possibility.

As the understanding of these events has evolved among 9/11 researchers, it has sometimes been said that the Towers "fell" as the result of demolition charges that were triggered in a carefully timed sequence, removing the support structure in advance of the "collapse".

Unfortunately, this description still conveys the idea that a global collapse is taking place, so it is forced to compete in the same category with the gravitational collapse theories. To those who believe that steel frame buildings can actually collapse without explosives, the explosives hypothesis seems bizarre and unnecessary.

I'm suggesting that the SAME explosive scheme that is removing the support structure is ALSO simultaneously and utterly destroying the building itself. This is no longer a collapse theory. From looking at the videos and photographs we can see plenty of falling debris, but it is shattered and pulverized, and it only begins to fall straight down AFTER it has been propelled out beyond the original perimeter of the structure. While this debris includes the material from a FORMER building, "falling debris" and "falling building" obviously have entirely different meanings!

The Scene of Destruction

When the air clears, allowing a look at the scene of destruction, there are no heaps of identifiable "collapsed" structure that "fell" within the footprints where the buildings once stood -- we find only smoking ruins with debris scattered for blocks in all directions.

The Strength of Steel Frame Structures

For those who want us to imagine that the Towers "collapsed", the assumption that they "fell" on their own is a critical part of the story. But to anyone who is familiar with the performance of modern steel-frame structures, it should be obvious that they cannot simply collapse on their own, with or without an office fire, or even from the impact of a falling portion of the same building. If impacted from above, the Towers might bend or distort, but they wouldn't explode, disintegrate in mid-air, or collapse like a house of cards!

Anyone who's ever played with an Erector Set knows that as long as the structural members remain well-connected, a framework may become twisted and distorted if it falls to the floor, but it will never just collapse into pieces under any scenario involving self-related and self-proportional forces. Buildings that have fallen in earthquakes demonstrate this resistance to disintegration.

Design Integrity Creates Structural Unity

If a force large enough to cause total destruction was actually applied to the top of one of the Towers, the continuous vertical strength of the specially fabricated multi-story core columns with their welded connections and dense cross-bracing, along with the high-strength perimeter columns and the integrity of the structural concept as a whole, would cause the building to respond as an entire assembly, splitting out or buckling asymmetrically over a multi-floor region, much like pushing down on a bundle of archery bows.

The vertical spacing of the office floors in the Towers did NOT correlate to periodic points of weakness in the column assemblies. A force applied from above would not cause the building to flatten on a floor-by-floor basis; it would resist and behave as a unified structure.

NIST Avoids the Big Question

The official theories have all been based on the a priori assumption that the Towers "fell", so the NIST investigation was left only with the task of trying to explain how each building became "poised for collapse". I've been amazed that they have been able to get away with such an egregious example of cart-before-the-horse analysis. Before jumping ahead to formulate hypotheses for "collapse initiation", they first must prove that the Towers DID indeed collapse! But since this has already been pre-established by category placement, few seem to notice that they have "overlooked" this step.

Unfortunately, whenever anyone talks about how the Towers "collapsed" or why they "fell", they are unwittingly (or wittingly) giving credence to these unproven assumptions and are perpetuating the incorrect categorization of these events. The directors of the NIST investigation would no doubt prefer that we all join them in their assumption that the Towers "collapsed", but this is, in fact, the crux of the matter and the REAL question. I therefore believe that we should not allow our choice of language to obscure this point.

We Can Reframe the Debate

By questioning whether OR NOT a global collapse (properly speaking) even occurred, we can significantly reframe this important debate and finally begin to cultivate a competing mental image and a proper category for what DID happen. The sooner we openly and aggressively challenge the imaginary assumptions that are bundled with this false use of language, the sooner we can break its hold on the minds of those who are convinced that they saw something that never actually happened.

Another Example of the Same Tactic

A final note:  I've noticed that media and government spokespeople ALWAYS refer to 9/11 researchers as "conspiracy theorists". Apart from the obvious pejorative intent, I believe this is another attempt to impose a disabling category error. In the absence of a real investigation, the consistent mislabeling of legitimate citizen-volunteer inquiry as "conspiracy theory" is a way to discourage the general public from discovering that a growing body of well-documented evidence now exists for the crimes of 9/11.

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