–
At FireGeezer, there is the start of a series on conspiracy theories that will be in 5 parts running each morning this week. Monday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part One – “Remember the Maine”: Our Love Affair with Conspiracy.
–
–
Conspiracy theories depend on a few things. First, at least one coincidence which seems impossible that this could have occurred by chance.
What is a coincidence? Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton develop calculus at the same time? Not really. Both were working on was to calculate infinitesimal differences. What about all sorts of things related to 9/11/2001 adding up to 11? such as the number of letters in many of the names. Yes. These are coincidences, but it is far from impossible that this could have occurred by chance.
There is one other shocking 11 letter word that clearly proves what all of this means. Can you guess what it is? The word is ___________. Clearly, this is proof that the evidence of a conspiracy is a ___________. How can we argue with that kind of proof? Coincidence – 11 letters.[1] 😯
Popular Mechanics did some excellent debunking of the impossible that this could have occurred by chance proofs.[2]
On a slow anniversary of 9/11 at the EMS Shack, after hearing a bunch of these conspiracy theories, I decided to rant a bit on this, too.[3]
–
One of the examples that is often used to try to explain how we underestimate the likelihood of things is the number of people who would need to be in a group for the odds to be 50/50 that 2 people in the group share a birthday. This is usually misunderstood.
A couple of years ago, someone on the Johnny Carson show was trying to explain this. Johnny Carson didn’t believe it, noted that there were about 120 people in the studio audience, and asked how many people shared his birthday of, say, March 19.[4]
But that is a misrepresentation of the question. That question is how many people have to be in a group for one of them to have the same birthday as one person chosen ahead of time. The person chosen ahead of time cannot change his birthday, so there is only one variable – the number of people needed to make it 50/50 that someone else in the room has that one specific birthday. For someone in a group to share a birthday of March 19, or any other specific date, would be 253 people.
However, the question was how many people need to be in the room for any two of those people to share a birthday. This has not one variable, but 2 variables. Any 2 people can have matching birthdays. While Johnny Carson was dealing with an audience of 120 people, he probably had several pairs of people in the audience who did not know that they had birthdays matching someone else in the audience. All they knew was that their birthday did not match Johnny’s birthday.
–
FireGeezer’s schedule of posts will be updated each day. Go read each of them –
Monday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part One – “Remember the Maine”: Our Love Affair with Conspiracy.
Tuesday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part Two – US Conspiracies: We Can Do That. I do not have the link, yet. I will add the rest as they are posted. This is definitely a topic worthy of a multipart discussion.
Wednesday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part Three – Anatomy of a Conspiracist: Smarter Than the Average Bear?
Thursday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part Four – Conspiracists: Prosecutor, Judge and Jury
Friday – Firefighters and the “9/11 Truth Movement” – Part Five – Betraying Our Trust
–
Footnotes:
–
[1] Yoh Duh
snopes.com
Article
–
[2] Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report – Popular Mechanics examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
Popular Mechanics
February 3, 2005
Article
–
[3] Sometimes logic fails to triumph over imagination
Rogue Medic
Article
–
[4] Innumeracy
John Allen Paulos
Book Page at Google Books
.
Can you explain to me how a building that is struck by a plane with only a fire load of airplane fuel and office furniture can create molten steel which smoldered for weeks under the fallen towers can happen?
And how can a building across from the towers suddenly fall to the ground when it was only partially damaged?
And where is the planes parts that were suppose to have hit the Pentagon like where are the wings
jet engines and the wheels or for that matter any part of the plane? I have seen many plane crashes and there is always huge broken pieces left behind.
How can a plane fly less then fifty feet off the ground at over six hundred miles per hour fly that precise course and then hit the building all without ever once stalling out? Is this even possible?
Very Curious!
And no I am not a Conspiracy person, but I am a very curious retired firefighter officer.
Safety56,
The metal of the building was weakened by the impact of the plane. The fire retardant coating on the metal was knocked off by the impact. Smoldering ashes are not uncommon when a fire is not completely extinguished.
What is the difference between partially damaged and damaged enough to fall?
Do you want to claim that the collapse of an undamaged bridge is a sign of a conspiracy. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was not hit by anything, except wind. It collapsed.
How many of those planes crashed into a building the way that plane hit the Pentagon? Where are all of the parts of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania? That also dove into the ground, which is different from the typical crash. These questions should be easily answered by people at the FAA, who see all kinds of plane crashes.
How long is it supposed to have been at that altitude? 5 seconds? 3 seconds? How quickly do you expect it to decelerate and stall?
Why should we assume that the pilot was accurate? We do not know what he was aiming at. Most likely he was aiming at the Pentagon, but he might have been trying to hit another part of the building. We don’t know how accurate he was. We don’t know how hard it is to hit a building that is not moving with a plane that is moving very fast, since few of us ever do this.
Not really curious. this is an unusual event, so why should we expect anything about it to be ordinary?
Popular Mechanics explains it very well. there are other places that have explained a lot of what happened.
What would be truly unbelievable would be if the WTC were wired to detonate over the months leading up to 9/11 and the charges went off according to schedule.
The explanations for any conspiracy theory requires ignoring coincidence.
The explanations for any conspiracy theory usually requires accepting events that are so unlikely, that they make the suspicious parts of what happened seem common place.
A conspiracy is not required for the events to have occurred as presented by in the 9/11 Commission Report.
.
Can you explain the molten steel that is seen just prior to the collapse I believe it is Tower 2.
What kind of temperatures are required to cause steel to melt not buckle but actually melt to a liquid form?
And what about all the eye witnesses who all claimed they heard explosions before the towers collapsed?
Long after the plane had crashed into the towers?
I also needed to clarify in my first questions to you about the building having smoldering ashes I was not refering to ashes rather I was refering to the steel that was actually molten steel that had been covered up by all of the other crushed material from the collapse.
I am very aware of how after a fire is out you can still have hot spots that can rekindle days later.
I am very aware also of how high winds can destroy bridges and buildings, but we are talking about a passenger jet and if as you claim that the towers fell because the floors all pancaked as they began to collapse why are there not pictures showing all of these floors of concrete in the foot print of the collapsed buildings. Because the shots that show the actual collapse it shows the building being blasted out ward huge pieces of the tower is being blown out like an explosion. Again bystanders talk about these huge pieces being found blocks away.
It shows the concrete floors being blown up and out, I have watched the actual recording from the ABC recording, and even the news people say they heard explosions all around the towers before they fell. I can’t find any comments about this from the sites you and others who refute that this was a planned event.
People are giving a pat answer for the whole horrible collapse of these towers.
But no one is explaining why people heard and felt explosions from both towers after the plane hit the buidings, or maybe I am not looking in the right place for the answers.
Safety56,
Why do you assume that what you see is molten steel?
When someone shows that this is molten steel, then I will wonder about how the steel melted. Until then, there is just an unknown image that some people claim is molten steel.
Eye witness testimony is the least reliable evidence available. People may claim they heard something, but did they hear somebody saying that they heard explosions and then repeated what they heard?
What did they hear?
There were plenty of people on scene recording audio. Where are the recordings of these “explosions”?
I don’t know what might have been in the building that might have exploded, but where is the evidence that anything exploded? If there are recordings of explosions, I want explosives experts to examine the evidence to determine whether there actually were explosions.
Where do you get the information about there being molten steel in the rubble?
The high pressure after a collapse can create high temperatures. Increased pressure will produce increased temperature.
Take any model of a building, put pressure on it from only the top, if you press down to the point of collapse, parts will be forced out of the building. That does not mean that there were explosives inside.
Eye witness testimony is the least reliable evidence. With all of the audio recording equipment on site, where are the recordings of these explosions?
It makes sense that a building that has been burning will eventually collapse under its own weight. This is not anything new.
It makes sense that a building, with a strong external frame, will collapse toward the base, as long as the external frame is intact.
During times of great fear and excitement, people will think they hear things, see things, and feel things that do not reflect reality.
If another sky scraper with the same kind of frame is hit in the same way by a large plane, we can expect that it will collapse in the same way as occurred with the World Trade Center. We had two different buildings with the same construction, that were hit in the same way by large planes. They collapsed in the same way.
What would be really surprising would be if the government were to create a conspiracy where someone flies a plane into a building wired for demolition. Even after a plane collision and a fire, the explosives go off exactly as planned for a perfectly controlled demolition and that demolition begins right at the point of impact, where the explosives would be most likely to fail.
And this happens twice, right next to each other, without rehearsal, and without anyone coming up with any proof of what happened.
That is what I see as so far fetched as to be impossible.
This requires a phenomenal level of perfection. My government is not capable of doing this, regardless of which party is in charge.
.
@safety56
1. It wasn’t molten steel.
2. The building across from the towers (WTC7 I presume you mean) didn’t “suddenly collapse”. What do you consider “partially” damaged? Have you read the NIST report on how much damage was likely done to WTC7 from the collapse of WTC1?
3. Search the net… there are many pictures of the remains of flight 77 including one of its engines
4. Why would Flight 77 have stalled? How long did it fly “50 feet off the ground”? What do you really mean by that question?
As for you not being a “conspiracy theorist” you certainly tout the claims most raised by that group… peculiar.
Please have a look at http://www.debunking911.com/ they answer your questions in much greater detail.
valleytenderfoot,
I don’t know how much of this applies to safety56. Maybe he is just someone who is looking for the truth. The 9/11 truthers certainly are not looking for the truth. Their whole game is hiding the truth. If they had a 9/11 version of 3 card monte, it would be run by the 9/11 truthers.
If it looks like it supports a claim of conspiracy, the appearance is all that matters.
If it casts any doubt on a claim of conspiracy, no amount of evidence is enough.
–
It is all about presenting things in the most scary sounding way possible.
The horrors of dihydrogen monoxide. This poison could be in your home RIGHT NOW!!!11!!!
–
Everybody is an expert at crash reconstruction, right up until it is time to explain howe an uncontroversial crash occurred. When they can do that, then they might have some credibility. They are only good at pointing out things that they think look suspicious, based on a lack of information and an excess of imagination.
–
Create suspicion.
This is all along the lines of the question – Have you stopped beating your wife? Reality has nothing to do with the answer. It is all about creating suspicion.
Accuse. When the accusation is discredited, make a different accusation. When that is discredited, return to the first discredited accusation or come up with a new one, but always keep accusing. If they stop making accusations, they are no longer getting attention.
–