Have you considered the impact of the two planes that hit the building? That's bound to have jarred the structure all the way to the basement sort of like a mini earth quake. And I bet if only one plane had hit only one tower engineers would have found structural damage to the other tower.

Have you considered the impact of the two planes that hit the building? That's bound to have jarred the structure all the way to the basement sort of like a mini earth quake. And I bet if only one plane had hit only one tower engineers would have found structural damage to the other tower.

Yes. Besides, may buildings survive earthquakes with millions of times the amount of energy of either the impacts or collapse. I pointed out in an earlier post that the Oklahoma City bombing had a THOUSAND FOLD the energy than either impact. Guess what, that building didnt fall down. Besides, its been stated (even by JOM article) that it could support lateral loads several times what the planes impact produced. The super redundant design of the towers could possibly handle several impacts actually. THe problem is what exactly was the cause here? Fire has never taken down a steel frame building in history. THis isnt to say its impossible by any means but it DOES set a precendent for steel framed buildings. So the impacts and resulting fire in and of themselves probably didnt cause the collapse but the combined events contributed to the joists giving way (a design inadequacy) and birth of the pancake theory. Seems plausible, Id think, to even to madisonman and Id have no problem myself accepting that if it wasnt for 7WT. THeres simply no easy way to convince me that 7 didnt fall disturbingly similar to how Dan Rather called it on that day.