R/Engineering mod didn't like this
0 2015-09-11 by snapple_es_bueno
I'm not an engineer, but I am a huge fan. Everyone puts their lives in your hands every day, and over the millennia there are few professions that have left such a mark on human civilization.
I hear all the time that you engineers generally, almost unanimously, accept the official story. If I can assume that most engineers are familiar with the relevant details of the events and the investigations, then I think it's fair to assume engineers in general were familiar with the World Trade Center prior to 9/11 as well.
So, I have a dilemma. I just can't believe you would have built buildings that terrible, that you specifically told people they would survive plane impacts, and when that day came they actually took it in stride, only to blow up an hour later with thousands of people in them! This makes you look really bad!
People came to work in those buildings, firefighters ran up the stairs to help those people, they trusted you and they got cremated! Splinters of their bones turned up years later, on the roof of a skyscraper that got totalled by a massive chunk of the South Tower from hundreds of feet away. Even the phones and computers and office furniture were pulverized and incinerated - they found a single filing cabinet, from the concourse level!
And then, in what would have been the tallest building in most states, a localized failure caused a chain reaction that destroyed the building in a few seconds! It's by luck alone that there was nobody inside. A single bomb, a construction accident - who knows what could have caused the building to collapse while it was full of people!
Evidently, no one in the engineering and architecture communities saw this coming. Nobody spoke up and said what a deathtrap these buildings would become, that the people who built them had made a mistake, that instead of surviving a plane crash, they'd actually blow up! Nobody would have rented office space in them if they knew that were true!
So by your incompetence, hubris, complacency, whatever, you had a big hand in maximizing the death toll. And from your reaction to the way it was investigated, it seems as though you knew this and you wanted to cover it up.
You have responsibilities to the people who use your buildings, and to the people who died in them. You should have called for a painstaking investigation to find out what really happened and how you could use the information to avoid another shocking and deadly professional failure. But you didn't.
I know that you don't know exactly what happened. Anyone can read in NIST's own reports that virtually all of the evidence was thrown away before they even got started. This means they're just guesses!
The twin towers investigation didn't even try to explain how the buildings suffered total destruction, and NIST even said it explicitly: "we are unable to provide a full explanation for the total collapse". The WTC7 report is comically specific, as though a computer simulation is as good as x-ray vision!
Portions of four core column sections out of 329 in the twin towers fire zones, and no physical evidence at all for WTC7. I can't believe you have let such disrespectful and insulting shams be the last word in a matter of your very credibility. Because if you really believe the NIST reports, if you really believe that your buildings were totally destroyed during situations that were explicitly considered during their design and construction, and that nobody saw this coming until the results were fatal, and even then you didn't care that the investigations were terrible...then I can't take your opinion seriously anyway.
But you see, it's in large measure because I find engineering credible that I believe there must have been additional sources of energy in the buildings designed to destroy them. I don't think four hundred tons of jet could reduce a million tons of tower to an apocalyptic wasteland. And I don't believe four pieces of steel and an admission of ignorance means justice for thousands of people who were horrifically torn to pieces and burned to ash by buildings you said were strong.
So throw me a bone here. Is engineering an effective and scientific discipline, or are you a bunch of witch doctors and snake oil salesmen who make terrible predictions and don't take any responsibility when your guesswork kills people?
38 comments
3 [deleted] 2015-09-11
I think 9/11 was "Physics Don't Matter" day.
0 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
lol yeah why worry about what happened that day? Physics is by all accounts back to normal by now :)
1 [deleted] 2015-09-11
It's crazy, man. I just cannot fathom how people can buy the "official" narrative.
-2 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
I think it's all sorts of motivations, primarily ignorance of the details, apathy, having a mortgage payment due...I suspect the people who spend all their time debunking on Reddit have pathological personality traits...but on the whole I think most people are genuinely afraid. I've met way more people IRL who flat-out refuse to discuss it than actually defend the OCT.
0 [deleted] 2015-09-11
I can't understand the "people who spend all their time debunking on Reddit [with] pathological personality traits" as I can't fathom why someone would defend government corruption.
1 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
Shit be fucked up dude. Seems these flies like to buzz around the new queue eh?
3 GrovyOne 2015-09-11
Just when I thought the posts here couldn't get any more cringe-worthy...
5 thisisnotmyreality 2015-09-11
Seriously.
"I posted something really condescending, and they didn't like it."
2 ridestraight 2015-09-11
con·dense verb gerund or present participle: condensing
1. make (something) denser or more concentrated. "the limestones of the Jurassic age are condensed into a mere 11 feet" 2. change or cause to change from a gas or vapor to a liquid. "the moisture vapor in the air condenses into droplets of water" synonyms: precipitate, liquefy, become liquid, deliquesce "the water vapor condenses"
1 thisisnotmyreality 2015-09-11
Typo. I fixed it. Thanks.
Now, go after this guy and set him straight. I got downvoted for telling him to get a dictionary.
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1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
Most welcome. I'm by no means a word snob. Have no reason to follow or tag some other thread, disparate from this one. Shit happens.
Back to your posit that OP is condescending to r/engineers and your argument in here is OP should be silenced there and in here?
I strongly disagree and urge lay persons to encourage credentialed Engineers, Scientists, Chemists, Doctors, High School Teachers (FFS!) to push back!
Questions the OP presented should be respected and answered, if possible, in here, no matter how OP was treated elsewhere.
OP should not be hit with inane slurs and derision in here.
3 thisisnotmyreality 2015-09-11
If you offend the reader they won't pay attention to what you're saying. Don't go into an engineering forum and post a condescending, sarcasm-filled screed (essentially calling them dumbasses) and act surprised when they hate you. OP could have asked questions in a way that was tailored to the audience. Instead, he pissed them off. Now he's over here trying to portray it as a 'conspiracy'. The truth is that he was being an asshole and /r/engineering mods called him on it.
Example:
1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
I've offended everybody I know the past 99 Days!
Passed a CDC screening to return to work: Free of Salmonella.
Not so much! I'm not doing well, at all. Been screaming for weeks.
Positive! Yeah!
Is it on me?
1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
Please explain your comment by addressing the portion that merits your disdain for OP's post on point.
1 GrovyOne 2015-09-11
Basically, the OP went to a sub, accused them of misleading and being mean old stupidheads while providing no evidence of such misconduct. It's like if I went to r/science and said "You're all so dumb! I can science so much better and believe all the right things! Well...bye!"
1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
Well done!
-2 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
Thank you! It's from the heart :)
2 ridestraight 2015-09-11
I for one appreciated your passion from a very visceral perspective, my gut!
Some of us want answers!
If the professional communities, academic institutions cannot speak out, a passionate lone voice, should by all means, be given room in here to explore your frustration as to why they do not!
I'm sick and tired of all the cowards that hide behind their Titles, Degrees and Shields!
I applaud you! Even as one poster in here depicts, (what I perceive as your/my/some/collective) frustration as condescending... guessing the definition of that word and the spelling isn't important to him/her.
IMHO, your post over there should have been responded to not quashed and in here your post should be discussed and respected on temerity alone!
Well done!
X-post to r/9/11!
1 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
I actually had a really awesome serendipity earlier today, and reading your gracious words this evening feels very...synchronicitous! I really needed and appreciate the encouragement :)
Of course I wasn't trying to condescend engineering, and I actually, naively assumed that whoever read it carefully would realize that while I think engineering is brilliant, the NIST story makes them look totally ridiculous. The official story and those who support it are the ones condescending engineers.
I'm still mulling strategy, but I'm taking the rest of the night off! TTYS
1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
You hit a nerve. Don't stop!
Dream great dreams! Dream well!
0 The_BrownBear 2015-09-11
I'm a structural & civil engineer with over 15 years experience of design & construction of large buildings and domiciles.
All high storey construction projects with a small footprint, especially those in a condensed built up area, are designed with a demolition plan in place in order to bring the building down into its own footprint, ie not topple over and destroy surrounding buildings.
Weakness points are designed into the structure as a method for demolition.
So....to reiterate... If this demolition plan is not followed, the building will topple over. Any 'explosions at the base of the tower' claims are bullshit as the structural weakness point would be about half way up.
Them shits were demolished.
-1 RMFN 2015-09-11
You are a warrior for truth. Keep fighting.
0 [deleted] 2015-09-11
[removed]
2 RMFN 2015-09-11
Do you have the ability to think for yourself?
1 [deleted] 2015-09-11
[removed]
1 SovereignMan 2015-09-11
Rule 10. Removed.
2 [deleted] 2015-09-11
[removed]
1 SovereignMan 2015-09-11
Rules 8 & 10. Removed.
-2 YouAreBeingDetained 2015-09-11
This violates neither. It isn't a post. It's a comment. It's not mocking the sub, or it's users. Nor is it accusing anyone of being a shill.
1 SovereignMan 2015-09-11
Rule 10. Removed.
1 ridestraight 2015-09-11
Stick with this thread! You do great stuff in here BTW!
Damned idiots will eat their own, I swear.
0 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
Thank you, it means a lot to me for you to say that. I will.
2 RMFN 2015-09-11
God, they came out in full force against this post.
2 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
Yeah and they're too dumb to realize how obvious it is...or actually they probably don't care since they got what they wanted anyway. Bunch of degenerates. Well thank you for coming by!
-1 nonorat 2015-09-11
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate.
1 snapple_es_bueno 2015-09-11
I have a foolproof way to tell if somebody is suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect: they bring up the Dunning-Kruger effect!
-2 brizzadizza 2015-09-11
Best 9/11 post I've read today.