BMAC,

I believe that the initiation of the collapse would have been caused by thermate, which would have been in the areas where the aircraft impact would occur. Thermate will not ignite due to shock and it's ignition temperature is far too high for fires to ignite it. The ignition devices could have been buried in the thermate to protect them from fire. This would have been done to make it look like fire caused the initiation. I also believe that thermate would have been used to weaken the perimeter column corners to eliminate their stiffening of the perimeter walls, since the use of explosives there would have been a dead giveaway.

Another interesting fact is that the collapses actually started above the aircraft impact sites or where there was little aircraft impact damage. They started on the 98th floor in the North Tower where most of the aircraft impact damage was on the 94th thru the 96th. The same thing occurred in the South Tower with the initiation occurring at the 82nd floor.

After the above all that needed to be done was to take out the 24 outer central core columns and the building would come rolling down. Cutting these 24 columns would also cause the perimeter wall to be pulled inward (bowed inward) at the start of the collapse and would also pull down much of the remaining smaller 21 internal core columns through pulling on them with the interconnecting beams, until the columns got strong enough to resist the pulling and the connections broke first. This would account for the lower internal core columns still standing after most of the collapse had passed. I am still working on just how the remnants of the inner core, which was still standing for a few seconds, came down.

I believe explosives would have been used on these 24 outer core column welds every third floor everywhere but at the initiation site floors. The use of explosives would be for reliability to keep the collapse moving after it was started via thermate.

I have recently looked into just how much explosive would be needed to take down these 24 outer core columns, every three floors at their welds, and it is in the 2,000 to 4,000 lb. range.

The core columns were welded every 36 feet which would certainly make them easily transportable. That is probably one of the reasons they were made 36 feet long to begin with, to facilitate transportation to the site during the construction of the buildings. If you look at photos of the rubble you will see some longer lengths but these are probably inner core columns which would not have been attacked and were pulled down by the outer core columns.

I am thinking about writing a short paper for the Journal of 911 Studies, outlining this demolition scenario, to give people an idea of how the demolitions could have been done which matches observation, and to refute the notions of large amounts of explosive being needed to cause the dust clouds. Do you think it is needed? I am not the only one who proposes this scenario. Gordon Ross, another mechanical engineer who has written on this, believes it was done along similar lines.