1993 World Trade Center bombing succeeds?

Can the 1993 attack destroy the World Trade Center?

  • Yes, both towers can fall.

    Votes: 16 35.6%
  • No, not structurally possible without a 9/11 style attack.

    Votes: 29 64.4%

  • Total voters
    45
The 1993 a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower. The intent was to bring both towers down by sending the North Tower crashing into the South, it failed to do so but killed six people and injured more than a thousand.

So three questions.

1) Can a better bomb bring the one tower crashing into the other? Or is that not structurally possible?
2) How many die in said nightmare scenario?
3) How does Clinton respond?
 
The consensus seems to be that a bomb slightly closer to the support structures, and perhaps also plausibly larger, could have led to the collapse of the North Tower.

Whether the North Tower could have collapsed onto the South Tower, knocking it down, is a separate question entirely. The World Trade Center towers ended up collapsing on themselves, doing damage to buildings in their immediate footprint. I'm not sure if this would have changed in the instance of a collapse driven by a truck bomb. The South Tower could itself be badly damaged from the debris, certainly.

The casualties could be significantly greater than OTL, on account of the collapse starting below ground level. In the OTL collapse of the North Tower, the large majority of people below the impact zone were able to evacuate from the building before its collapse. In this scenario, depending on the lag time between the explosion and the collapse, many fewer people may have a chance to get out.
 

Wendigo

Banned
If the 1993 bombing succeeded how many deaths would there have been?

How many people were in either Tower at any one point in time?
 

Cook

Banned
The World Trade Centre structural support consisted of 14 inch (360mm) wide steel columns, spaced 3 feet (~1m) apart along each external face of the building; 59 on each of the 208ft (63m) long external walls. 232 columns in total around the perimeter of the building. All of the building’s dynamic wind loads were taken by these columns.

In addition, there were was a central box core 135ft x 85ft (41m x 26m) containing the building services and an additional 47 steel columns. It was these columns that supported the bulk of the building’s vertical loads. Even if enough supports had been removed to make the building collapse, the direction of that collapse would still have been vertically downward through the core of the building; in other words, the building was never going to topple over regardless of how big the terrorist bomb was. We saw that with the September 11 attack; when the columns yielded, the building collapsed vertically inwards on itself.

The columns were cross braced, forming four boxes, each box incorporating one external corner and part of the core, with considerable overlap; removing the supports under one of these boxes would have resulted in the loads being distributed across the remaining supporting columns.

There’s another point working against the terrorists: steel columns are not particularly vulnerable to blast. Here’s a photo of the result of the 1993 bombing:

wtc-site.jpg


What you can see is that, although the support points where the reinforced concrete floors connected to the columns gave way, the columns themselves are virtually untouched.

When the buildings were hit in 2001, even with massive amounts of structural damage and large numbers of columns destroyed, the building continued to stand for nearly an hour until enough of the remaining columns began to yield in the heat, at which point the building collapsed.

So summing up: no, they were not going to bring down a tower. Not without multiple bombs, strategically spaced around the building’s basement at critical structural points, and even then the building would have collapsed vertically, not topple over.
 
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Even if enough supports had been removed to make the building collapse, the direction of that collapse would still have been vertically downward through the core of the building; in other words, the building was never going to topple over...

Correct. What most people don't understand is that the weight-to-strength-of-material ratio of a large building is enormously greater than any object in normal human experience. The fabric of the building has enough vertical compressive strength to hold up the load, when completely distributed across the base. But laterally, the ratio is more like wet sand. The lateral bomds aren't strong enough for one side to pull the other over; the unsupported side just goes straight down.

And even vertically, the fabric is (by design) close to maximum load as distributed.

A toppling object falls over by pivoting against the supporting surface on a corner edge of the object. That means the corner edge has to bear the weight without collapsing. Which in a modern high-rise building, it can't; it just collapses. (Stone towers are different, e,g, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which has rotated as a unit. But solid stone is very strong.)
 
The 1993 a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower. The intent was to bring both towers down by sending the North Tower crashing into the South, it failed to do so but killed six people and injured more than a thousand.

So three questions.

1) Can a better bomb bring the one tower crashing into the other? Or is that not structurally possible?
2) How many die in said nightmare scenario?
3) How does Clinton respond?
To answer your questions:
1) If the bomb is really, really, REALLY powerful, it can work. However, like it has been said before, the North Tower would collapse in a downward fashion (a.k.a. The North Tower's collapse starts underground (where the bomb was) and the weight of the building does the rest... Imagine 9/11 WTC1 Collapse occuring at base if you can't picture it.). The South Tower would be badly damaged but would survive the attack.
2) Because having an accurate number is far-fetched, let's estimate by using the facts available to us: considering the number of people inside the tower at the given time (12:17 a.k.a. 17 minutes past Noon), I predict a number of victims to be between 1,500-4,000 dead and 2,000-3,500 injured
3) I think he would respond like Bush responded after 9/11 (Research Bin Laden at all cost and send troops to the country the USA believe he is (Thanks to RLBH: The US would send troops in Sudan to find him))
 
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3) I think he would respond like Bush responded after 9/11 (Research Bin Laden at all cost and send troops to the country the USA believe he is: If someone know where he was in 1993, that would help me deciding where the US would send its army to)
At the time, he was based in Sudan, apparently with a house in a well-off district of Khartoum and a retreat in the city of Soba on the Blue Nile. As well as occasional terrorism, he seems to have had a road-building firm and acted as the local agent for a British aerial surveying company.
 
I think any damage to the South Tower would be catastrophic and it would be require to demolish it.
I am not an expert, so I need a confirmation on this.

At the time, he was based in Sudan, apparently with a house in a well-off district of Khartoum and a retreat in the city of Soba on the Blue Nile. As well as occasional terrorism, he seems to have had a road-building firm and acted as the local agent for a British aerial surveying company.
Thanks! I'll edit my previous post.
 
If the towers do fall,then what happens next? Does Sudan hand him over to the US? If not we would likely see a US led invasion of Sudan. Would that go better than the War in Afghanistan?
 
If the towers do fall,then what happens next? Does Sudan hand him over to the US? If not we would likely see a US led invasion of Sudan. Would that go better than the War in Afghanistan?
Given that the Sudanese government kicked him out in 1995 for planning to assassinate the President of Egypt, I think we can assume they'll at least give the Americans fuel and directions on their way to arrest him themselves.
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
The 1993 a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower. The intent was to bring both towers down by sending the North Tower crashing into the South, it failed to do so but killed six people and injured more than a thousand.

So three questions.

1) Can a better bomb bring the one tower crashing into the other? Or is that not structurally possible?
2) How many die in said nightmare scenario?
3) How does Clinton respond?

Ex CIA case worker Bob Braer in "Cult of the Suicide Bomber" explains about the 1993 attack and the bombs effects in good detail.

Don't class this as gospel as I'm no structural engineer and I'm only quoting a TV show, but the engineers interviewed said the original plan would've worked if the vehicle hadn't been downsized due to a r.s.j being put over the entrance on the car park to deter drivers of large vehicles doing u-turns on the premises of the WTC. They even parked the vehicle in the right place to cause a domino effect and wipe out about 10 buildings in one go.

EMT's said if it had been successful, you're looking at around 25,000 plus casualties in the area of the collapses.

As I said, I'm only going on what was explained in "Cult of the Suicide Bomber"

As for "Knobber Clinton" , he'll do what he did when faced with Osama Bin Laden the first time, when seen by video link from a US drone carrying Hell fire missiles. ABSOLUTELY BUGGER ALL!!! and sit on his hands.
 
One of my professors at Fordham knew the Trade Center's chief engineer (who was last seen with his aides going higher into the North Tower). He told me that the engineer was convinced that if the bomb was just a bit bigger and bit better positioned...
 
As for "Knobber Clinton" , he'll do what he did when faced with Osama Bin Laden the first time, when seen by video link from a US drone carrying Hell fire missiles. ABSOLUTELY BUGGER ALL!!! and sit on his hands.
Except Hellfires were only mated to the Reapers in like '03, roughly.
 
One of my professors at Fordham knew the Trade Center's chief engineer (who was last seen with his aides going higher into the North Tower). He told me that the engineer was convinced that if the bomb was just a bit bigger and bit better positioned...

My professor says he's mates with the Queen.
 
The World Trade Centre structural support consisted of 14 inch (360mm) wide steel columns, spaced 3 feet (~1m) apart along each external face of the building; 59 on each of the 208ft (63m) long external walls. 232 columns in total around the perimeter of the building. All of the building’s dynamic wind loads were taken by these columns.

In addition, there were was a central box core 135ft x 85ft (41m x 26m) containing the building services and an additional 47 steel columns. It was these columns that supported the bulk of the building’s vertical loads. Even if enough supports had been removed to make the building collapse, the direction of that collapse would still have been vertically downward through the core of the building; in other words, the building was never going to topple over regardless of how big the terrorist bomb was. We saw that with the September 11 attack; when the columns yielded, the building collapsed vertically inwards on itself.

The columns were cross braced, forming four boxes, each box incorporating one external corner and part of the core, with considerable overlap; removing the supports under one of these boxes would have resulted in the loads being distributed across the remaining supporting columns.

There’s another point working against the terrorists: steel columns are not particularly vulnerable to blast. Here’s a photo of the result of the 1993 bombing:

wtc-site.jpg


What you can see is that, although the support points where the reinforced concrete floors connected to the columns gave way, the columns themselves are virtually untouched.

When the buildings were hit in 2001, even with massive amounts of structural damage and large numbers of columns destroyed, the building continued to stand for nearly an hour until enough of the remaining columns began to yield in the heat, at which point the building collapsed.

So summing up: no, they were not going to bring down a tower. Not without multiple bombs, strategically spaced around the building’s basement at critical structural points, and even then the building would have collapsed vertically, not topple over.
That's nice to know.
 
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