The Twin Towers brought down by controlled demolition?

(No, not a conspiracy theory given form)

Let's say that the attacks on 9/11/2001 are slightly different in that the novice pilots don't manage to strike the buildings square like they did. Instead of striking with the nose of the plane, they each clip a building with one their wings. This releases jet fuel and an engine to start fires in each of the buildings, but not the impact that caused catastrophic loss of the fireproof coating over large parts of the structure. There is still some loss of this fireproofing on some of the beams. There is not the large amount of jet fuel available to help the fire reach the size and temperature necessary to weaken large amounts of steel to cause the collapse we see OTL, but the fire still spreads with other flammable materials in the buildings. The planes spiral off after the impact, hitting other places in the city, spreading death and destruction. Flight 175 might hit the US Post Office, for example.

As in the original attack, no one above the point of impacts survives due to the fire. The majority of the people below the impact points manage to safely evacuate the building. The NYC Fire Department manages to fight the fire with little to no fatalities on their part. (The entire state of NY averages about 10 on duty fatalities per year, so that's a distinct possibility) but has to use even more resources to fight the fires and do rescue operations over several city blocks, instead of having everything located in one city block. In the end, the death toll for the attack is in the low hundreds (200-300) and the towers are still standing at the end of the day, though the top 30 or so floors on each building are gutted.

Within the next week or so, structural engineers comb both buildings and find that some of the steel beams in both of the buildings on the upper floors have been warped due to the loss of fireproofing and the heat from the fires. At the time, they are still stable, but the engineers aren't sure if they can bear the weight of a full load. They decide to condemn the buildings as unsafe and try to determine how to repair or remove them.

Would it even be technically feasible to carry out a controlled demolition of those two buildings (and any others that may have been damaged like WTC7) in the middle of Manhattan? Would it be possible to repair them? How would this affect the American psyche?

Torqumada
 

mowque

Banned
Interesting question. Do we have the technical skills to remove them without destroying a big section of NY city? We need an expert.
 
Interesting question. Do we have the technical skills to remove them without destroying a big section of NY city? We need an expert.

Great question. Don't they normally gut a building as completely as possible before a controlled demolition?
 
That's a LOT of building to bring down. Cranes and some serious plasma torches might have to be brought in to cut enough chunks off the building to demolish the rest of it safely.
 

mowque

Banned
That's a LOT of building to bring down. Cranes and some serious plasma torches might have to be brought in to cut enough chunks off the building to demolish the rest of it safely.

Probably have to call the Army Corp of Engineers in?
 
You couldn't implode it without doing damage to a lot of the buildings around it... too densely populated... plus an implosion above NYC subway lines would be...well not something good

it would literllarly have to be taken apart beam by beam from the top down
 

Swordman

Banned
You would probably have to take off at least the top half of each building to bring the rest safely down.
We all remember that terrible day when we saw the towers collapse. Physics-wise, that's exactly what happens in a controlled building demolition.
Remmeber the damage that was caused to the other buildings in the WTC by the fall of Tower 1 and Tower 2; remember also that gigantic dust cloud that was created? That's what would happen if the full-size-ruined towers were to be imploded.
I think the best way to proceed will be to remove all of the damaged parts of T1 and T2, and then do a thorough structural analysis to see if any other parts have been compromised. Then, re-build the damaged parts of each tower floor by floor.

Mike Garrity
 
You couldn't implode it without doing damage to a lot of the buildings around it... too densely populated... plus an implosion above NYC subway lines would be...well not something good

it would literllarly have to be taken apart beam by beam from the top down

In OTL, the majority of the subway damage was done to the WTC station. See here. Only three other stations were damaged and they were back in service within a year. Depending upon how the demolition is carried out, that damage might not happen ATL, especially if they can shore up the other stations in advance of the demolition, with the exception of the WTC station. I expect it would have similar damage if they chose to implode the buildings.

Torqumada
 
What you'd probably do is something more like what gets done to the Empire State Building in David Macauley's Unbuilding; take it apart floor-by-floor in pieces. Not, as in that case, because you want to put it together again somewhere else, but because it would be a bad idea to bring down a building of that size in that densely populated an area in one go. I'm pretty sure you couldn't just take apart part of it and then rebuild it, though perhaps it would be possible.
 
I think the best way to proceed will be to remove all of the damaged parts of T1 and T2, and then do a thorough structural analysis to see if any other parts have been compromised. Then, re-build the damaged parts of each tower floor by floor.

Mike Garrity

If it's feasible I think this is absolutely the route they'd go. What better way to give the finger to the terrorists than to rebuild it as quickly as possible?
 
If it's feasible I think this is absolutely the route they'd go. What better way to give the finger to the terrorists than to rebuild it as quickly as possible?

I agree, I think in this scenario, the fire damage wouldn't be anywhere near OTL and though indeed initial engineers might condemn the buildings, I doubt that the damage would be substantial enough to warrant demolishing them, especially given the extenuating circumstances previously mentioned. True, it would be a gargantuan project, but a feasible one nonetheless.

A bigger question in my mind, is what would the "War on Terror" look like with the 9/11 attacks claiming only a few hundred lives instead of a few thousand?
 
I don't know that you can even GET a full on War on Terror going in this scenario. Certainly there will be a lot of public outcry and outrage but a few hundred dead probably doesn't get the international community behind a full invasion of Afghanistan.
 
If the planes loose their wings and crash, were would they crash? IIRC the first came flying down the lenght of Manhattan. With the speed of the impact and height and direction my guess it impacts the water between Govenour and Elis Island. Minimum of casualities

Flight 175 would crash on Manhattan with hundreds of dead.
 
Best example is to use the Deutsche Bank building. It was damaged, but not toppled, by the attacks OTL, following which it was demolished. This involved the cutting of the links between beams, and their controlled removal by crane, effectively the opposite of putting up a skyscraper. Sledgehammers were then used to take down what was left of the lower floors.

Now, if it's only the top 30-40 floors that are damaged, this could be a case of deconstruction and rebuilding, depending on whether the building is deemed to have an unfixable design floor.

EDIT: As an aside, I'm glad to see that the new WTC1 is finally getting to the point where it's part of the visible skyline.
 
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The Windsor Tower in central Madrid was partially destroyed by a fire in 2005 and then completely demolished over several months. Granted, it was only 106 metres high, but I can't see why it couldn't be done with the Twin Towers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Tower_(Madrid)

windsor.jpg



However, there are several important structural differences. The Windsor Tower had a structural core from where the floors were hanging. This allowed the engineers to start demolishing the tower from the top down while using the lower floors to support equipment. The Twin Towers, however, lacked a structural core and were instead supported by their facades. This means that structural damage to the facade, no matter how small in comparison to OTL's direct hit, would have probably been enough to topple the whole structure. I think it was an all-or-nothing affair: either the structure resisted and then there would be no need to demolish anything important, or it didn't and the whole thing would have crashed down. In the case you posit of a few beams being too damaged, it would have been trivial to build provisional support beams to retire and repair the damaged beams instead of demolishing the entire thing.
 

Hyperion

Banned
If the planes loose their wings and crash, were would they crash? IIRC the first came flying down the lenght of Manhattan. With the speed of the impact and height and direction my guess it impacts the water between Govenour and Elis Island. Minimum of casualities

Flight 175 would crash on Manhattan with hundreds of dead.

This is a key point.

More than likely, even if both planes miss the buildings except for one wing, the resto the planes will simply smash into other parts of Manhattan.

Your looking at 1,000 dead easy.
 
I did mention that in my original post. I just didn't want to do the calculations to figure out how far the planes could "fly" after the impact. :p

Torqumada
 
More than likely, even if both planes miss the buildings except for one wing, the rest of the planes will simply smash into other parts of Manhattan.

Your looking at 1,000 dead easy.

Wouldn't this also suggest widespread fires across and around the area of impact as well? So instead of a concentrated area of destruction and collapsed towers, you get a wide ellipse of fires, debris and structural damage in the area of impact.

That might well be harder for emergency services to deal with, as there'd be more injuries and dispersed areas to which they'd have to respond.
 
Wouldn't this also suggest widespread fires across and around the area of impact as well? So instead of a concentrated area of destruction and collapsed towers, you get a wide ellipse of fires, debris and structural damage in the area of impact.

That might well be harder for emergency services to deal with, as there'd be more injuries and dispersed areas to which they'd have to respond.

Again, I did mention that fact in the original post. Emergency response is my area of expertise.

Torqumada
 
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