alternatehistory.com

(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
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