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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33998 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Nerds were the first to have access to online conspiracy content.

Almost tautological because of "online".

Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams!

The Jet A open air burn temperature is 1,030 °C, considerably less than the melting point of even lower melting point steels. Alas, sneering at the actual TRUE things conspiracy theorists find is pretty typical for deboonkers, and demonstrates they are merely accepting authority rather than thinking.

Muh Magic Bullet!

That's a lot older than online conspiracy theories.

I want the old America back where children were born without marriage, didn't try to change their gender, and got all the vaccines their pediatrician recommended.

There were a lot fewer recommended vaccines.

As a pedantic private pilot, Jet-A burns between 900 and 1500 degrees Celsius depending on the ratio of fuel to oxygen.

As an amateur blacksmith, mild structural steel (ie the sort I-beams are made of) may not be a liquid at 1100 degrees Celsius, but it is very "bendy".

The Jet A open air burn temperature is 1,030 °C, considerably less than the melting point of even lower melting point steels.

I am not an expert on 9/11, but isn't the idea actually that the fire weakened the steel causing it to collapse under the weight of the tower, not that the steel melted?

The NIST-accepted theory is that the fire caused the floor trusses (not beams) to lose stiffness, sag, and pull the outer columns inward, which initiated the collapse. Loss of stiffness and strength due to the fire was a cause, but not the proximate cause, of the collapse -- the buckling of the columns was.

@VoxelVexillologist I suspect the Loose Change video was what conspiracy theorists refer to as “well poisoning”. It only brings up issues that are easily debunked with ten minutes of research, or ones that are absolutely loony like directed energy weapons.

Also unfortunately even the ones investigating in good faith often tend to focus on the flashy improbable things and often miss the more plausible and often quite damning details.

Well I mean what about building 7 though?

Yes, but notice that the easily quotable catchphrase that Loose Change coined, “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams” works to take your focus off building 7, and put it onto buildings 1 and 2 where there is at least a plausible argument that the building collapses were caused by the plane strikes.

It burned down because it was on fire.

It’s the only steel framed skyscraper in history to do that. Grenfell tower was burned to a charred husk and didn’t collapse.

Grenfell tower

A much smaller concrete building.

The air India 787 that crashed into a building two weeks ago didn't manage to flatten the building it crashed into. 787s are almost twice as heavy and carry way more fuel. Yet two 757 manages to take out three gigantic steel buildings in NYC while a 787 couldn't take out an Indian school.

The air india jet was, as the pilot kids say, low energy. And it is easier to topple a tall thin building than a short stocky one.

Alas, sneering at the actual TRUE things conspiracy theorists

It's true but irrelevant.

The Jet A open air burn temperature is 1,030 °C, considerably less than the melting point of even lower melting point steels.

True, but the theory isn't that the beams melted, it's that they weakened due to the temperature. Structural steel loses half its room-temperature strength at 500 °C, and the chart I can find doesn't go much past that. Structural factors of safety are high, but not that high, and it's unsurprising IMO that they'd fail at "extended structural fire" temperatures, which is why we mandate automatic sprinklers in such buildings these days.

True, but the theory isn't that the beams melted, it's that they weakened due to the temperature.

That's not quite true either, though. In fact, one of the reasons the conspiracy theory is wrong is there weren't any steel beams to begin with. The NIST theory is the floor trusses on the damaged floors lost stiffness (not strength), sagged, pulled the (remaining) structural columns inward, and the cascade started from that.

Conspiracists who can see past the “controlled demolition” of 1 and 2 to the truth of the floor truss narrative nevertheless tend to get one-shotted by talk of building 7. They don’t know NIST also has a report on why that building collapsed.

https://www.nist.gov/publications/final-report-collapse-world-trade-center-building-7-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0

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