An explosive puzzle?

Nuclear fusion at the WTC on

911.
postflaviana.org /explosive-puzzle-nuclear-fusion-wtc-911/
Jerry Russell
According to Occams Razor, the best explanation of any phenomenon is the simplest. In the case of the
World Trade Center towers, this criterion would certainly favor the analysis that the towers were weakened
by aircraft impacts, further weakened by fire, and ultimately fell in a gravity-driven progressive collapse.
A variety of evidence indicates that the Twin Towers were indeed struck by large commercial (or
militarized) jet aircraft, and that the wing structures of those aircraft were massive and strong enough to
slice like a knife through the exterior columns (and perhaps even some interior columns) of the buildings
leaving each tower intact, to be sure, but in a structurally precarious condition. The ensuing fires
certainly would certainly have caused some further progressive weakening of the structures. In this
situation, it seems reasonable that some interior floors might have partially or completely collapsed, or
disconnected from the exterior columns. As the unsupported height of the exterior columns increased, the
idea of a sudden buckling around the perimeter of the building doesnt seem impossible, especially if the
core columns were already weakened by fire and aircraft damage. And this is exactly what is seen in the
videos of the collapse: without any sign of explosive cutter charges going off, the exterior columns appear
to yield in a process of smooth and uniform crushing, almost as if they simply melted away.
After the collapse initiation, the videos appear to show a zone of destruction accelerating downwards at
almost free-fall speed, with the intact upper stories of the towers pounding against the stationary lower
stories in a spectacular orgy of mutual destruction, with dust and structural fragments thrown outwards in
massive volume until finally nothing can be seen except the billowing cloud moving downwards and also
hanging in the air and exploding upwards at the same time. An explanation for this phenomenon was
provided in a paper by Bazant & Zhou that was allegedly written and rushed through peer review in a
matter of days after 9/11: the amount of energy required to buckle and break the columns of the WTC
towers is quite trivial compared to the gravitational potential energy of the towers, assuming that the
appropriate leverage is applied by the dynamics of the collapse.
A more imponderable factor is the possibility of accelerated combustion during such a collapse process. As
the collapse initiated, the contents of the smoldering office fire would have been swept downwards into a
turbulent maelstrom. Could the flaming embers have been fanned to hotter temperatures by this turbulent
compressed air, and quickly ignited more flammable materials encountered at each new floor on the way
down? Any such process would be limited by the amount of air contained in the towers as the collapse
began; but if as much as 50% of this oxygen had been consumed in such an accelerated process of
combustion during the 10 seconds it took for each building to collapse, the energy released would have
been equivalent to 165 tons of TNT.[1] Such an energy source could go a long ways towards accounting
for the explosive appearance of the collapses, and for the expansion of the dust clouds.
However credible this scenario might seem, it has been challenged in virtually every detail by many
investigators well aware of the long history of false-flag operations perpetrated by governments preparing
their people for war. The evidence is overwhelming, from many lines of argument, that 9/11 was just such
a false-flag inside job; the collapse of the World Trade Center must be evaluated in light of that basic fact.
In context, the needs of the perpetrators for an operationally successful event must have taken the highest
possible precedence. For that reason alone, considering the many imponderables of the collapse process,

it seems unlikely that the perpetrators would have left the collapse of the towers to chance. A partial or
asymmetrical collapse, or non-collapse, would have been catastrophic to their plans. Thus, it seems highly
probable that the perpetrators planned some technological means to insure the outcome.
Moving along to more specific arguments: firstly, it seems unlikely that the fires in the buildings were
intense enough to have substantially weakened the structure much beyond the initial damage caused by
the aircraft impacts. A substantial portion of the fuel on board the aircraft would have flashed in the fireball
seen on impact, while any remaining fuel would have either burned off quickly, or drained to lower floors.
After the jet fuel was gone, the remaining fire would have been simply a typical office fire, as indicated by
the smoldering black smoke that was emerging from the flames. Such fires do not burn hot enough even to
significantly weaken structural steel, much less cause a collapse; and has often been pointed out, no other
modern steel-framed skyscraper has ever been destroyed by such a fire.
The collapse initiation scenario of Bazant & Zhou has been disputed by Gordon Ross, who argues that the
entire building both above and below the collapse zone should have acted like a resilient system of springs
and dampers that would have absorbed and dissipated some of the energy of impact, stopping or at least
slowing the initial collapse. Also, there is no reason why all the columns on the initiating floor should all
buckle at the same time, offering no further resistance, as postulated by Bazant & Zhou; again, in the event
that a single column failed in a buckling mode, the surrounding web of beams, columns and floors would
be subject to both elastic and inelastic deflections which would redistribute the load while absorbing kinetic
and potential energy, slowing or halting the onset of the collapse.
However plausible the accelerated combustion scenario might (or might not) be, it is very difficult to
account for such processes generating extremely high, directed and explosive pressures. The intensively
energetic nature of the collapses has been extensively documented by investigations of video footage and
other photographic records, interviews with eyewitnesses, first responders and cleanup crews, forensic
reports on the dust and debris, and analysis of seismographic recordings and infrared thermal imaging
reports. The results of these investigations, as well as the basic questions about the plausibility of the
gravity-driven collapse scenario, have led to extensive speculation as to whether the collapse of the Twin
Towers was actually caused by some sort of intentional demolition, and if so, how this could have been
accomplished.
Derrick Grimmer suggested in 2003 that the core columns could have been quietly destroyed by thermite.
He estimated that a core column could be melted by a coating of thermite of approximately 2 inches thick,
and that 11 metric tons of thermite should be more than sufficient to provide the energy needed to drive the
expansion of the pyroclastic cloud of hot gas and dust that enveloped Manhattan as a result of the collapse
of the towers, as calculated by Jim Hoffman. Grimmer suggested that this modest amount of thermite
could have been installed at the time of the towers construction, or that it could have been applied as an
insulation coating during routine maintenance.
However, in Spring 2005, an anonymous Finnish Military Expert argued that there were some aspects of
the WTC event that could not be explained by any conventional thermal or explosive technology, but could
only be explained by the use of a pure fusion device similar to what I have suggested above. The Finnish
expert cited the predominance of extremely small particles < 300 microns in size in the dust (typical of
nuclear molecular decomposition rather than any chemical process); a brown shade of color in the air;
selectively burned cars in the parking areas and other effects resembling EMP (electromagnetic pulse)
induction; superheated pools of molten steel, including core columns melted completely to a height of 65
feet; elevated tritium levels in the WTC debris; a blast wave whose onset was very soon after the first
collapse began, which apparently destroyed WTC6 (the customs building) before it was struck by falling
debris, and which ejected steel columns outwards to a distance of up to 175 meters. This Finnish expert
mentioned the thermite theory as well as the possibility that explosive cutting charges were used, and he

denied that either of these methods could account for all the effects.
Recognizing that any nuclear explosives used must have had fairly low yield and precise effects, the
Finnish Military Expert wrote:

While looking for a bomb with a small size and a strong effect, a pure hydrogen bomb was
an obvious solution. When no atomic device is needed for igniting, the size of the hydrogen
bomb gets even smaller and the yield (effect) can be set within a wide range, for example
between from 1 to 100. This succeeded in the 1980s, as well as the neutron bomb, which
kills only living things and leaves most material untouched.

A remarkable claim, yet casually asserted as if it were an indisputable matter of fact. In 2007, the Expert
published an addendum to explain his claim that such weapons exist:

With almost unlimited funds and the sharpest minds of the known scientific community, do
you believe all the universities researching this have continuously failed for some 50 years?
There are some 10 ways to ignite such a fusion ball besides the atomic bomb which is the
only way the audience is generally aware of. Half of these could be useful in weapons
applications. [.]4th generation thermonuclear weapons and directed energy.
Google(Swiss researcher) Andre Gsponer and read all his weapons-relatedmaterial you can
get.

If Gsponers work is the only source of this information, then of course the Finnish Experts 10 ways to
ignite such a fusion ball can only be viewed as highly speculative. As we have discussed above, Gsponer
never claimed to have any inside knowledge about whether the technical possibilities he discussed had
actually come to fruition. Nevertheless, the evidence and argument that the Finnish Military Expert was
presented was influential enough that in the aftermath of its publication, another sort of explosion ensued,
disrupting and ultimately fissioning the so-called 911 Truth movement.
Finnish Military Experts views won some influential support from Dr. Ed Ward (MD), who noted the many
cancers that were starting to emerge in first responders, and wrote:

The spectrum and percentages of cancer are massive. There are at least 4 classifications of
blood-cell cancers: leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkins and myeloma. There are many more
classifications of soft tissue cancers. There is brain cancer. There is breast cancer. For
most of these there are subclassifications of many different types of specific cancer in each,
so far not publicly disclosed. There are huge percentages of respiratory distress and loss of
function. Multiple reports of irregular cycles (miscarriages?). Most likely there will be
several more types of cancer to follow. In particular, responders should be checked for
thyroid cancer and function. There has been no noting of birth defects which also needs to
be done. There is one thing and only one thing that can cause all these cancers and
problems RADIATION.

Ward agreed with the view that a small pure-fusion weapon was probably responsible. However, William
Tahil, a British engineering consultant, published a book-length analysis titled Ground Zero in 2006,
answering that well-known fission technology was more likely responsible. Tahil focused on the issue of the

superheated pools of molten metal found in the debris pile. He reasoned that these long-lived underground
heat sources could only be accounted for by the meltdown of nuclear reactors, which he claimed had been
built into the basement of the WTC towers. Tahil reviewed a USGS study of the dust from the towers, and
found highly elevated and correlated levels of barium and strontium. Unfortunately, the USGS study did not
reveal whether these were the radioactive isotopes of barium and strontium. Tahil argued that the barium
and strontium in the dust must indeed have been highly radioactive fission products, and that the elevated
level of zinc must have come from a special jacket designed to enhance the deadliness of the radiation.
Another blogger going by the handle of The Anonymous Physicist attempted to debunk both Tahil and the
Finnish Expert, claiming that small, tactical-style nuclear weapons were the explosive of choice. Such
weapons would have been readily available from any major nuclear nations arsenal, and thus would not
have required exotic development such as Finnish Expert postulated, nor was there any requirement for
generational advanced planning and secrecy such as Tahils model suggested. Anonymous Physicist
was very critical of Tahils dust analysis, noting that the strontium could easily have been a component of
limestone aggregate in the concrete, and barium and zinc could be common components of white paint.
However, Anonymous Physicist acknowledged that even in his scenario, there should have been easily
detectable levels of radioactivity throughout Manhattan after 9/11, and he claimed that results to the
contrary must have been faked.
Meanwhile Steven Jones, famous for his earlier work in cold fusion, emerged in 2005 as an advocate
for the thermite hypothesis. Many 9/11 activists greeted Jones enthusiastically into the movement because
of his prominent status as a full professor at Brigham Young University. Jones initially worked together with
Dr. Jim Fetzer, another full professor who was also famous (or infamous) for his work on the JFK
assassination, to create the Scholars for 911 Truth organization and its Journal of 911 Studies, a venue
for publication of Peer Reviewed scientific papers.
Jones and Fetzer quickly came into conflict, however, as Fetzer was willing to entertain a wide variety of
theories about the causes of the WTC tower collapses, including not only the various nuclear theories, but
also Judy Woods view that exotic directed-energy technology was involved; while Jones insisted that any
such views were incompatible with the scientific method as he saw it. Fetzer, for his part, argued that
thermite and other conventional explosives couldnt possibly have accounted for all the effects seen on
9/11.
As the conflict became heated, Fetzer attempted to dismiss Jones and his allies from their positions within
the Scholars group, and in late 2006, Fetzer threatened legal action to take sole control of the groups
web sites. Jones founded an alternative group, Scholars for 911 Truth and Justice, which is said to have
attracted a majority of the membership of the original group. Fred Burks brokered a truce in the legal
battle, in which the original website became a disambiguation site with links to the alternative Scholars
homepages. Jones faction kept control of the Journal of 911 Studies.
Over time, both Fetzer and Jones have displayed Jekyll and Hyde-like behavior syndromes, appearing
very reasonable at times, and fierce or insane at other times. This has led to accusations that both Fetzer
and Jones are controlled opposition, or Lifetime Actors. One website critical of Fetzer noted that he lists
his work on the JFK assassination and 911 on his academic curriculum vitae as applied philosophical
research, and speculates:
When Dr. Fetzer meets up with his friends or old colleagues, he doesnt need to play the role of a crackpot
whose cognitive powers are in decline, leading him to fall for preposterous hypotheses whilst developing
an irresistible urge to broadcast his weird beliefs to the world. He simply tells them that his applied
philosophical research includes his role in infiltrating conspiracy theorists.
Jones, for his own part, has developed an interest in over-unity research, involving an implausible belief

that simple electronic oscillator circuits can somehow draw significant amounts of power from the quantum
foam, or some other unknown and mysterious source. Much earlier, Jones top-notch research on muoncatalyzed cold fusion took place against a background of his far less credible research findings that Jesus
visited America.
The net effect of Fetzer and Jones antics, however, has been to convey the impression that even the bestqualified 9/11 conspiracy researchers can safely be dismissed as nut-cases while at the same time
consistently drawing attention away from the possibility that a pure fusion weapon was used.
As incredible as it may seem from a viewpoint limited to technology in the public domain, pure fusion is the
only explanation thats fully compatible with the data that has been released from credible and/or official
sources. Fetzer and others in the conventional nuclear explosives camp are forced to ignore or deny the
data indicating very low or negligible levels of residual radioactivity in the debris, dating from as early as
those measurements were taken; while Jones and his followers are forced to obfuscate or evade the many
lines of evidence pointing towards nuclear effects, including the evidence of extraordinarily high
temperature reactions, the dustification of so much of the debris, and the pattern of radiation-induced
cancers in first responders.

[1] Given an air density of 1.22 kg per cubic meter, and an estimated volume of air 1.5e6 cubic meters per
tower, the mass of air in each tower would be 1.9e6 kg. With a stoichiometric ratio of 15 kg of air for each
1 kg of fuel, we could burn 138 tons of fuel with the air in each building. If the energy available in the
contents is 10 gigajoules/ton, we would obtain 1380 gigajoules of energy, or 380,000 kwh (equivalent to
330 tons of TNT.) This is an approximate upper limit on the energy that could have been released by
accelerated combustion, but the real figure is probably much lower: stoichiometric combustion is an ideal
that can only be approached in highly controlled conditions. A more reasonable estimate might be in the
range of 20% to 50% of this upper bound.

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