r/NoStupidQuestions • u/JMRooDukes808 • 6d ago

Do you think the 9/11 hijackers knew that the WTC buildings would collapse?

I really don’t know where else to ask this. There is obviously an overload of information about the event itself online, but one thing I can’t find out is if the hijackers intended to, or knew that the WTC buildings would collapse. Do you think they just planned on the impact and fires to be the extent of the damage caused? As far as I know, no steel structure buildings in history had collapsed from fire at that point, so it makes me wonder if they actually “succeeded” in their plan more than they intended.

Edit: no conspiracies please, that was not the point of my post

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u/bouncypinata 6d ago

Imagine the damage if it toppled sideways rather than falling within itself.

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u/Hoppie1064 6d ago

I've heard it said, that if the planes had hit in the lower floors, that might have happened.

I've also heard that the only people who got out of the towers were on floors below where the planes crashed.

A lower floor strike would have killed a lot more people either way.

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u/SOTG_Duncan_Idaho 6d ago

The towers, like all megastructures, are carefully designed to fail as gracefully as possible. Specifically because it is entirely unacceptable for a high rise to topple.

Doesn't mean it can't happen and there are limits to what they can do, but they do a lot of work to ensure that if the structure is going to fail, it's not going to topple.

This is one reason all the bullshit conspiracy theories about how the collapse was a controlled demolition are bullshit. The engineers who built those towers did not build them to withstand what happened to them, but they did a good job making sure that even worse would not happen. The structure performed exactly as you want them too if collapse is inevitable. That is, they collapsed on their own footprint.

It's like when someone cuts down a tree. You cut a notch so that when the structure of the tree fails, it fails the way you want it to. Except, it's a lot more complicated with a 100 story building.

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u/FuegoHernandez 5d ago

I think it’s amazing they stood for as long as they did. Engineers build a hell of a structure to withstand the initial impact of a commercial airliner slamming into it at 500 mph FULL of fuel. I think people forget these planes were east to west coast flights that were carrying a shit load of jet fuel.