Curve V.

This is coolbert:

Conclusion.

Curve - - WTC!

Excerpts and comments continue from the book: "Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee.

My observations and comments most germane to the tenth anniversary of WTC and 9/11?

John McPhee and Ted Taylor making a visit to the World Trade Center, NYC, just after the buildings opened for business. At the time those two structures were the two tallest buildings in the world. Impressive and to become very iconic. So much so that the twin towers became THE targets of terrorists hoping to TOPPLE the buildings!!

"Driving down from Peekskill . . . we found ourselves on Manhattan's West side Highway just at sunset and the beginning of dusk. There ahead of us several miles, and seeming to rise right out the road, were the two towers of the World Trade Center"

McPhee and Ted Taylor touring the outside of towers first, then ascending to the fortieth floor - - the entire discussion dealing with what the results would be from the field expedient atomic device exploded either outside or inside of the structures!

"A low-yield bomb exploded inside one of the World Trade Center towers could bring it down. The same bomb, if exploded outside, would behave erratically."

"'The rule of thumb for a nuclear explosion is that it can vaporize its yield in mass' . . . 'This building [World Trade Center] is about thirteen hundred feet high by  two hundred by two hundred. . . . Any explosion inside with a yield of say a kiloton would vaporize everything for a few tens of feet. Every thing would be destroyed out to and including the wall . . . It [World Trade Center] would fall, I guess in the direction in which the bomb was off-centered.'"

"Just to make a crude bomb with an unpredictable yield - - but with a better than even chance of knocking this building [World Trade Center] down - - all that is need is about a dozen kilos of plutonium-oxide power, high explosive and few things that anyone could buy in a hardware store."

"If you explode a bomb down there [the space between the two World Trade Center buildings], you could conceivably wind up with the World Trade Center's two buildings leaning against one another and still standing"

"there's no question at all that if some one were to place a half-kiloton bomb on the front steps . . . the building [World Trade Center] would fall into the river."

"the total weight of the bomb would come to down to two hundred pounds. The yield would drop from a kiloton to about half a kiloton, he guessed. A tenth of a kiloton, however, would be enough to bring down the World Trade Center."

"'you could just boil away the water, get plutonium-nitrate crystals and make a bomb out of the crystals. It would be much of a bomb - - only a tenth of a kiloton, say - - but that enough to knock down the World Trade Center.'"

"Try to see what is the simpleminded way to make something that could knock over the World Trade Center"

"Musing once over a little sliver of metallic U-235 about he size of a stick of chewing gum, Ted Taylor remarked, 'if ten percent of this were fissioned, it would be enough to knock down the World Trade Center.'"

Recall as I have said many times before, this was all in the period 1973/1974! Iconic landmarks of America, NYC, and emblematic of the American way of life so hated by the jihadists of Al Qaeda!

To what extent if any were bin Laden and his cohorts aware of "Curve" and the tempting targets that the WTC complex presented I cannot say! The analysis of Ted Taylor did inspire some jihadist associated with Al Qaeda to conceive of the overall plan as executed on 9/11? Again I cannot say!

Atomics were NOT and ARE NOT available to Al Qaeda or we would have seen a use already?

John McPhee too has had serious concerns that his book in some way, however minuscule, did influence the planners of the attacks on the WTC? I wonder!

coolbert.