Watched most of the show. It still seems completely surreal to me having watched it that eventful day and seen programmes like last night year after year. They should continue to show these programmes to help people remember how tragic it was. Like the holocaust, WW, 07/07, etc. These events define history and should be retold. Its just very saddening that individuals or members of groups would want to inflict so much damage and loss of human life.

What chills me to the bone when I see it are the jumpers. What must have they been thinking to make such a decision? Its natural for the human or any animal for that matter to preserve life yet they were willing to jump to their deaths (from one of the worlds tallest buildings) rather than face death by fire/smoke/building.

but the lead researcher on the team did go on TV explaining that's exactly what it proved

I had missed this, thanks. Part of the problem of thi stuff, which is brought out rather well in David Aaronovitch's "Voodoo Histories" is sorting out which of the people opining on all of this are loonies, whether they are endlessly citing other loonies ina great circle of looniness and to what extent they have made up their minds that the world is an exciting place.

To be sure, to someone who (like me) knows absolutely sod-all about thermite, it sounds odd that there is apparently thermite knocking about. But, faced with the choice between a fiendishly complicated plot by dark forces unknown, and a rather straightforward, but admittedly lucky, plot by some asshats with form in this sort of thing who have been gloating happily about their success ever since I'm running with the latter. It will take a lot more than some circumstantial evidence supoporting a wildly improbable hypothesis to alter my view on that, then we can start on JFK, the moon landings, Atlantis, the blood-line of christ, the influence of space-lizards on human evolution and all the rest of the stuff that someone made up and wrote on the internet. Just because it's the obvious explanation and it makes sense doesn't mean it's not true. 😐

I was trying not to rise to alpin's nonsense, but others have so here we go:

the WTC were designed to withstand an impact of this magnitude by an aircraft.

The design considered the possibility of a strike by a Boeing 707 with a "gross weight of 263,000 pounds and a flight speed of 180 mph as it approached an airport". The planes that struck were Boeing 767 with an estimated weight of 274,000 pounds at speeds of 470 to 590 mph.

Despite that, the towers outperformed the design by surviving the impact and standing long enough to allow tens of thousands to escape.

you'll see horizontal 'puffs' of smoke exiting the building many floors below the point where the tower is falling

Two questions: What would you expect to see if several floors collapsed internally? If you wanted to bring down a building in a controlled manner then wouldn't you place the charges near the bottom, rather than the 77th floor?

9/11 is one of those 'where were you when you heard' incidents. 102 Minutes was powerful stuff but the bit that stays with me was the bampot screaming at the camera that we should go bomb 'Finland or where-ever they come from'. The eye for an eye vitriol was astounding, if understanable.

Thanks for GrahamS there finding those details on the design spec. Clearly showing ~700% impact energy over that that it was designed for. And I personally have never heard of any other skyscraper being hit my a 747, let alone remaining standing.

mtbfix – christ that really does show the average american has no idea about the rest of the world!

i'll never forget that day – my mate phoned me at work about five minutes after i heard it on the radio that "a light aircraft had hit WTC" with the proclomation – F**king hell, we're going to war

I don't think i'll ever understand what was going through the minds of the people in the planes/in the towers/on the ground and every time i see that second plane hit (the most footage is of that) it chills me to the core.

There was a program on National Geographic the other night regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories. While i agree that the US government mabye ignored the threats and intelligence, remote controlled planes/thermite/missiles into the pentagon/controlled demolition seems a little far fetched for a country that can't even sort out its healthcare system. As with all conspiracy theories there is not one shred of evidence that they can hand over, but then if you heard the theorists you'd realise that there is no argument that they couldn't try to talk themselves out of

Every year i watch these documentary's not because i'm looking to blame anyone or out of a sick morbid curiosity, but because the way the firefighters/police/paramedics/port authority selflessly risked their lives to save lives – I would just hope that if the chips came down and i was caught up in something like that, that i could step up to the plate and be half the person that they were.

in response to SimonRalli: one paper published on t'net is not "proof" – it may be evidence, but how well would it stand to close scrutiny by an expert in the field? In the abstract, it notes the samples as: "One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later." WTF? So you are seriously proposing that four samples of "material", collected from non-controlled environs, "prove" that thermite was used in the WTC? 🙂 Oh maybe the lizard queen made them do it!

it certainly made me think about the realities of being faced with this kind of atrocity. From peoples reactions it was clear that their entire world was falling apart, few Americans will have ever believed that it was possible for them to be attacked on their own soil, no one else has done it successfully since Pearl Harbour and look at America's reaction to that.

At the end of the program i was left feeing how lucky we all are to be faced with the tiniest threat of terrorist attack as opposed to the daily threat of death and destruction faced by hundreds of thousand of people world wide. Since 2003, somewhere in the region 0f 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq, imagine (well you can't really) being faced with that on a day to day basis.

I don't believe it happened at all.
I suspect it was filmed and staged somewhere top secrete, probably in a hidden studio on the moon. If you look closely at the people at the windows waving (actors, possible alien actors) what is supposed to be flags of some sort,you can clearly see that gravity is not affecting the flags the way is should. They should flop about a bit in the breeze but the lack of gravity is causing them to look stiff like cardboard or somate.
That shows that is didn't happen. The news companies have been fed the film and forced to show it by Murdock, who coincidently owns them all anyway. He also owns all rights to films made in and around earth. Because there has been a dramatic drop in films being watched and therefore made in outer space (due to the alien writers strikes) he was able to get cheep labour and chose to film on the moon. Which he also controls. FACTCTCT.

Also trying not to rise to alpin and rallis opinions.

So instead I have a, purely rhetorical, question;

Can you imagine any evidence, beyond what is already available, that would convince you that this was NOT a conspiracy?

I ask only because (as a general principle) if you can't imagine anything that could reasonably change your mind on a subject then you should seriously consider where your opinion is coming from and why it is so unassailable.

e_t_p – very well put.

sadly attempting to demonstrate rationality to conspiracy theorists is rather tricky 😉

Indeed: "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

I would imagine they'd say 'the absence of the proof* which exists'

* space-lizard based

Indeed: "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

But you can "love them for a reason and let the reason be love"

Theres always the Dara O'Briain method;
"Get in the fookin' sack" 🙂

(That goes for you too roper .. no excuse for bringing out those teeth)

I remember that day like it was yesterday.

brother-in-law was in NYC, he had planned on going up one of the towers and was having breakfast a few steets away when it all went to shit.
we didnt hear from him until later that evening so we were getting a little worried as you can expect.

what was so supprising was the low number of people that were killed….3000 is a awful lot but amazing considering how many people worked in the WTC complex. It could easily have been in the 10's of thousands.

the world changed for the worse that day.

didn't the timing of the attacks dictate that a lot of the dead were low paid workers from ethnic minorities employed as cleaning and maintenance staff?

I may be making this up though.

8:46 and 9:03 are pretty normal office start times, not exactly targetted at any particular group.

man i remember waking up at around 3 pm(from a great dream involving alyson hannigan).then switching on the tv,and seeing a plane flying into one of the twin towers.first thing i thought was "what film is this?" then realized it was for real."oh ****" i said. 😯

ck – not suggesting it was targeted at those minorities, just that it had an effect on the figures

can't find any figures regarding that but these are some quite interesting statistics

# Total number killed in attacks (official figure as of 9/5/02): 2,819

# Number of firefighters and paramedics killed: 343

# Number of NYPD officers: 23

# Number of Port Authority police officers: 37

# Number of WTC companies that lost people: 60

# Number of employees who died in Tower One: 1,402

# Number of employees who died in Tower Two: 614

# Number of employees lost at Cantor Fitzgerald: 658

# Number of U.S. troops killed in Operation Enduring Freedom: 22

# Number of nations whose citizens were killed in attacks: 115

# Ratio of men to women who died: 3:1

# Age of the greatest number who died: between 35 and 39

# Bodies found "intact": 289

# Body parts found: 19,858

# Number of families who got no remains: 1,717

# Estimated units of blood donated to the New York Blood Center: 36,000

# Total units of donated blood actually used: 258

# Number of people who lost a spouse or partner in the attacks: 1,609

# Estimated number of children who lost a parent: 3,051

# Percentage of Americans who knew someone hurt or killed in the attacks: 20

# FDNY retirements, January–July 2001: 274

# FDNY retirements, January–July 2002: 661

# Number of firefighters on leave for respiratory problems by January 2002: 300

# Number of funerals attended by Rudy Giuliani in 2001: 200

# Number of FDNY vehicles destroyed: 98

# Tons of debris removed from site: 1,506,124

# Days fires continued to burn after the attack: 99

# Jobs lost in New York owing to the attacks: 146,100

# Days the New York Stock Exchange was closed: 6

# Point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average when the NYSE reopened: 684.81

# Days after 9/11 that the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan: 26

# Total number of hate crimes reported to the Council on American-Islamic Relations nationwide since 9/11: 1,714

# Economic loss to New York in month following the attacks: $105 billion

# Estimated cost of cleanup: $600 million

# Total FEMA money spent on the emergency: $970 million

# Estimated amount donated to 9/11 charities: $1.4 billion

# Estimated amount of insurance paid worldwide related to 9/11: $40.2 billion

# Estimated amount of money needed to overhaul lower-Manhattan subways: $7.5 billion

# Amount of money recently granted by U.S. government to overhaul lower-Manhattan subways: $4.55 billion

# Estimated amount of money raised for funds dedicated to NYPD and FDNY families: $500 million

# Percentage of total charity money raised going to FDNY and NYPD families: 25

# Average benefit already received by each FDNY and NYPD widow: $1 million

# Percentage increase in law-school applications from 2001 to 2002: 17.9

# Percentage increase in Peace Corps applications from 2001 to 2002: 40

# Percentage increase in CIA applications from 2001 to 2002: 50

# Number of songs Clear Channel Radio considered "inappropriate" to play after 9/11: 150

# Number of mentions of 9/11 at the Oscars: 26

# Apartments in lower Manhattan eligible for asbestos cleanup: 30,000

# Number of apartments whose residents have requested cleanup and testing: 4,110

# Number of Americans who changed their 2001 holiday-travel plans from plane to train or car: 1.4 million

# Estimated number of New Yorkers suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder as a result of 9/11: 422,000

Operation Enduring Freedom……… WTF is that for a name? keeps the media/populace on your side though as it's for Freedom and an Enduring one at that.

Percentage of total charity money raised going to FDNY and NYPD families: 25
that is disgusting. charities; just another business.

Don't tell me you're now going to suggest the whole thing was a charity scam?

25% of the total charity money raised going to FDNY and NYPD families sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Note: that doesn't suggest that 75% went into some evil charity overlord's pocket.

there was some misappropriation of charity funds, not sure it was on that scale though

# Estimated amount of money raised for funds dedicated to NYPD and FDNY families: $500 million

# Percentage of total charity money raised going to FDNY and NYPD families: 25

You've taken it out of context I'm afraid Graham. This is scientific proof that the WTC was destoyed by the NYPD Benevolent Fund's administrators to ensure that they could have a performance bonus.

http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2009/01/state_sues_to_recoup_money_fro.html