So what reappl happened with 9/11?

[Lestat]

I'm sure there have been other incidents of smaller planes crashing into buildings... But to my knowledge, this is the first time a fully fueled jumbo jet willfully crashed nose first at full speed into a skyscraper.

I'm just saying that in order for something to be "extremely unlikely" as you state, there should be something to base that opinion on. Since, it's never happened before, there is no sample size from which a claim like this can be (or should be), made. Especially, not by lay-people like us. So I'm perfectly fine with accepting it as being completely reasonable until shown otherwise. I do see your point however.

[hmkpoker]

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I'm sure there have been other incidents of smaller planes crashing into buildings... But to my knowledge, this is the first time a fully fueled jumbo jet willfully crashed nose first at full speed into a skyscraper.

I'm just saying that in order for something to be "extremely unlikely" as you state, there should be something to base that opinion on. Since, it's never happened before, there is no sample size from which a claim like this can be (or should be), made. Especially, not by lay-people like us. So I'm perfectly fine with accepting it as being completely reasonable until shown otherwise. I do see your point however.

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My reasoning for considering it as "very unlikely" has more to do with considering the difficulty involved in a planned demolition. If one were to plan the demolition of one of the towers, a great deal of planning, rigging and research would be necessary to ensure that the building collapsed into a neat little pile, and didn't collapse unevenly, resulting in the tower tipping over to one side and not demolishing completely.

Yes, I know that we don't have other examples to compare it too, it just seems astounding to me that a laborious planned demolition could be counterfeit by a simple, brutish explosion at the high end of the tower. (Does this mean that we are overpaying our demolition experts for unnecessary calculations and time when all you need to do to bring down a skyscraper completely is to just create a massive explosion somewhere in the building?)

What I can more accurately call extremely unlikely, however, is the collapse of building seven. The twin towers were the first time that a jumbo jet filled with that much explosive power crashed into a tall building, but building seven was not caused by that. It simply caught on fire as a peripheral effect of the explosions. This is not the first time that a large building was consumed by flame, but it is the first time that a building was properly demolished as a result of it.

Whether the building was brought down as a result of the fire, or whether it was brought down by a planned demolition, it is undeniable that the effect of the incident was functionally identical to that of a planned demolition; the collapse of building seven undeniably resembles that of a demolition. Unless I am mistaken, I believe this is the first case in which a fire-ravaged building ended in a complete, symmetrical collapse.

Again, I know that there are just as many, if not far more problems with the conspiracy theories surrounding the event, but it seems to me that the disaster should be at least considered something of an architectural anomaly.