The morning of 11 September 2001 hosted four planes fueled for transcontinental flight hijacked by Islamic terrorists. Two Boeing 767-200s were flown into New York's World Trade Center at local 0845 hrs (north tower) and 0905 hrs (south tower), eventually collapsing both 110-story mammoth edifices and killing some 3400 civilians, plus ancillary damage. Impacts were each about 340,000 lbs at a speed of about 350 mph. This is 1.9x109 joules or 0.00045 kilotonnes nuclear equivalent. Remarkably, the impacts were small stuff compared to what followed.
TNT empirical heat of explosion is 4.5612x1012 joules/kilotonne. Atomic Energy Commission definition of a nuclear kilotonne is 4.186x1012 joules or a trillion gram-calories. Heat of combustion of common kerosene is 46.7x1012 joules/kilotonne, Energy, 2nd Ed., G. Aubrecht (Prentice-Hall, 1995).
767-200 fuel capacity is 90,770 liters of density 0.81 g/cm3 Jet A-1 aviation kerosene for a maximum range of 7612 miles. Both planes were about half-fueled, holding some 37,000 kg each with a heat of combustion exceeding 42.8 megajoules/kg or a fuel energy content of 1.6x1012 joules/plane. This is 0.38 kilotonnes nuclear equivalent/plane. If burned over 40 minutes the heat input internal to the buildings was 1.3 gigawatts.
Each laden tower massed approximately 260,000 metric tonnes and was 415 meters in height. Potential energy = mgh (average height of 207 meters) or 5.3x1011 joules. This is 0.13 Ktonnes nuclear equivalent released from each tower as it collapsed.
The total energy released in the two World Trade Center towers was onekilotonne nuclear equivalent, favorably comparing with the Hiroshima hypocenter ("Little Boy" having an estimated yield of 13 kilotonnes). Note that WTC time evolution was over some 40 minutes rather than in a second.
One hijacked plane took out a wedge of the Pentagon, awarding our potbellied military undeserved promotion opportunities. The fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field after its passengers invested the price of freedom.
DO YOU THINK IT IS OVER? Political theatre demands a second hit. The first hit was a clean punch; the second will be ignominy. Washington capons are counterattacking with words. It will never stop, never end, never cease escalating your blood and money against rumors.
Media onslaught was immediate. Calls for closure and healing oozed from talking heads as smoke billowed into Manhattan skies. We endured 24-hour bleating across 100 TV channels. President Bush the Lesser whined about the "walking through the valley of death." Not a single call for rebuilding the towers (higher than Petronas Towers!) was heard. America rallied as one and put its collective thumb up its butt.
A bully stomped into the school playground. We were shaken down for our lunch money and ran home crying. Alas, both Mom and Dad have to work full time supporting their family against the jackbooted State compassion of income redistribution. Nobody was home.
Is America nothing but little girls? Have a good cry, buy a new dress, eat some chocolate. Put makeup over black eyes. Learn to live within an abusive relationship. Seek counseling.
Somebody managed a sane assessment, http://www.fredoneverything.net/NewYork.html. This is accurate and pertinent, but it is incomplete.
Our leaders do not care if we are killed, even by the offhand tens of thousands. We the people don't mean squat to them (except on election days - and those are negotiable). They prefer intimate relations with Arabs and their money. American leaders in government and business are the Arabs (the Bush family triumphantly visiting after a minor contretemps in Kuwait to sign private oil agreements), or so they thought.
World Trade Center towers weren't merely filled with "we the people." Royalty occupied penthouse suites. There were sons and daughters of moneyed and powerful hereditary elite, high-ranking military officers, politicians and their street enforcers in those buildings. The most expensive real estate on the planet is dog meat. Terrorists destroyed property of kings and killed people who matter: the loved ones of the people who control this country and some of those people themselves.
Parade ground officers in the Pentagon met their mortalities. Billion-dollar insurance companies are into it for fat trillion-dollar liabilities. True monarchs of America are displeased and frightened. It is a good start.
Had Islam pursued the IRS, BATF, or Hyannisport the bloody swagger might have made Page 3. Detached effete elite who own and run America would have stood up and blustered, called for justice, and swept it all under the rug with a few arrests and kangaroo court trials. This isn't World War II seeking to grab IG Farben's patents with a camouflage show of social conscience. This time, THEY got hit.
These guys DO have big brass balls. They own and control the civilized world with an iron hand. Martyr-loving imbecile Islam faces a sworn enemy of unlimited power capable of wreaking inconceivable reprisal without a fleeting thought of remorse. Top management deals destruction and even death on a daily basis and sleeps soundly at night. The folks in unlisted clubs are merciless and cruel and vengeful and capable of levels of rage that crush whole nations as grist.
You challenge the elite within chivalrous ethics of conflict. You do not kill their children. You do not expunge their real estate. You do not burn their bank accounts. They are not looking for prisoners.
History is definitive. You do not attempt regicide unless you can make it stick. Islam is dead. Do the little people in elected public office have the balls to follow demands of their owners? No.
Japanese sought a death stroke against America on 07 December 1941. By mid-1945 General Curtis LeMay had burned flat every Japanese city save a handful reserved for denoument (and the temple city of Kyoto, ruled off limits). The Japanese sustained an enthusiastic appetite for conflict. Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed that. Islam is open to discussion after we gift the object of our displeasure with thermonuclear vitrification of its idolitous Ka'aba.
"Civis Romanus sum!" "I am a citizen of Rome!" was not an idle boast. Harm a single Roman citizen and lose your country to Rome's Legions. There will be honorable rules of conflict or we will crush our enemies and move on - or we will fail as men and be destroyed by our betters. Counsel that, girly men.