Many different conspiracy theories regarding the events that took place in New York City on September 11th, 2001 have come to light over the past 17 years. The fact that airplane crashes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center managed to bring those towers to collapse had certainly inspired many questions. Without access to evidence that would otherwise provide meaningful answers, conspiracy theorists have come to fill that void with their own “answers.” The outcome of this terrorist attack was certainly unusual, leading many conspiracy theorists to believe that the United States government may have actually been behind the attack that the public has been led to believe was perpetrated by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda. Many of the most popular conspiracy theories of this event point to the collapse of “Building 7,” a tower that was not directly hit by an airplane on 9/11, and yet collapsed anyway. Of all of the supposed “evidence” of an inside job, the collapse of Building 7 is viewed as being among the strongest throughout conspiracy theorist circles, particularly on the Internet.
Building 7 was a 47-story World Trade Center building that collapsed at 5:21 pm on September 11th, 2001. Unlike the two Twin Towers that had been brought down following plane crashes into them—leading to structural collapse largely as a result of the fires and debris brought forth by the impact—Building 7 simply collapsed on its own. The official account for this strange occurrence is that Building 7 was hit by some of the debris from the collisions into the other two towers. This debris had caused fires and damage to key structural columns within the building, allowed those columns to buckle and the whole building to collapse in turn. Conspiracy theorists have argued that such an account represents an unprecedented building collapse, as no other steel-frame building to exist had ever collapsed in such a way as a result of fire. Furthermore, conspiracy theorists point to widely available images of Building 7 just prior to its collapse, and claim that the fact that there is no indication of substantial damage—at least not enough to cause an outright collapse—as further “evidence” of their views on what they believe really happened to Building 7 on 9/11. As such, conspiracy theorists have promoted a very different account of what happened to Building 7 in contrast to what has been officially claimed: that it collapsed in a secret controlled demolition perpetrated by the United States government. Of course, this account has not been backed by any substantial or official evidence, and has been wholeheartedly rejected as a ridiculous and harmful conspiracy theory by government officials.
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"Analyzing the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Regarding Building 7".
Despite the lack of evidence in regards to the mainstream conspiracy theory’s account of what happened to Building 7, the conspiracy theory has persisted throughout the Internet and within American culture all the way through to the modern day. Even recent Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in Illinois, Bill Fawell, had been found to believe in the Building 7 conspiracy theory. The popularity of this theory has come to inspire independent research into the collapse of Building 7, some of which has only seen publication in more recent years. Among such publications is the report released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which had reached the conclusion that the outbreak of fires, leading to thermal expansion and the weakening of key structural members, brought Building 7 down. The researchers behind the report called it an “extraordinary” event, as the building’s ultimate collapse came as the result of an essentially perfect union of independent misfortunes. Most notably, the water supply to the automated sprinkler systems within the building had failed at the time of the fires, leaving them uncontrolled. As the fires spread, they eventually reached key infrastructural components that triggered the subsequent collapse. Despite the thorough account for the Building 7 collapse in this report and the several others to be offered by other independent organizations and the U.S. government itself, many conspiracy theorists continue to believe that the collapse of Building 7 is evidence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks having been an inside job.
The fact that the conspiracy theory surrounding Building 7 became one of the most popular of the numerous 9/11 conspiracy theories is certainly in the fact that the official account for the building’s collapse has been far-fetched. For the building to have collapsed primarily as a result of uncontrolled fires caused by plane crashes into the Twin Towers is an undoubtedly suspicious one, even among many otherwise rational human beings. As such, the theory had gone viral throughout the Internet, particularly in the early days following the terrorist attack in New York City, when little was officially known about the attack. The fact that it had taken such a great deal of time for investigations and research into Building 7’s collapse to conclude that the official account for the collapse was indeed accurate only allowed for the conspiracy theory to spread and gain further credibility in conspiracy theorist circles. It is highly likely, however, that even as these investigations—such as the one conducted by the researchers with NIST—have concluded and their findings published, the Building 7 conspiracy will live on. The idea of the U.S. government having been involved in a terrorist attack on its own citizens is perhaps simply too appealing to give up on, even as the evidence continues to pile up in favor of the event’s official account.
- http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/building-seven/
- https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a3524/4278874/
- http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42195513
- https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/736223/9-11-tower-Building-7-collapse-fire-conspiracy
- https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/25/politics/kfile-illinois-republican-nominee-illuminati/
