OKC BOMBING DESCREPANCIES

Plus, they look like golden Easter eggs.

 

Who is David Shippers?

 

infowars appears to be an anti-American website pushing that the Patriot Act was designed on purpose and the attacks were somehow sanctioned by our government so they could form a police state.

Bottom line, if I'm not guilty of terrorism I would gladly let the government listen to my phone conversations if it will prevent another 911. People just don't get it.

If you have a security clearance your life is an open book to the government anyway. If you are hiding something, then you had better not apply for a clearance.

Sorry, but I'm not into treason!

 

By the way, the Patriot Act was voted in by the people you elected, the president can only ask for approval. If you don't want protection from terrorists, then vote them out next time around and the new electees can remove it.

 

I agree that there is a lot of truth to the story, but I think it goes too far in saying that we have imported lots of terrorists. The terrorists that are attacking us are not the moderate Muslims that Iraq was known for.

Afganistan, Syria and Iran are the major terrorist generators, not the soldiers of Iraq. Are there bad apples? Sure. But the majority of Iraqis are happy with their new found freedoms. The insurgents are from Syria and Iran. Primarily the corridor from Syria which is so difficult to patrol due to its terrain and size.

I think we are specifically discussing the Oklahoma City bombing case and not terrorism in general?

Do you actually believe that the US would protect Iraqis if they had any evidence that they were involved in the OKC bombing?

 

I looked at the OKC building the day after the explosion. It looked very much like the way it was described. It is difficult for people to see just where the truck was parked since it is after the fact. The sidewalk ran along the front of the building and directly below the area of the second floor children's daycare was a cutout in the sidewalk that allowed delivery trucks to pull right up to the front door.

According to McVeigh, he was going to commit suicide and ram the truck into the lobby if this cut-out had another truck in it. It didn't, but I don't know if he was telling the truth.

The bomb went off right next to the front walls, literally a few feet from it.

ANFO is not a good explosive for shattering supports. Its detonation speed is much slower than military bombs using TNT or RDX (usually aluminized). It is a good blasting agent for cratering the ground or pushing rocks due to its slower pushing power. Now, please realize that just hearing the explosion is difficult to realize the difference in speed. This is 5000 meters/second vs. 7000 meters/second.

Military bombs have high brissance, which means they have a shattering effect. A 1000 pound military bomb would have probably leveled the building and possibly the one across the street.

Anyway, back to his homemade bomb, he used about 7000 pounds of ANFO. This was calculated based on both the destruction and the amounts that were purchased. He claimed a much lower amount, but he was trying to brag on his bomb making ability. Either way, I didn't run the numbers myself, but I did see the blast and radiation pattern and it was very consistent with what I would have expected.

Look at the pictures of the buildings and you can see that most of the blast moved upwards from the truck. The huge tear in the roof that moves towards the back was just to the side of ground zero. So you can see where the truck was parked. The bomb kicked out most of the support of the building from the front causing the heavy concrete floors to collapse. The entire back half of the building was relatively untouched by the blast itself due to the very heavy debris and flooring material that shielded it from the blast.

The back of the building was also higher than the front of the building and was sort of inside a hill. Any direct blast through the building would have hit the back walls under ground level. There was not enough shock-wave to continue to travel through the heavy debris after it used up its energy disrupting the heavy floors and most of the energy was ducted upward.

It is also consistent with an ANFO shock-wave not to blow up the building across the wide street. There was damage to it (quite a bit), but there was damage for three blocks around including windows broken out of skyscrapers in the downtown area several blocks away.

The building was actually very well built and was much wider than it appeared on television.

The bomb also left the exact size of crater consistant with 7000 pounds of ANFO inside a truck.

Is that what you are asking? Does that make sense?

This building would have been somewhat difficult to demolish using standard demolition explosives and techniques; if it hadn't have been so badly damaged by the McVeigh's bomb.

Look at the pix again and see all of the flooring material. You will see that it was completely pushed up and fell by the shock-wave near ground zero and the rest of it collapsed when the front wall and supporting pillars were kicked out. Since the side walls held (expected with ANFO) they held up some of the flooring around the sides. The flooring in the back of the building was still intact. In fact, most of the survivors went out the back way. Although very badly damaged and debris strewn, some of the back of the building was unharmed at all.

The windows were sealed, so they were probably very strong glass that was tempered to prevent accidents. The combination of all of this kept them from blowing out.

Besides, if there were internal explosives, which I doubt in a federal building with all of its video cameras. They would have had to have been fired at the exact same time. Because there was only one boom as confirmed on a tape recording being made in a water-board meeting occuring directly across the street.

Although the building was cleared once during rescue operations when the Bomb Squad found the TOW missile box, there were no other explosions from the first big one on. There were many witnesses that survived in the building that testified of only one big blast.

Were there actually some explosives found inside; I cannot say for certain since I did hear the Bomb Squad leader interviewed on the radio early in the morning saying that he did disarm one bomb and his crew were disarming two others. Now, in reality, he may have simply been referring to the TOW missile he found since it was in a real box and not marked "INERT", as it should have been. You have to remember that everybody including the bomb-squad (which was located only two blocks from the blast--and thought at first that it was a blast inside their own police department) were in quite a bit of shock and didn't have any idea what caused all of this damage until they surveyed the crater and found the axial of the truck about a block away after it fell on the hood of a car. This is also consistant with an ANFO blast which would not have torn up the heavy metal of the rear axial and would have thrown it upward in the blast directed that way by the cratering of the ground.

Again, does that make sense?

 

To be more accurate, ammunition engineer with training in energetic materials (explosives/propellants), including related shock-waves and target destruction. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but that just happens to be my job.

 

Yep, you are right, it was discussed just like that. A little odd.

Actually, I went behind the building the day after the bomb and I cannot remember exactly what it did look like. It is very possible that elevator shafts helped stabilize it. They would certainly help; no doubt about that.

1/2 mile, wow.

I didn't mention this, but when the bomb squad leader testified in the Nichol's trial (down in my neck of OK) he said that the bomb-squads TRUCK broke down. They had to locate another truck before they could move it 2 blocks to the site. Then he said he went to the back of the building first and didn't realize that the front was blown off for about 20 minutes. I thought this was somewhat interesting, but possible considering that people were scrambling out the back way.

I "think" I have driven past it before it was blown, but I don't remember the front. I had to look at pictures of it before it was blown up.

I bet it rattled your windows just a wee bit. (Understatement of the year.)

 

By the way, I wasn't making fun of such a tragic loss of life. Just trying to put some levity in a sad-sad situation.

 

To be more accurate, ammunition engineer with training in energetic materials (explosives/propellants), including related shock-waves and target destruction. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but that just happens to be my job. </font>[/QUOTE]I forgot to paste this link into my last post.

http://independence.net/okc/congressbombreport.htm

Do you agree with this analysis? (I know nothing of the site. It just sounds a lot like the explanations I heard years ago.) </font>[/QUOTE]Aaron, I just got in and posted a few other posts then read yours. I have not and probably will not have time to thoroughly read it tonight, but would like to go through it in details. It appears fairly thorough, but I will have to run the data.

I do see a couple of errors in the analysis, that are NOT major errors, but do need to be mentioned. If I am not mistaken the drawing of the front of the building shows the cut-out in the pavement running all the way across the building. If I remember correctly the cutout was very small and was only near the front somewhat to the left of the doors in the center. Directly under the Day-care center.

The only reason I even bother to bring this up is that this error also appears to show a narrower sidewalk running between the building and cut-out. Also, I'm not sure, but if I remember the pre-bomb building, the cut-out went right up to the front wall where a truck could pull up and practically put its bumper agianst the wall. This is minor; however, but indeed may cause the blast to be miscalculated.

Shock-waves do decrease in a square function with distance, however, this was a "ducted" shock-wave which was a combination of the ground reflected wave and multiple other issues including the building across the street confining the shock-wave to go primarily into the Murrah and up.

This is not exctly correct. First, this was not really an Ammonium Nitrate bomb. It was an ANFO bomb. There is a big difference although Ammonium Nitrate was a key ingredient---the fuel oil changes the explosive characteristics. I've been working with military explosives lately and I really don't remember the detonation velocity (velocity of the shock-wave THROUGH the material which translates into an air-shock-wave which travels at the speed of sound). The ANFO detonation velocity is very low compared to most high-explosives. Around 5000 meters per second or so, I think. Whereas TNT, RDX or Trinitol are about 7000 meters per second. This causes a tremendous difference in something called "brisance". This is the "shattering" capability of the explosive.

ANFO is an excellent earth moving explosive because it provides a PUSHING and shoving explosion which craters the ground well and moves rock; however, on the other hand, military bombs are designed to shatter the building. ANFO will simply not powder the concrete like TNT would.

The writer also seems to miss the fact that many of the walls were brought down not by sheering load-bearing pillars, but lifting the floors in the upward blast, causing them to disconnect at the attach points and literally fall on each other. The building was not shattered by the ANFO as a lot of explosive technicians have mistakenly thought would happen.

Now, whether or not the remaining portions of the report are correct, I cannot say, those are the only areas I had time to read and they caught my eye.

The rest of the article may be fine, I just don't know, but I will tell you if I agree or not. Sadly, there is little good data outside of ordnance design where a lot of this information is well know. In fact, most non-ordnance explosive engineers (commercial blasting and explosive) describe the function of a shaped-charge incorrectly--even though the effect was used by Germany and Japan in WWII.

It is not because it is classified, it is just that the ordnance designers have much better data based on high-speed x-ray flash-cameras, etc. I'm not debating here just discussing. If I can see data on inside explosives on the OKC building, then I will surely consider it. I just haven't seen any credible yet. I do want to go over the data portion and see if I agree with it.

This might yield some insight to me. After all, I have not sat down and completely done an analysis based on construction plans, materials vs bomb size, shape, configuration and location.