What happened to Ted?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Ecthy
What about Mr A's passport then?

Everything was destroyed - the planes, the people, the buildings, but not the passport. Occam's razor suggests that it could not have survived.

[Lorizael]

Occam's razor never really suggests that things cannot happen.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Occam's razor never really suggests that things cannot happen.

Just fewer of them.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Occam's razor never really suggests that things cannot happen.

True, we need another tool than the Razor to investigate this mystery. Common Sense might fit the bill.

Common Sense would seem to indicate that the passport could not have survived.

Yes, I think that works.

[Lorizael]

I still think could and can are too strong here. Other objects, from both the towers and the planes, survived; there was no anti-matter involved. So it is possible, however unlikely, that the passport could have survived on its own too.

[Ecthy]

The official version of the story surely doesn't involve Mr Atta's passport being found in the ruins of WTC?

It was an inland flight, he wouldn't have needed it to get aboard the plane?

[Japher]

unless it was his only form of identification

[Ecthy]

Maybe he had big self-esteem and many ways of self-identification... wait!

[Japher]

maybe had some sort of psychological problem that made him need to carry around multiple forms of identification!

[Kuciwalker]

I thought they used driver's licenses (from Virginia) to get on the planes.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Everything was destroyed - the planes, the people, the buildings, but not the passport. Occam's razor suggests that it could not have survived.

Far from everything was destroyed. Intact parts of legs, significant chunks of bodies, some documents from offices on the floors of impact zones (though most which would have survived subsequently were damaged by debris, water, secondary fires, etc., but thousands of pages survived from those floors, and possibly hundreds of thousands from other floors) survived. Due to the nature of these crashes, far less survived, but there is often a surprising number of that survive plane crashes, because those things are blown out of the plane in the initial impact and/or shockwaves at the leading edge of explosions.

Hell, DNA from several of the hijackers survived, and was subsequently identified. As for Asshola's passport, he was in the cockpit - whether the passport was there with him, or in one of the first class seats (IIRC, they were in rows at the rear of first class and moved forward when they took over the plane), it was well forward of the wings and center of gravity of the aircraft, where the fuel was. Whether those items were blown out on initial impact, or in the debris field on the other side can't be known, but either is possible.

Random debris like that could be blown through windows popping out when the fuselage structure is impacted, or through ruptures in the fuselage skin, etc. - all that's needed for something to survive is that it doesn't pass through fire, or get shredded by high velocity debris. That could happen by shielding by another object, or the convenient sort of frisbee/kite/paper airplane attributes of something like a passport or letter.

Thousands of mundane objects survived in various conditions, and some large pieces of aircraft and body parts, but nobody focuses on that - the focus is on the one truly interesting item among those thousands.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ecthy
The official version of the story surely doesn't involve Mr Atta's passport being found in the ruins of WTC?

It was an inland flight, he wouldn't have needed it to get aboard the plane?

He was a non-resident foreigner, required by law to keep his passport and valid visa plus I-94 with him at all times, just like the other 18 *******s and any other non-resident foreigner who is either from a country with a visa requirement to enter the US, or has a special visa status requiring a visa (i.e. foreign students, temporary workers, employees of foreign business or government entities, or their dependents, etc.)

BTW, IIRC, it wasn't found in the main debris fields from the collapses of the two towers, but generally around one of the smaller WTC buildings which was heavily peppered by both aircraft and building debris. A lot of paper flew around and was caught on thermals from the fire.

[Winston]

Re: What happened to Ted?

I think what happened is someone dropped him in the maternity ward.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Back in the old days...

I would probably have banned at least half a dozen people in this thread.

[Winston]

That's because you're such a sensitive human being.