I just found proof that prisonplanet is run by idiots.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/281104unmistakablecharges.htm
That's fucking brilliant that is.
Now this is supposed to show "squibs" (apparently a technical term), what you do see are a few puffs of debris (presumably) in the top right and front center of the film.
Now i am far from a demolitions expert, however i have taken part in dems training and blown up a selection of house hold goods using standard army kit including shaped charges. I also know the basics of how you demolish a building and since it's a hell of a lot cheaper (and safer) than letting us near real explosives we spent a lot of time on planning excersises.
1) The debris appear in two places on that film, the frontcenter of the building and the right edge (where it's easier to see due to the skyline). The front center of the building is the interesting one, mainly because what it looks like is a shockwave propigating upwards smashing the windows out rather than any explosions.
2) The "explosions" are going off on every floor, why? If you take a Jenga set and hit it at the bottom with a hammer it will fall without you hitting it at the same time at every point. While you might detonate it at several points to aid in pancaking there is no point to setting it at every level. None at all, all it does is increase the complexity.
An example of how to blow up a building:
http://mirror-au-wa1.gallery.hd.org...s-before-explosion-original-rotated-5-DHD.jpg
Points to note, three layers of explosives, 1300 individual charges, if you're planning to blow a building on every single floor then you're talking about so much demolitions that it would be impossible to hide, and take a battalion of military engineers to rig it in anything less than a day. It would also be impossible to conceal, not difficult but impossible. However there are windows on all these floors, could it be that that famously flexible stuff used for windows be shattering as the outer facade starts to deform?
3) The blasts are too small. I've seen a (little) cutting charge go off, the blast is a hell of a lot bigger than that appears to be. In a confined space the blast would be even more impressive.
4) The right side shockwave propigates faster than the front center one does. If you're blowing a building you'd have the ringmain on the same floor, not vertically, you can't have individual electronic detonators for each charge, you just can't. Also the blasts would have to be near simultaneous (shockwave propigates @ 6.8 kps in detcord) on each floor, this isn't the case in the video. As the debris appears at the top right corner before it reaches even near the top of the front.
5) Why the right rear corner and not the front right one? Why the front center? It's not logical, if there were no support members to cut then there wouldn't be any charges there, however if there was support members then why aren't there on the other corner we can see?
In short: Prison plannet don't know what the hell they are on about.
The video supports the idea that the building collapsed, the debris you see being glass and possibly other bits of the facade breaking off as the frame deforms. The pattern also supports it, one edge fails before another, as it would with progressive failure of the supports from one side to the other, and the rate and irregularity of propigation looks about right. Of course it could all have been done by setting the dems below the camera's viewpoint, but to say it gives
any support to the idea that the building was pulled can only be based upon a lack of thought and research.