9/11 conspiracy theorists and politicians should be watching Nova's Building on Ground Zero. Not only does it get a hell of a lot closer to providing a plausible explanation of the WTC collapses but also exposes an even more plausible conspiracy - that of government inaction to do anything about the lessons learned form the collapse and failure to implement improvements in building codes recommended by NIST. This includes really obvious stuff like wider stairways for escape, designing escape systems for full rather than partial evacuation so you can actually get people out before the structure exceeds its maximum fire rating, better fireproofing for steel that wont be damaged by maintenance or blown off in an explosion, and redundant critical systems.

What is driving that inaction? Well money of course, construction people, the government and others claim it would cost "millions of dollars in extra cost for each building" which is somewhat ironic when the government wrote a blank check in 2003 to invade Iraq that cost us hundreds of billions - a fraction of which would have paid for thousands of safer skyscrapers... If 9/11 had just lead to a big fire and a few hundred deaths do you think we would be in Iraq now?

Toward the end "Building on Ground Zero" focuses in on a new building in Shanghai destined to be the tallest in habited building in the world. The Chinese are proving to be anything but fruggle in that design - massively redundant structure, multiple reinforced safe havens accessible from stairs, interior and exterior elevators available for rescue to name but a few. The also mention the improvements used in the WTC 7 rebuild - far beyond code. So obviously some people get it, so why not just make all this mandatory and not leave the choice to be frugal and put lives at risk in the hands of penny pinching developers?

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