Steve Alten: Back Pimping the Troof

Despite the failure of his 2008 novel, the unreadable thriller, Shell Game, novelist Steve Alten is now back trying to promote another novel for the troof, called Grim Reaper: End of Days.

A bit of it was posted over at 911 flogger, and it appears as cheesy and poorly researched as before:

Unnerved, Patrick Shepard turns away, staring coldly out the driver's side backseat window. Somewhere in the distance is FDR Drive, beyond that the East River. There is only darkness out there, save for two towering infernos -- the Manhattan Bridge to the north, the Brooklyn Bridge to the south. The two expanses had been destroyed seventeen hours earlier, yet the incendiary thermite used in the blasts still burns, the chemical compound melting right through the steel girders-

I am always perplexed in how troofers seem to think that thermite has some sort of magical properties. Seventeen hours!? OK, I suppose that isn't much, considering they seem to think it burns for up to 6 weeks. I thought it was cool when the Mythbusters guys tried to cut a car in half with a half ton of thermite, and that only lasted a minute or so.



How much freaking thermite would you need to keep burning for 17 hours?

Homeland Security had shutdown all access to Ground Zero effectively preventing any close inspection of the debris; still, resourceful engineers managed to collect plenty of particle samples -- their analysis revealing the presence of a foreign substance that should not have been in the wreckage: Thermite. A pyrotechnic material used by the military and construction engineers to collapse steel structures, thermite generated temperatures at a super hot 4,500 degrees. Thermite also burned for extended periods of time. And it could be applied as a paint.

Nevermind that there was no such thing as "Homeland Security" in 2001, now, of course, thermite is no longer an incendiary, but a pyrotechnic material "used by the military and construction engineers to collapse steel structures". Aside from the fact that construction engineers don't normally do this, Thermite is not used in building demolition! It never has been. If it were, you can guarantee it would be in every YouTube video the troofers made.

So Steve, go back to the giant sharks.