Remembering 9/11 - 20 years on

[arknor]

The same goes for middle-aged people now who were still adults in 2001?

I was playing some battlefield game mod when it happened, everyone in chat was "americas under attack check the news"

crazy stuff, surreal to watch it happening live on the news.

I distinctly remember that Saddam Hussein was prime suspect and very few had even heard of Bin Laden prior to this.

I thought they assumed it was al quaeda straight away because they tried to blow it up with a van full of explosives before?

 

[thenewoc]

I was playing some battlefield game mod when it happened, everyone in chat was "americas under attack check the news"

crazy stuff, surreal to watch it happening live on the news.


I thought they assumed it was al quaeda straight away because they tried to blow it up with a van full of explosives before?

I don't think they had much intel to who was behind it as such judging by that BBC documentary. It seemed those high up in the intelligence services made their best guess based on the MO but I think later Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for it but they also do that a lot. Days I think after they started piecing a few more bits together like some that had fled to Saudi I think it was.

 

[ubersonic]

I remember being in college in the student union lounge and the SU president changed the SKY TV feed to news because he'd seen something on his computer about a plane accident in NYC. Everyone just stopped talking and stared at the footage of a burning tower, then a second plane flew into shot and it became obvious the first crash wasn't an accident, still gives me chills thinking about it.

 

[arknor]

I don't think they had much intel to who was behind it as such judging by that BBC documentary. It seemed those high up in the intelligence services made their best guess based on the MO but I think later Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for it but they also do that a lot. Days I think after they started piecing a few more bits together like some that had fled to Saudi I think it was.

I was probably watching skynews maybe their reporting was different.

I bet most of the old live broadcasts are on youtube even

 

[potatolord]

I had the day off and was skiving around at home, supposedly decorating the house to sell.

The wife (now ex) rang up and told me a plane had hit a building in New York. I just thought "well, bound to happen at some point", thinking it was an accident. I didn't know what really happened until I turned the telly on, to watch the news.

Kind of emphasises how communications have changed. I'd get dozens of texts etc within minutes if it happened now.

 

[ubersonic]

It also touches on flight 93 which if the story is true that it wasn't brought down by their own fighter planes is a remarkable act of selflessness and courage that those passengers and crew took to avoid greater losses.

One of the more harrowing things we later learned about that day is that the fighter jets tasked with stopping flight 93 had been taking part in a training mission when scrambled and weren't armed. They were never officially ordered to ram it but the pilots and control knew what the order to stop by any means mean for unarmed fighters. The pilots plan had they caught it was for one of them to collide with the vertical stabiliser in the tail and the other would hit the cockpit.

 

[ZG002]

I was 17 and on the way home when the first plane hit, I remember getting home and my mum was watching it on TV and moments latter it was being reported a second plane had hit (I think there was a fair bit of confusion with the reporting and it wasn't obvious it was the second tower)

I knew very little about the twin towers other than seeing them in photos of the NYC Skyline and movies.

I'd agree it warped my perception of the world (the biggest thing I'd "witnessed" upto that point on TV was the death of Diana)

Nothing has shocked me like that since and I think it had a lasting effect on how I viewed the world.

 

[thenewoc]

One of the more harrowing things we later learned about that day is that the fighter jets tasked with stopping flight 93 had been taking part in a training mission when scrambled and weren't armed. They were never officially ordered to ram it but the pilots and control knew what the order to stop by any means mean for unarmed fighters. The pilots plan had they caught it was for one of them to collide with the vertical stabiliser in the tail and the other would hit the cockpit.

That maybe why they were unsure whether they had actually taken it down themselves. They were certainly caught off guard that day considering they were on a heightened state of alert I believe. All seemed rather ill equipped for a super power not to be able to hold a reliable phone connection between the White House and AF1 and AF1 not being able to get a TV signal unless it was flying low enough over a well populated area.

 

[Josh]

Came home from school (Y10) and my mum was watching daytime TV, she never watched daytime TV.

My dad who was in the forces came home, paid it no real mind then we went out to play golf, during the round he said to me "this will have a drastic effect on the armed forces", that was about the sum of it really. He had spent a long time doing things he wouldn't speak about in NI so was typically stoic.

7/7 - I was 5 days into my first holiday away in Cyprus with the then GF (now wife), I remember a German bloke buying me a beer and just patting me on the shoulder, was a nice gesture but it didn't feel right as I felt that, yes although it was my city and my country, it didn't affect me directly, was felt kind of dumb towards it.

Shocking days.

 

[flea.rider]

a lie by there own government .. but the truth shall set you free

 

[Zeebedy]

Dont get me started on this, all those lives affected and lost for ultimately what, money!

RIP

 

[SPG]

Question is who`s money....

 

[bainbridge]

There's a good 9/11 documentary free on audible, following the FBI from the first attack in 1993, their attempts to get the CIA to share evidence when they suspected airplane attacks, the attacks themselves, and then the huge investigation afterwards. Well worth a listen.

 

[4K8KW10]

I was a kid playing something on the street in my village. Then, my aunt came and told me, I instantly felt that something very big/important happened, it was like everything could be felt in the air on the whole planet.

 

[jcr]

still waiting for a credible explanation for building 7.

 

[chrismscotland]

still waiting for a credible explanation for building 7.

I almost got suspended from High School about 6 months later for doing an essay on 9/11 conspiracies, that was one of them actually!

 

[inogen]

I had just been made redundant and was essentially on the p!ss back home saying hello to family and friends I hadn't seen for a while. I was at a relatives house casually watching TV with a bit of a hangover when the 1st plane hit. I knew several people from my recent workplace that were in NY at the time and I could have been there myself. I worked in a banking consultancy to the Trade Centers were common places to go. So yeah, it was quite real for me.

I then made the mistake of visiting the US a couple of years and didn't realise it was the anniversary. It might have been the 5th. Man. It was horrific. Remembrance is one thing but as usual the US OTT was everywhere. I was glad to get home for once.

 

[4K8KW10]

The primary reason is the war for resources that the US has been starting for decades.

But that doesn't justify the thousands of innocent victims and thousands of other family members whose lives changed forever.

It is the devil's job.

 

[adam cool dude]

I was in secondary school and because we lived in a different county we had to pay for our bus so our headteacher would always wait to make sure we all got on and informed us what happened.

Didn't really take any notice of it until I got home and my dad had it on the telly. You know something was serious when you went through all 5 channels with the same thing on. I remember literally sitting down with my dad and the second plane going into the building.

It actually had a massive impact on my future as my father was 22 years in the army. As was his father in WW2 and once the whole Afghanistan thing became apparent he told me the story of the Anglo Afghan wars in the late 19th and early 20th century. I can still remember it like yesterday and he said "they will never win, the Afghans will just go hide in the mountains".

His wish to me also was to not join the army as he foresaw what was going to happen. That was quite deep for someone who had spent 22 years of his life in the army. I was 15 at the time so a lot of decisions had to be made.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

I was in primary school at the time, about year 5. From memory i hadn't heard anything in school. I had come home wanting to watch CBBC and remember seeing BBC 1 and 2 just having bbc news in the schedule indefinitely, so i went over to watch cartoon network. Found out what had happened later on in the evening.