Remembering 9/11 - 20 years on

adam cool dude said:
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".
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I'm curious what does your dad think about the current situation in Afghan?
 
For those with Disney+, you will also have access to National Geographic.

I have just watched:

9/11 - The Plane That Hit The Pentagon
9/11 - Firehouse

Both documentaries are pretty harrowing to watch, and the 9/11 Firehouse is the first time I've seen footage of the 1st (North) tower impact.

Edit: sorry to hear about that @adam cool dude :(
 
chrismscotland said:
I was in High School and remember being on my way home; I got a text from my dad saying "turn on the TV when you get in"; I asked why? and he just replied "chaos in America"; a the time I think I replied with "Whats new?".
Anyway; I had just got a WAP enabled mobile (those were the days!) so I could get basic teletext style news and was just staggered; I think that was just as the second plane has hit the WTC and I just though; what kind of ATC failure is that?

I got in and my mum already had Sky News on and I think that was just as the second tower collapsed; and there seemed to be a lot of confusion about how many planes had been hijacked; car bombings in Washington D.C, etc - it was chaos.

I remember as well that buildings in London had started being evacuated at that point and there was genuine fear we were going to see something similar here (Although I now know that was unlikely given our stronger security on domestic flights)

I couldn't believe what I was seeing and was convinced World War 3 had just started but I remember the wall to wall coverage going on for days after that; its certainly going to be one of those "where were you" moments in my lifetime. I certainly will never forget the sight of people jumping from the two towers.

I iniitally bought into some of the conspiracy theories (I was only about 14-15) but not now; its pretty clear that as a collective the US intelligence community had enough information to potentially disrupt the attack but was run as competing agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc) rather than a more collegiate effective group of agencies; it was ultimately the biggest failure of US intelligence since Pearl Harbor and perhaps up until their assessment of the Taliban and Afghan Army's capabilities back in July...

I understand why 9/11 still talked about and remembered so much; it was unprecedented and thankfully never repeated on the same scale but its also nuts to think that we only just came out of Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago. Its had such a massive lingering impact on the world; the War on Terror, Arab Spring, etc; in some respect its had a bigger impact than the 2008 financial crash did.

A few folk mentioning 7/7 as well; that's also fair seared into my brain; I was at uni but was studying at home; turned on the TV just as the first "incident" had happened and London Underground, etc were reporting it as a power surge; I just knew immediately it was a terror attack and I think it was about an hour later that the Met, etc officially confirmed that.
7/7 probably caused more panic/fear in the UK; it was the first suicide attack on UK soil.
I was going in and out of Edinburgh for Uni every day at that point and I certainly became a bit more vigilant and cautious even though I thought it pretty unlikely here; that said even now when I'm in London for work I do tend to keep my eyes peeled, etc.

As a nation we're certainly more on edge that we were before 9/11 and 7/7.

Back to 9/11 - there's a documentary (6 parter) on National Geographic this week (and last I think) called 9/11: One Day in America - some rehashing of the usual but I hadn't seen some of the footage from the WTC before; the noise of people jumping and hitting the roof of one of the buildings below as the Firefighters are inside is just awful.
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I'm confused, are you American or British because it happened in the morning UK time so you remember incorrectly if your first paragraph is right...
 
Django x2 said:
I'm confused, are you American or British because it happened in the morning UK time so you remember incorrectly if your first paragraph is right...
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It happened in the morning American time. I can quite distinctively remember arriving from school and the buildings were still standing and the second plane hitting as soon as I sat down Infront of the telly.

Google says the north tower collapsed at 10:28 which equates to 15:28 which means most kids would have been coming home from school when this was all unraveling.

:Edit: after going back through the time stamps we must have come back early or maybe my memory is a little hazy as I would normally be home from school at quarter past 3 ish which would mean I would have missed the second plane and the first building collapse.
 
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Pawnless Endgame said:
For those with Disney+, you will also have access to National Geographic.

I have just watched:

9/11 - The Plane That Hit The Pentagon
9/11 - Firehouse

Both documentaries are pretty harrowing to watch, and the 9/11 Firehouse is the first time I've seen footage of the 1st (North) tower impact.

Edit: sorry to hear about that @adam cool dude :(
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It's still frightening footage seeing the size of those planes and the sheer speed they hit those towers. More so when you see the second one fly in and disappear without anything flying out the other side. I still cannot even begin to imagine what those in those floors must have felt when they saw those planes fly into those floors to their deaths. The thought of the sheer size of the planes coming towards you on those floors.

Everytime I think of it from that day even to now, it's like something you'd only see in a movie.
 
adam cool dude said:
It happened in the morning American time. I can quite distinctively remember arriving from school and the buildings were still standing and the second plane hitting as soon as I sat down Infront of the telly.

Google says the north tower collapsed at 10:28 which equates to 15:28 which means most kids would have been coming home from school when this was all unraveling.
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Oh yeah! Haha, so it did. Shows how old I am and how broken my memory is :D
 
adam cool dude said:
It happened in the morning American time. I can quite distinctively remember arriving from school and the buildings were still standing and the second plane hitting as soon as I sat down Infront of the telly.

Google says the second plane hit at 10:28 which equates to 15:28 which means most kids would have been coming home from school when this was all unraveling.
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I remember it well, just after Tuesday lunch, sunny afternoon in college programming class. We were 35 minutes into the lesson when a startling panic happened when some of the lecturers were kind of running about very alarmed. Nobody knew what was wrong but everyone was so concerned and uptight. I remember seeing some of them running past the entrance to the rooms down the corridors.

It wasn't until I got home that was when you fully knew what was happening as Sky News was covering it. It felt like something you'd only see in a movie that you couldn't believe it was actually happening. Especially after seeing the city engulfed in a cloud of white dust.
 
V F said:
It's still frightening footage seeing the size of those planes and the sheer speed they hit those towers. More so when you see the second one fly in and disappear without anything flying out the other side. I still cannot even begin to imagine what those in those floors must have felt when they saw those planes fly into those floors to their deaths. The thought of the sheer size of the planes coming towards you on those floors.

Everytime I think of it from that day even to now, it's like something you'd only see in a movie.
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In reality you wouldn't feel anything as it would just happen so quickly. I think even seeing the plane coming towards you would be just a haze. As cold as it sounds it is a far better way to go than cancer.
 
Was at work at the time and the boss suddnely hooked up the old black and white TV we had (we used it to test Amiga's and Atari's).

I'm pretty sure we caught it just before the 2nd plane hit, always remember my boss saying "This is like something out of Hollywood".
Didn't seem real at the time.
 
I remember it, I was surfing these forums on my day off and a thread popped up about it. I switched to the bbc news website and then went downstairs to put the tv on. I sat there for the next few hours, my dad came home from work and hadn't heard. He just sat with me in stunned silence.
 
adam cool dude said:
In reality you wouldn't feel anything as it would just happen so quickly. I think even seeing the plane coming towards you would be just a haze. As cold as it sounds it is a far better way to go than cancer.
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You do realise that thousands of people were later diagnosed with cancer due to being in proximity of Ground Zero when the twin towers collapsed?
 
SexyGreyFox said:
and you think that will make a difference?
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IMO there was a certain amount of covering up for political or organisational incompetence, other failings, corruption and so on which has only helped to fuel conspiracy theories around the event - similar as we see with COVID, etc. these kind of events sometimes risk exposing such things in a way those involved didn't foresee.
 
I remember it well, I worked evenings part time in an Off License so was at home in my dressing gown before work and watched it from the moment it broke on the news. Little did I know then the things I would do as a result.
3 years later I joined the Army and spent time in both Iraq and Afghan.
How has Afghan turned out? exactly as I expected and as everyone else did when "is this worth it" convo came up..
 
This may seem like a weird question, but was this forum around in 2001 and if so, are the posts from this day still accessible? I find it extremely interesting to read example of forums from that day where people were posting as events unfolded. Curious to see what was said on here.

I have a feeling there was a total refresh either in 01 or 03 and everyone had to stsrt from scratch? So perhaps the thread from then has gone.
 
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