[RD] Remembering 9-11-2001 (20 freaking years later)

[SpacemanSpiff]

TL;DR - If you want to read what we were saying, right here on CFC, as 9-11 was occurring, click through to this thread:

9-11-2001 on CFC, AS IT HAPPENED

You don't know me -- based on the fact that almost every CFCer I used to Follow have not signed on in years -- but I happened to start that thread. I want to here thank user "Alcibiaties of Athenae" (also not seen here for years) for splitting off the original thread from the 1-year anniversary posts that started to extend it, in order to "preserve this one as it was."

===============================================================
EDIT: My thread review found this additional thread, written by the same "Alcibiaties of Athenae" just mentioned, by the real person behind that name who was actually right there when & where it happened.

A-of-A's Day-Of Reports From Ground Zero
(I had linked this in my 15-year thread, but that link is no longer working. I just re-found it.)
===============================================================

My real name is Steve, and I still live and work in the Baltimore area.
I wasn't "there."
I lost no one I knew personally on that day.
I'm just a guy who was around at the time to tell an observer's story.

Back then, I was a 31-year-old father of two very young children, an office worker, and a gamer of the times... and Civ2 was my hands-down favorite (I even installed it on my PC at work to play during downtimes). Today, I'm the father of two additional pre-teen boys with my second wife, we just got our first dog (a 10-week-old, black-lab-looking, rescued female puppy), I work from home full-time since COVID-19, and gaming-wise I only have time to play the likes of Fortnite with my young sons (though I would still love to have time to get back into an extended just-one-more-turn Civ game).

2021 is the year that the oldest preteen wanted to know what actually happened on 9-11, like "for real," and he's been willing to watch some documentaries with me, including the one by the French brothers "as it happened." That one opened his eyes quite literally, and he says he didn't really get how big this was until then. I've collected 9-11 videos from various anniversaries (including from VHS from the 1st anniversary) and I try to pick "the best" to show him.

It is time for the next generation to begin to learn this history well enough to be able to pass it on themselves.


But rewinding 20 years, there was no social media yet, so when I wanted to participate in online opinion-style discussions -- and I did so quite often for a time -- I did so right here in the Off-Topic forum of CFC. I did this often enough to kind of get to know some of the other very active users I often argued with. And this site was not even 1 year old yet.

This Civ Fanatics Off-Topic forum was my Facebook and my Twitter.

While 9-11 was unfolding, I was in my cubicle. My city is/was situated between planes-as-missiles hitting to my north and to my south. I had no radio or TV in the office. Cell phones were not yet "smart" and could not take or watch videos. The internet available from my office, via my desktop PC, very quickly became clogged-up to the point where no videos would play from any news website ... in fact, most of them were 100% unreachable. YouTube also did not yet exist. I largely could not find out WTH was going on from where I was.

In fact, I am just today seeing some of the day-of 9-11-2001 coverage for the first time.

Just before my 9AM meeting, a co-worker called out that a plane had hit the twin towers. The Excite News (AP/UPI/Reuters consolidation) site only had 2 lines of text stating as much. After my 10-15 minute 9AM meeting, I returned to my cube, hit F5 (refresh), and Excite had added just one more sentence ... but the one sentence that changed my world forever: That a 2nd plane had hit the 2nd tower. Universally, that's when absolutely everyone knew this was on purpose, it was an attack, and anything could happen next.

In an effort to reach out into the world to both get more information and to share my own thoughts, I turned to my only "social media" outlet (before that was even a term). No one else had done so yet, so I created the thread linked above. Between myself, other active users of the time, moderators, and Thunderfall himself in upstate NY, we exchanged about what we knew, what we thought, what we were worried would happen next. We didn't feel an in-forum hierarchy in those moments; we were all just humans exchanging.

NOTABLY: On Page 9 of that thread, Thunderfall copy/pasted some text found in another online forum that threatened something bad would happen on 9-11, a few days before it happened. That forum no longer exists, and no one ever talks about it. No one knows who wrote it, perhaps one of the hijackers. But it happened, and the evidence is in Thunderfall's post there.


That thread was my 9-11. That's why I return here every few anniversaries to commemorate it. I feel a responsibility, as the thread-starter, to make you aware of what happened here, which gets lost in the intervening years. Today, I almost simply "bumped" my 17th anniversary post, thinking I had nothing to say -- and I probably did just rehash some previously-stated things here -- but bumping did not seem right for the 20th anniversary (maybe I'll just bump this one in the future).

The first time I could see video of what actually happened was later that afternoon, when the internet started to clear up. I have been something of a collector/viewer of 9-11-related videos ever since.

To close, in order to keep all this together, if you want to see other 9-11 anniversary threads that I know of (with my and others' thoughts & recollections of what happened at those times), here are those links:

The One-Year 9-11 Anniversary Thread

The Fifteen-Year 9-11 Anniversary Thread

The Seventeen-Year 9-11 Anniversary Thread

Always Remember / Never Forget
Spiff

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

I'll say this about the word "collapse"... it sometimes does not communicate what the speaker intends.

When humans collapse, I imagine them falling in a direction. Not able to see what was actually happening, I was on the phone with my first wife, who was home watching on TV. She suddenly started screaming. When she became intelligible again, she could only say that the first tower "collapsed."

In my head, I briefly imagined the top of a tower sliding off, but mostly I imagined a 110-story building falling to one side, not into the other tower, which would have crushed an unknown number of other buildings and killed an unknowable number of additional people.

I had to see a video of it in order to truly understand. Also, finding video anywhere of lesser-covered Tower 7 also "collapsing" and how that looked was especially difficult from a computer that day.

Personally, I would have used the word "imploded." Because what happened is essentially what it would have looked like if someone had a somehow planned destruction of these towers by implosion (which would have been a dumb idea ... but at least it communicates the correct image). But maybe that's just me. I certainly was not imagining what actually happened based on that description.

 

[r16]

moroccans provided an almost complete list of names who would do something , but not exactly sure about what . Their flight training were the subject of similar warnings which were written off as Harry the sheriff being right as much as a broken clock shows the correct time , twice everyday . Why would a guy be sprouting prophecies while he could watch some extra American p rn , in between sessions of escorts provided courtesy of (finally) certain Middle East goverments ?

 

[red_elk]

I was at work and some guy came in, said to check the news, crazy stuff is going on in America.
Internet got slow, but it worked and we could watch the videos.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was in bed when the first tower was hit. A few minutes later the phone rang, and a friend told me, "Get out of bed, turn on the TV, and tell me what's going on." She was so shocked that she couldn't process it, and as she knew I'm a news junkie, maybe I could figure it out.

Well, at first it seemed like nothing more than a tragic accident - some navigational or other failure on the plane, and that's what the CBC news anchor was cautiously saying (while stressing that there were no definite answers at the time).

I told my friend, "If this is more than an accident, they will get Peter Mansbridge (the chief news anchor) out of bed and bring him in to replace this one". (I still remember which junior anchor it was - Ben Chinn)

Not long after, Mansbridge did come into the studio, and didn't leave again for many, many hours.

I was glued to the TV that day, and trying to sift through all the speculations and questions to figure out WTF was going on.

Then the second plane hit the second tower. Clearly this was not an accident.

I saw both towers fall, clouds of dust everywhere, people running for blocks to get away from it, people crossing the bridge on foot...

There were 24 Canadians who died. I just read an article on CBC.ca about the last person to make it out before his tower collapsed. He was Canadian.

It annoys me to this day that there are still people who insist the terrorists got into the U.S. via Canada. Someone on the gaming forum I no longer belong to started pontificating that "Canada should be nuked" because of this BS he believed... four years later. The moderators there did nothing to remind him that he was trolling every Canadian member of that forum.

The people on the planes that were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador were grateful that the people there cared enough to take them in, provide beds, food, phones, access to TVs, help with childcare and medical needs, and entertainment while they were there (U.S. airspace was closed).

In retrospect, I shouldn't have watched TV so much that day. I had nightmares, and couldn't look at tall buildings without shivering. I was grateful that the tallest building in our downtown (at that time) was just 7 storeys high.

It may sound bizarre now, but people react to major acts of violence and terrorism in different ways. That was mine, even though I was thousands of miles away and in no danger whatsoever.

There's still fallout, for the families, the survivors who got out, for every Muslim person since who has been assaulted, spat on, told to "go home" even if their family has been in North America for decades, and so on.

 

[amadeus]

I was in high school at the time, far, far away from New York. I was going intermittently since I was suffering from depression (not a phase! 20 years later, back at the psychiatrist!) There was also some stuff going on at home, like I had known that my father was having an affair and was probably going to leave—only I knew that, and nobody else knew I knew since I found out by accident and no one saw me at that time. Things had already been tough as it was, to put it lightly.

Anyway, news broke while talking in my American civics class about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Someone came in the room and told us to turn on the TV. We did, and we saw the World Trade Center in New York on fire. I was stunned, I don’t know what the others in my class thought since I was always interested then in politics and liked to talk with my teachers about it. Was this an accident? How could a jet hit a big building in New York by mistake?

We were watching the building burn when out of the side of the screen came the second plane. What I’d feared had all but been confirmed: this was not an accident. I only really remember points of the day, but I do remember after that class finished I went upstairs to the computer applications class, mainly how to use MS-Word 101, and I and that teacher and the other teacher from the neighboring room huddled around an old black and white set and continued watching.

Most of the day was about the same until my fourth period English literature class, when the teacher—already an absolute bore in even the best of times—flat-out stated that the events in New York were not relevant to English literature and thus, no TV and no discussion of it. Ms., it has been twenty years, here is what I remember of your class: aside from the above, nothing.

After that, I went home and turned on my TV. The rest, I don’t quite remember, but I do remember sitting at my desk, in school, watching in confusion...

That’s all I have to say for now.

 

[Snowygerry]

[...]
Most of the day was about the same until my fourth period English literature class, when the teacher—already an absolute bore in even the best of times—flat-out stated that the events in New York were not relevant to English literature and thus, no TV and no discussion of it...

That's very a narrow interpretation of the field if I may say so, couldn't they tie it to Aldous Huxley like they do with everything else

 

[amadeus]

That's very a narrow interpretation of the field if I may say so, could't they tie it to Aldous Huxley like they do with everything else

I should say American literature in English, and not the classics either. I appreciate some, I mean I took a class on proletarian Korean literature from the 1970’s when I was in college—aside from the Bruce Cummings (nork sympathizer) the readings were all pretty good and interesting to discuss.

 

[Zardnaar]

Happened around 3am here. Arrived at work around 6:30am hadn't listened to the radio or watched TV.

"America's under attack". No TV at work that we had access to so yeah. No idea what was happening just what people were saying.

Probably saw first footage something like 13 hours later.

I remembered a conversation from 2000 with friends dad saying OBL was the most dangerous man alive just talking about world politics etc

 

[amadeus]

I remembered a conversation from 2000 with friends dad saying OBL was the most dangerous man alive just talking about world politics etc

I had a similar convo with the civics teacher, a die-hard Mondaleite who was always very affable and quick with a joke about some Republican scandal. Anyway, I said that OBL would have been the most likely candidate since groups like Abu Nidal had been dormant for a decade, PFLP and the all those other groups kinda ran out of steam. I don’t remember the exact details, but OBL seemed like the most logical suspect since we were still on the heels of the USS Cole bombing just a year earlier, and shortly before that the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

 

[Zardnaar]

I had a similar convo with the civics teacher, a die-hard Mondaleite who was always very affable and quick with a joke about some Republican scandal. Anyway, I said that OBL would have been the most likely candidate since groups like Abu Nidal had been dormant for a decade, PFLP and the all those other groups kinda ran out of steam. I don’t remember the exact details, but OBL seemed like the most logical suspect since we were still on the heels of the USS Cole bombing just a year earlier, and shortly before that the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Yeah that conversation probably took place around USS Cole time.

 

[sendos]

I was 8 at the time it happened. I had just come from overseas visiting my family in Poland 2 months ago.

I remember the news on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars ever since, the subsequent terror attacks in Europe and Bali, the attempted terror attacks in Australia, the Cronulla riots, its flow on effect on the Tampa affair and so on.

Time has certainly healed American here, but it is still important to remember 9/11.

 

[Farm Boy]

I had stayed up too late playing Warcraft 3 mods the night before. My mother woke me up in the early afternoon with a call to the house phone, carried by a roommate that woke me up to take it -- the first words I remember are "You need to wake up, we're at war." She wasn't wrong, even if smart people would care to quibble with a university educated women who just knew what would be happening next for my classmates and generation. Born in 1947, she'd seen it before. There was not a draft, however, maybe the cities of America bore it lighter. I would not speak for them in this regard. My friends bore it heavy.

Interesting tidbit - There was a plane in the sky over Peoria, Illinois(thinking of you, Rah!) that afternoon. I did not get a good look in hindsight to tell you if it was a military shuffle or Airforce 1. Planes were grounded by that point.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm going to repeat part of my 2016 post on this topic:

I watched a lot of TV back then, and got my news from a mix of CBC Newsworld and CNN. One thing I remember about CNN in the days and weeks following this was that Larry King sometimes had musicians on, and one of them was Enya. Anyone here who used to watch this show back then would have heard her song "Only Time"; it became a sort of unofficial "hymn" that was often played.

Here's a video of her appearance on his show; it was on November 8, 2001:

This song had me in tears then, and every time I've heard it since, including tonight.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

This song had me in tears then, and every time I've heard it since, including tonight.

Most of her songs have me in tears every time, or at least tug at me emotionally, ever since her CD "Watermark" became the soundtrack of my college years. I can't get enough of her voice, no matter what the piece or how often.

I even taught myself a basic version of the track "Watermark" which I play often at a piano. (If you know music, start the bass line with ascending and descending arpeggios of the F-major chord. Again, my self-figured version.)

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

There was not a draft, however, maybe the cities of America bore it lighter. I would not speak for them in this regard. My friends bore it heavy.

As an American in/from a city/suburban area, I'll speak for them ... OK, OK, just my POV...

We all bore it pretty danged heavy -- esp. since it was cities that were attacked -- but that doesn't equal "draft" for us ... so that not having a draft means what? we don't care? That's a pretty far-fetched connection I never would have made.

Maybe it's because there are enough of us who volunteer for the military -- esp. after those attacks -- that a draft was simply not necessary.
(And you should know that we would only draft if absolutely necessary because, as a culture, we hate being told that we have to do anything. We're seeing that on display right now with masks; but we also have disinformation to go along with that one.)

Also because the attack was not from a specific country. There was not automatically a government to blame and immediately take arms against ... basically just one person: OBL ... + his distributed cronies.
(Yes, I know we attacked the Taliban, but not all of Afghanistan. And then Iraq as a country, but we also knew at the time that was just "W" finishing daddy's previous incomplete "war," there were no WMDs, and we esp. know now that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.)

Also because of the nature of the attack ... while it was a rare attack on our soil, the attackers extinguished themselves in the process. So, who to fight? We weren't facing a D-Day style attack of OBL's forces charging in from the Atlantic ... that would require a quite different response.

All of America has long enjoyed 2 relevant things here:

1. This aforementioned distaste of forcing citizens to do anything potentially against their will. There'd have to be a very compelling reason ... like imminent danger to almost all Americans.
   In other words, the luxury of not having to force everyone to do something (pandemics are a different story).
   
   
2. Geography. With our only possible neighbors to the North and South (we can't be surrounded on land), and I can't see our neighbors ever attacking us, so any military-style attacks must come by air and/or sea, and we already have a pretty powerful Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force at all times.

The question of the government instituting a draft is a simple one: Is it better to cause ire by trying to force citizens into military service against an enemy we have to find first, and that enemy is so small that what we already have is probably good enough? Or is it better to let the attacks be it's own motivation for plenty more to sign up, and we just roll with that? I'd think that choice is a slam dunk.

 

[Farm Boy]

I imagined it would be similar. But man, the recruiters really sweep through. Lots and lots of boys went overseas that were exactly my age. I won a wife out of the absence of one of them. I was just thinking of the differences in them, when they came back. Less messed up than my dad's friends seemed, comparing to Vietnam, but that's why I brought up the draft.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

I was working for one of the early web analytics companies at the time. I vividly remember being in the middle of a presentation when a colleague knocked on the door and told me I had to look at what was going on. I went outside just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower on CNN. One of our gay employees immediately said it had to be Bin Laden... I had never heard of Osama at that time but later realized how sentient he was.

I also remember an odd coincidence from that day. I was supposed to be involved in a conference call with one of the senior dudes from Akamai later that afternoon... when we called to find out why he hadn't dialed in, we were told that he was on the plane that went down after passengers overwhelmed the hijackers.

 

[Lexicus]

This is a fascinating historical archive (no sarcasm)

 

[red_elk]

Two days before, Massoud (one of the leaders of Northern Alliance) was assassinated.
I remember watching it in the news and there was a strange feeling that something important is happening and it's more than just another guy killed in Afghanistan.
Still don't know whether the two events were connected.