9/11

[DJ Jackalope]

*sigh*

I got back from hanging out in Las Vegas with Vandal about exactly 2 years ago to the hour right now, its 12:30am my time.

I remember waking up and the first thing I heard on the radio was "both the towers are gone!" and I pulled the covers over my head and was kind of afraid to come out.

It was weird going to work a few minutes later because there were no airplanes in the sky.

I remember getting on ICQ and hearing from my friends in Brooklyn who worked in Manhattan.

Anyway.
that's just what I was thinking about right now.

[KeLviN]

i remember finding out as i got ready for school.....

all i could think about was how quick i would enlist when they started drafting.

its a shame that shit like that has to happen in order for us to get in a patriotic spirit. (reguardless of politics)

this WILL be my generations version of the famous question "where were you when you found out that kennedy had been shot?"

[blackwave]

I was in my dark dark room when someone came running down the hallways yelling. I could barely hear through my blasting headphones when I took them off and looked around the monitor lit room and right as I turned towards the doors the door was practically kicked down... "blackwave! a plane just hit one of the towers in new york!!!"...
I got up and followed him to his office and he had 4 other people huddled around his rigged radio... there the news announcer kept repeating the news... I looked at everyone and said, "we have a TV in the big conference room!.... ", we all ran down the long hallways and turned it on and started blankly... realizing that it was hooked to a CCTV and the room being thickly constructed had no reception.... I unscrewed the cabling, grabbed my leatherman and told the closest person next to me to get me a few yards of wire.... he came back in a few seconds and I stripped and rigged a homebrew antenna and duct taped it to the walls of this conference room and we all stood around the glowing TV.... they kept repeating and replaying... things were getting worse fast... we then sat down around the conference table realizing we had seats... we sat there all day... America would never be the same.

[DJ Jackalope]

I saw a show on Nova the other night about the structural design of the towers.

The person I feel the worst for is the guy who did most of the designing, especially his taking into account of an airplane hitting the building while he was designing it....a much smaller airplane than what actually since the 767 (was that right?) that hit the building wasn't even designed yet....the guy did all he could. He looks so destroyed. No one should have to feel the weight that he does.

lope

[ck3k]

This marked the first big tradgic moment in my generation. I was getting ready for school, when I turned on the tv, for a second i thought it was some sort of sci fi movie, and then i realized, that this was a real event happening around me. I went to school, but every teacher had there tvs on, and the history teachers tryed to grasp how this would rewrite the very books they had made us read. I cant believe it has been two years, it feels like alot shorter time.

[Chris]

I flew out of DC on the 10th and was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on the 11th. I sleep with the TV on when I am travelling so when I woke up on the 11th the first tower was burning and the news was talking about a "small plane"hitting the tower.
I started checking my email before heading to the job site to begin work. While I was checking mail the news showed the second plane hitting the second tower.

My initial reaction was that they had video of the first plane...then I realized that now BOTH towers were on fire. Shortly after this they announced that a plane had hit the Pentagon. Since we (my wife, my daughter and I) live in the shadow of NSA the first thing I did was call my wife to make sure all was well and tell her she might not want to take Ashley to school that day (turned out to be a moot point as school was cancelled).

Then the misinformation started, a car bomb outside of the DoE building, the DC Mall (which is NOT a shopping center) on fire etc.

Turned out the facility we were supposed to work at was closed down becuase of this, so my boss and I grabbed a couple of six packs and went back to my hotel room and watch the news all day.

Both of us were very freaked when we found out where the planes had originated and that we had just flown out of DC the day before.

We then started the long process of trying to get home. Because air traffic to and from DC was restricted even longer than the rest of the country we were unable to get a flight home and had to drive from Sioux Falls to DC....24 driving hours. We left on Friday and got home late Saturday night.

I am not a very sensitive person, especially when it comes to people I don't know, but I have never felt more empathy for people than I did for those that were walking around NYC with pictures of their wife/husband/daughter/son/friend etc. I cannot think of anything that would be more of a nightmare than to have lost someone I loved that day and have to wait and wait and wait just to find out that they were gone.

[murakami]

At that time, I was commuting weekly from Texas to DC. That week, I flew in from a week long trip in Europe to DC on the 9th. I had missed my flight at Schipol, and I felt lucky to find a cheap alternate flight. I had meetings in and around the DC crash site on the 10th and 11th.

I had gone into the office early to pick up a couple of things and taking the Metro when the plane hit the crash site. I made it to my Pentagon City hotel, where some of the folks I was meeting with told me about the plane hitting DC and we ran up to the rooftop bar to see the smoke from the crash site.

We all looked out stunned, somebody said a second plane had hit the WTC, that's when we all looked at each other and headed for the stairs. I went to my room and immediately started calling car rental companies, all the cars in a 10 mile radius were already rented. After that, pretty much all the land lines and cell phone lines were overloaded. The hotel didn't have broadband so I was on dialup and Blackberry. With the blackberry I was able to ping pong messages to my family.

I remember the disbelief, schock, dismay and anger of the people I was with. I remember people coming out of their office buildings and just standing in the street. We had dinner plans that night and we went ahead with them, driving through DC and seeing all the soldiers and Humvees on the empty street. It felt like a B-movie version of the city.

I wasn't able to get a car until Thursday afternoon, which allowed me to make a meeting at a facility on Friday. Usually, there's only one guard to check my ID. That day there were eight guards in full gear (submachine guns, shotguns, gas masks, body armor). Although they knew me by name, they checked me and my car throughly for weapons and bombs. I was grateful.

After the meeting, I started my two day drive back to Texas. It was early fall and the drive through Virginia was gorgeous. I reached Texarkana around 1-2 in the morning and found a hotel to collapse in because I was strung out on caffeine and tension. I made it home that afternoon and went to the airport to drop off the rental. The airport was shutdown and there was a police road block. There was a long line of people returning cars. We stood around telling bits of our stories.

[kraa26]

When this happened I was on my way to work. I heard that tower hit one of the trade centers. I work in Denver but my company had 3 floors in Tower 2, and they are about on the same level as where the first plane hit tower 1. When I got to work, I tried to call some friends that were there. The phone lines were down. The data lines were still up and I knew that the servers were ok. We had 593 people at work at the time. I set up a web site on the internet so we can track people and put a message board out so people in the company could take. By the time the towers fell, we only had counted for 112 people. None of these were in my group. I started wondering if they had made it out.

It took 2 days to get a head count for all people in the company. Luckily.. we lost no one.

I remember a friend of mine telling me that he was looking out the window and could see people on fire, and watching them as they jumped from the broken windows to escape the heat of the fuel.

I worked from that Tuesday until Friday morning straight on getting servers rebuilt here. It was the only way I could stay focused and not lose my head over what had happened. When I did finally get home, I sat down at the table, grabed a bottle of Jager and proceeded to have 6 or 7 shots in a row without stop.

We know now as a country that even though we don't stand united when we fight each other, we stand united as a country if you mess with an American. Like brothers... I can beat my brother as much as I want... but no one else is allowed too.

[yankee]

I was in London. I really wanted to be around other Americans, but the Brits are the next best thing. I was amazed at how affected they were by the whole thing. I'll never forget the Star Spangled Banner being played at Buckingham Palace or the memorial ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral.

[Hazard Toxic]

Alls i remember is being at my cousins house just been on the weights in the loft and remember going down the stairs and seeing my aunt devastated watching the tv at the time i was to young to really understand what had happened etc etc, But now i reliase what a very bad attack this was for no apparent reason i personally think that it has to of been the most heartbraking moments for alot of people

Please pray for all the lifes what were lost on September 11th 2001 :(

[ch0l0man]

it happened on the second day of a new job.
i was getting ready when the news broke and showed the first plane hitting the towers.
i woke my gf and told her she had to look because it looked like something out of a movie, i figured it was just a horrible accident.
it wasnt until i got to work that i was told what had really happened.
i have never seen the freeways of la so bare after leaving work that day.
gf works right next to lax and she could not believe all the police that were there, her job sent her home for the day.
downtown la was a ghost town!

just thinking about it makes my anger boil!

[noid]

I woke up to a cell phone call. 'Dude, I'm not sure if I should go to work today or not", my friend said (at the time my friend worked for The Man(tm). Groggy and half asleep I said 'why the fuck wouldnt you go in? its 7something in the morning, why the hell are you calling me?'. The response I got was 'man, we're under attack someone just fucked our shit up out in New York'. I went down stairs and caught the teevee as the second tower got hit. I just kinda watched in disbelief for several hours before dragging my ass to work.

Got to work and started trying to track down the Moloch folks to make sure they were all OK and accounted for, but with phone service fucked to NY that turned out be much harder (in the end, everyone was present and accounted for). Went out to have a smoke and found the usual gaggle of middle aged secretarys out there but they were all sobbing. 'man, do you fucking believe whats happening?' I said. One of the secretaries looked at me and said, while choking back tears, 'our boss was at a meeting in the second tower when it got hit, and now he's missing' (to this day, he still is, he's one of the 1000 or whos remains were never recovered). At that point it hit me. I really couldnt focus on anything other than smoking, so I went home for the rest of the day.

That night we had our usual Tuesday 23.org get together. One of our members, Maximus was in a blind rage. Most of us couldnt even get words out, but he was able to and what he had to say pretty much summed up what was in everyones heart wether they wanted to admit it or not. At that point I got pretty mad.

To this day, I'm still mad. I'm mad my friends boss had to die because of some stupid fucking religious zealot. I'm mad at the politicians who have captialized on this for their own political gain and to further thier special intrests (I mean for fucks sake the anti-gun lobby was trying to capitalize on this, how did what happened there have ANYTHING to do with gun control?). I'm also mad that the actions of a few extremists have made the West view the middle east as nothing but a pack of filthy towelhead terrorists. I'm mad that I've had rights taken away from me because of the actions of a few individuals who weren't even Americans. I'm mad that because of their actions *I'm* now suspect, regardless of the fact that I'm a law abiding patriotic American. I'm mad because my government used this as an excuse to attack its own citizens with opressive new laws. And I'm mad because its just going to get worse.

[converge]

9/11 OT$2

-- as a fore note: I have to admit to being a heartless bastard and initially thinking this thread was pretty pointless, tired and generally overplayed. I was not going to post. I did however read others replies out of curiosity and was softened by some of them... I then realized that today was, indeed, September 11th already; so here goes:

That day was a regular work day in a job that I was growingly displeased with. The morning started as any other: gathering our bearings on what tasks were in line for the day, what other systems had freshly broken, what other administrative or faculty demands had been passed up the line. My friend and former coworker gimpstax both doing this at our respective systems. I can't remember if we had talked yet about the Godsmack concert we both had tickets to for that night in Augusta, but it is quite likely. Still fresh into the day, he spoke up and said that his friend in NH just messaged him about a plane hitting one of the trade center towers.

This both struck us as odd, but couldn't have been _that_ big of a deal, right? Planes get off course, or lose control on a regular basis. Couple that with a really fucking big tower and the risks of one eventually crashing into seem... almost normal. The one thing about that department, was we _always_ had our cheapass workshop radio playing the local rock station, 24/7. (yes, we generally did not bother to shut it off nights and weekends). The radio had not even mentioned the news blip yet, so it definitely wasn't a big deal.... We both commented on how that was a little odd, turned around, and went back to what we were doing. Within minutes, gimpstax perked back up and stated that his friend just messaged back from NH that he just watched a plane hitting one of the towers during the morning news. A second plane had hit.

After some pretty fucked up dialog, we both turned back around and started looking for any kind of word from news sites about what the hell was going on. The news just showed confusion and uncertainty. I had never been a fan of CNN at all... but I have to admit that they really stepped up to the plate that morning. As soon as anything was confirmed enough for reporting, they had their site updated with the latest. The only thing that circulated my head at the moment was "one plane is a possible mistake/accident/etc... two planes is no fucking coincidence". I don't think many people were yet able or prepared to make out what was happening. Then news hit of more planes, more flames burning from government buildings, more questions... the immediate thought running through my head was sadly not empathy for those right in the middle of this mess... at ground zero of these calculated attacks. The first thing that jumped to my mind, and I still remember it quite clearly this day- "holy shit.. we are being attacked on our own soil, the masses are still in confusion about it, apparently our government is NOT behind the ball on this one at all... we are about to go to war against an immediate threat to our country that no one is prepared to fight, against an enemy that remains unknown."

The work day had changed rapidly as many people sought any and all news sources to build their puzzle, to find answers to so many questions that had popped up. Students weren't in the learning mood, faculty weren't in the teaching mood, administrators were certainly no longer as prepared to administrate. gimpstax and I spent most of our day trying to find every, ANY, cable connection that we could hook up to projects/tv sets... an odd battle to fight considering we worked at a 'Technical College'. our supervisor had brushed the entire thing off as not that big of a deal, even at lunch time when it was THE discussion of the lunch room. He _was_ kind enough to put up with gimpstax and I insisting on getting news spots up for us and others to keep updated on.

It is difficult to remember when the empathy really hit... when the sorrow of so many deaths broke through the cloud of overwhelming event. But it did. If not immediately for some, if not later that day while watching every piece that the media was prepared to filter through, or in the day to follow... the reality of what happened broke through the fictional setting that had previously described life for several hours. The bullshit 'we are strong' attitude was so visibly fake.. our country was in shock, in pain, and generally hurting. Politicians immediately added spin that the terrorists had not won... in a sense they did. Those involved in the attack achieved exactly what they wanted from it, but the story did not and does not end there. The overusage, the molesting with, the complete commercialization of the event became a long term activity for politicians, businesses, so-called music artists, among others.. and only served to degrade the meaning of the sadness unleashed on September 11th of 2001. It is quite a relief to see others express their remembrance of the day in a very real, apolitical, unbiased recount of the events as they occurred.

As for me, I could hardly believe the one year anniversary had already reached us.. last year. I still find it hard to fathom that it has been two years; my memory places it at months ago.

I never did go to the Godsmack show that night in our state capitol. None of us did.. the show was cancelled. I don't think very many of us sought out a refund either; I still hold the ticket, a small symbol, stearnly to this day.

[renderman]

My story starts a day earlier.

I was working for a little IT shop at the time and on Monday the 10th we went onsite to Red-Deer (bout an hour and a half drive south) for a couple days of a network rebuild on live servers (fun!).

The 10th went by with us working till about 10pm. At this point we went for some food and beers in the pub at the hotel we were staying at, just across the street. A few beers into everyone and discussion turns to politics.

My boss, and another co-worker and I were sitting around chatting about all sorts of things. My boss and I never saw eye-to-eye on much. He ended up asking me why I was always so paranoid. I told him of the very plausible scenario of a modern version of George Orwells, Emmanual Goldstien character in '1984' being created as an excuse to take away everything (rights, liberty, weapons, etc). Prophetic statement number one.

The topic came up later about the proposed missle defense shield and the perceptions that it was a 'make work' project for a slowing military industrial complex. I pointed out that ballistic missles are probobly one of the hardest methods of weapons delivery; shooting at something half way around the world is'nt easy. I said that if a 'rogue nation' wanted to do more damage, they'd just have to smuggle a bomb into the states, assemble it, and park it outside the World Trade Center (Which had already been proven effective). Prophetic statement number 2.

I still feel sick when I think about saying that a mere 8 hours before 9/11.

I got up that morning in the hotel, did'nt check messaages, did'nt turn on the TV, and walked over to the client site.

Everything seemed realativly normal there, so I went to the server room to check /. and saw the headline 'World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked'. At this point I could'nt belive it and tried to check other news sites, all of which were down from the crush of visitors. Only the BBC was still up and it confirmed everything. At this point every orwellian nightmare I'd ever had came flooding back, including the nights previous statements. They expressed themselves with the immediate purge of breakfast.

My boss had his head up his ass and did'nt realize what was going on, and through out the day was cracking the whip behind us to keep working while everyone else realized the world had just changed and work was far from thier minds. It took my boss until about 2pm to stick his head up and realize why everyone was acting so strange, even then he would'nt let us try and call friends in NYC or even try and absorb it all.

He let us out for lunch and we bolted over to the pub from the night before (lots of TV's) and just sat there in stunned silence. After a few minutes a herd of local rednecks (ball cap, wife beater, pickup truck with gun rack types) came in and sat down. Within minutes there were shout's of 'kill the towel heads' and other very ignorant things when no one knew who was responsibe yet. My co-workers shaking his head at me was the only thing that kept me from trying to kill these guys for thier ignorance. My co-worker later commented that the gleam in my eye was truely one of homicide.

When the boss FINALLY let us go home I drove as fast as I possibly could making the 1.5 hour trip in 50 mnutes, in time to catch Dubya declare war on the world.

Ever since, everyone who has listened to my ranting has started beliving me alot more and does'nt dismiss me as easily.

In the most horrific way, I hate it when I'm right. It was a tragedy for humanity, but it's a bigger tragedy that it's been twisted into justification for so much wrong being done to others.

[Shatter]

As usual, I'm a little different.

I woke up on my friends couch (Derf, the DOC bartender from Defcon 8). The day before I had pack a duffle bag and drove 100 miles to a new job. This was to actually begin a new life for me.

I had to be at work by 9am for training class, and ws awake by 7:10. I flipped on teh tv, and saw the fire in tower one. I knew "this wasn't right". As I'm watching, and they're talking, plane 2 hit. This was very bad.

I picked up the phone, called the GF at teh time, told he rto get to my moms house, and stay there. Get there now before everyone else finds out what's going on.

I called my moms house, told them to stay in, load the guns, and keep an eye on the news. Things could get very bad. They asked what i was going to do, and I said "I've gota job to go to, and training to complete. I'm not letting this bull shit affect my life"

My thought went out to Nikki the Fed (Pentagon) and Ghost Writer & AbbyNrml (NYC) as well as the rest of the Moloch crew. I knew I'd hear form them when I could. All my other NY friends are in West New York.

I went to work, and one of teh sup's called everyone together and said "This is bad. Get the fuck out of here if you have family. They are more important than this job. Go deal with things." 3/4 of teh dept left or never showed up. One of the guys in my training class was from NYC, and all his family was there. He went home."

I focused on my training, did what I needed to do. I drove my car (101 was deserted) and it was weird not to see the planes, as Derf lived next to SFO.

Beyond that, I did my thing, remained aware of what was hapning in my general area, and I didn't worry. I never felt the need, and I wasn't about to let this cage my way of life. If I had, that would be like letting them win in my book.

Fuck them.

They will not make me scared. I will not worry. They do not have the ability to frighten me. The worst they could do is kill me, and another will take my place. If they destroy, we will rebuild, then we will bomb them.

They will never make me fear.