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20 years since 9/11

Kaido

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
What were you doing on the day?

I was in computer class in college. One of the students came in late & the teacher chewed him out; he mentioned that a plane had crashed into a building in NYC. We all thought it was like a Cessna or something, until we got out of class & found the entire school glued to the announcement televisions. I can't believe it was 20 years ago...

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I've since been down to the memorial & up the new building. It's very eerie to see two giant holes in the middle of NYC. I hope we never have to deal with anything like those terrorist attacks again.

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Man crazy it's already been 20 years. I was in grade 10 and I remember hearing tidbits about it and we were all talking about it, but we did not really know what was going on. I did not know what the pentagon or the WTC was back then so I was not really picturing the full gravity of the situation. I remember getting home after school and putting on the news to see what was going on and like every channel was covering it. It was just so surreal seeing the whole thing unfold.

The world changed a lot after that. Enhanced airport security, and just security in general in public buildings, mass surveillance, lots of new laws and acts passed like patriot act etc...

And now the world is in the midst of major change again. More restrictions for seeing loved ones in hospital and nursing homes, having to wear masks everywhere now, soon needing to carry and show vaccine passport to get anywhere etc. I'm sure in 20 years from now we'll be looking back and reminiscing about how things used to be precovid as well.
 
I was in college. The class was nutrition. School was cancelled shortly after. I had a 1.5 hour ride home, and I had the raido on all the way.
 
i was taking a test. professor interrupted us and said that a plane had hit the building and we could go watch it on TV, but that he wouldn't let us take the test again if we did that.

people got so many %10-20 scores on that test!
 
walking out of the locker room in highschool PE class as the 2nd plane hit. everyone glued to the TV in the metal box in the corner. admin had us stay in our current rooms for a bit, then let the day go on. our teachers were great. we talked about how we were feeling and people could go home if they got picked up. everyone just kind of aimlessly wandered around from class to class that day.

a defining moment of our generation.
 
i'll admit that in the first 10 years, the anniversary still felt powerful

but it's getting to the point where it's been decades, no kids (and even some adults) weren't alive or able to comprehend it

so it is less and less impactful every year

in a few more decades it'll be nothing more than an interesting fact about the day. people will say "huh", if anyone even remembers at all.
 
I spent 9/11 doing what I always seem to do... keeping the company equipment running. I got the news of NYC being attacked on my pager, and then the network crashed under the load from people checking the news sites to see what was going on. I ended up spending that day plugging and unplugging token ring connections trying to get the servers back online. Yeah... token ring. This equipment was old even by 2001 standards.

My office was only 30 miles from NYC at the time, and many of my coworkers knew people in those buildings. A lot of people went home, because they were in fear of getting attacked as well.

The next day, I received some old Pentium III era desktop PC's and a request to rebuild some web hosting infrastructure that was hosted in WTC7. We didn't get real hardware for a few weeks to rebuild it correctly, but we had the site back up and running by the end of the week. Can you get a web application server with a database backend to run on a desktop PC with only 512 MB of RAM? Apparently you can, but the performance was pathetic.
 
For a horrific trip down memory lane I’ve found the original OT thread.

!!!a plane has crashed into the world trade center building

Just hit the news.. hit one of the towers at about the 100th floor... hole in the side of the building with smoke and fire pouring out of it. That is all everyone knows at this point... go watch the news for more.. --- This terrorist attack is a unique event in U.S. history, well deserving...
forums.anandtech.com forums.anandtech.com
 
I was at work at my last full time job.

I found out about the state of emergency a little after 9AM PDT, IIRC. It was a medium sized company with maybe 200 employees, probably around 120 at our location, the main one. We were told to leave for the day. It was somewhat eerie there in downtown San Francisco. I got on the subway train (BART), made it home and turned on the TV.

By the time I heard about it at work, the Pentagon was already attacked. I think all airspace had already been shut down at that point.

2 days later I was escorted out of the office building I worked in, holding a cardboard box with my belongings (I'd worked there around 2.5 years). I made them pay me for the vacation time I never took (~2 weeks). I'd never taken a single sick day either or used the medical. I was Mr. Dependable. They had been taken over by people who were farming out the tech to India. 😡
 
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Was at work, saw the report of the first plane hitting the tower on the web. Actually took half a day leave and went home to see the TV coverage. I think the second plane hit just after I got home.
 
I was half my age at that time. When I saw the CNN breaking news about the first plane crashing into the towers, I was like, "This is really, really bad. Things will never be the same from this point onwards". But that video of Bush listening to the news from his chief of staff and just sitting there in school, that didn't make sense to me. Any other person would have gotten up immediately, excused himself and convened an emergency meeting to figure out the next course of action.
 
igor_kavinski said:
I was half my age at that time. When I saw the CNN breaking news about the first plane crashing into the towers, I was like, "This is really, really bad. Things will never be the same from this point onwards". But that video of Bush listening to the news from his chief of staff and just sitting there in school, that didn't make sense to me. Any other person would have gotten up immediately, excused himself and convened an emergency meeting to figure out the next course of action.
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Yeah, Bush just blew it completely there. I watched United 93 last night (3rd time, first since 2009), and they showed how it was impossible to get ROE (rules of engagement) for the fighter jets because it required authorization from the president and he was MIA. WTF was the president? They had the vice president's attention, but that wasn't enough. The military were totally ineffectual and in complete chaos in dealing with a handful of hijacked planes flying over the eastern seaboard heading for major targets and hitting them one by one.
 
I remember that Bush image and trying to think of what must have been going through his mind. Putting myself in his position I can almost understand why he did not immediately get up. He had to mentally process what was happening, and probably did not want to startle the children by suddenly saying he has to leave. Also being in that classroom was probably the last happy/comforting situation he would be in for a very long time and probably wanted to cherish that last moment.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I remember that Bush image and trying to think of what must have been going through his mind. Putting myself in his position I can almost understand why he did not immediately get up. He had to mentally process what was happening, and probably did not want to startle the children by suddenly saying he has to leave. Also being in that classroom was probably the last happy/comforting situation he would be in for a very long time and probably wanted to cherish that last moment.
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That was the refuge of a fool. He was NEEDED elsewhere but he indulged himself instead.
 
Muse said:
Yeah, Bush just blew it completely there. I watched United 93 last night (3rd time, first since 2009), and they showed how it was impossible to get ROE (rules of engagement) for the fighter jets because it required authorization from the president and he was MIA. WTF was the president? They had the vice president's attention, but that wasn't enough. The military were totally ineffectual and in complete chaos in dealing with a handful of hijacked planes flying over the eastern seaboard heading for major targets and hitting them one by one.
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That's F'ed up. That's like a guard dog waiting for his absent master to actually do something about a perpetrator. Wonder if the process of authorization changed since then.
 
Went into surgery to remove a cyst on my vocal cord. Went in, went under, everything normal. Got out, woke up, planes had hit the towers. World was everything but normal.

I was not supposed to speak in the recovery room, and for at least 24 hours, to help healing. I had to scribble on a pad. I was into politics back then, though not as much as I am now, but I wrote that Bush is going to lead us into war in the middle east for sure now, guaranteed.
 
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I was on my way to work when the news broke (on KCBS) about the first plane...alike many others, I thought it was some idiot in a Cessna...then the second plane hit and the info explained that it was commercial airliners.
Being on a construction job, we had no TV or radios on site, so the only information we got throughout the day was little blurbs from truck drivers who were making deliveries.

We worked 14 hours that day, so it was after 9 pm (pdt) before I got home and saw the devastation.
 
MrSquished said:
Went into surgery to remove a cyst on my vocal cord. Went in, went under, everything normal. Got out, woke up, planes had hit the towers. World was everything but normal.
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Reminds me of Nov. 22, 1963. I went to the campus hospital (1st semester of my junior year) for my regular treatment for a recent back injury. PT put me on my belly, turned on a heat lamp. Came back after some minutes to give me a massage, and asked me if I'd "heard the news?" "What news?" "Kennedy's been shot." I spent the rest of the morning in the student union among a shocked and silent crowd listening to the news.
 
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Muse said:
Reminds me of Nov. 22, 1963. I went to the campus hospital for my regular treatment for a recent back injury. PT put me on my belly, turned on a heat lamp. Came back after some minutes to give me a massage, and asked me if I'd "heard the news?" "What news?" "Kennedy's been shot." I spent the rest of the morning in the student union among a shocked and silent crowd listening to the news.
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I was just a kid when Kennedy was assassinated...home sick when the news came on the teevee. Living in Mass, Kennedy was like a god for the local folks.
 
Kaido said:
I've since been down to the memorial & up the new building. It's very eerie to see two giant holes in the middle of NYC. I hope we never have to deal with anything like those terrorist attacks again.

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I've yet to go back to the western side of lower Manhattan.... 🙁

Even after 20 years I'm still not sure I want to go....


EDIT: And that morning my alarm went off most likely just about the time the first plane hit the north tower and was tuned to News 880 am NYC....first words I heard were the helicopter traffic reporter who was on-scene.



Watch till the end. 😱
 
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igor_kavinski said:
That's F'ed up. That's like a guard dog waiting for his absent master to actually do something about a perpetrator. Wonder if the process of authorization changed since then.
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IIRC two fighter jets were ultimately scrambled to intercept the last hijacked plane, but were not armed with missiles. The pilots were ordered to ram the airliner if it became necessary to prevent another attack.
 
manly said:
IIRC two fighter jets were ultimately scrambled to intercept the last hijacked plane, but were not armed with missiles. The pilots were ordered to ram the airliner if it became necessary to prevent another attack.
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We really did get caught with our collective pants down.... the failure of the military to promptly/properly respond was just one of the last in a LONG list of failures.

Essentially if our "Intelligence" branchs (and I use that term VERY loosely here) had simply been talking to each other and looking at the big picture we could likely have prevented 9/11.
 
In mid town at work.
Once it became apparent it was an attack, and our offices in tower 2 were now at subway level and that my office happened to be right above a prime target for follow up attacks we hit the street and started to walk downtown to find a place to donate blood
As we passed Penn station, they started letting people in so we said fuck it...going home.

When I returned to the city the following week they already had souvenirs for sale on corners.
 
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