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September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

911realtime.org

501–510 of 523 posts

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#501

When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…

> Iraq Regarding WMDs, intelligence couldn't be released because it was supposedly sensitive. What if they were required to release an md5sum of a tarball of the intelligence, perhaps with associated metadata to make it infeasible to fabricate/game. This process is overseen by a judge or independent body. Then 5-15 years later they release it in full when that intelligence is no longer sensitive? This is a way to get…

Interesting idea!

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the "truther" nonsense came from the day of the attack when nobody really had any idea what the hell was happening. It wasn't immediately clear that a plane hit the first tower to cause the damage, it wasn't clear it was an attack and not an accident until the second plane hit, and it wasn't clear the planes alone caused the collapse for days at least. Hell, for like an hour the Pentagon attack was considere…

After the Pentagon was hit, I recall looking at early images of the wall supposedly struck by a Boing 757 (Fl 77) going hundreds of miles an hour. The size of the hole didn't look jet-sized. There were no visible wing or engine marks on the nearby walls. No videos emerged to show what struck the wall or knocked down the light standards. Physically, to this day, that whole scenario is confusing, and there's been littl…

I really wish people would stop with this “no airplane parts” narrative. Do you know what happens to airplane parts when the hit a concrete wall at over 500 mph? You clearly don’t, so let me clarify: complete obliteration. They found parts of the airplane, but nothing big enough that you would recognized it as an airplane part unless you were an expert on the matter.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#503

I'm actually seeing events I missed in real time - I was up overnight working. I worked for Sabre HR at the time, and kept going up to the office to run a massive PDF generation process for our performance reviews. (It was a terribly leaky VB process). I didn't wake up until after it happened, so I was hearing about it on the drive into the office. We all went home before noon. Within days the software we were writin…

Were you in the Trophy Club offices then?

No, this was before the move to Southlake.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#504
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many coincidences. Also we couldn't mobilize any fighter jets at all when a plane goes off course?

Not quite an answer to your question, but in the 60s and 70s hijackings were quite common (86 hijackings in 1969) and weren’t seen in the way they are now. The common understanding was that the hijackers wanted to re-route the plane somewhere else, and that everyone would end up alive but inconvenienced. It’s also one reason why only the passengers in United 93 fought back; the idea of a plane as a missile wasn’t wid…

Wow 86 hijackings and nobody in intelligence could ever conceive of how that could go horribly wrong

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#505
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This video shows an F-4 Phantom being slammed into a concrete wall using a rocket sled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4wDqSnBJ-k At about 2 minutes in they show the aftermath. The plane is just gone , while the wall is a bit discolored...

Unconvinced. That concrete block was not ridged. It moved when the plane hit it. So the strongest aspect of concrete, compression, was tested. But the weakest, flexion, was untested. What fun though.

To test it as you suggest, you'd have to build the full containment building, which are built as domes. That dome structure should lend itself to exploiting concrete's compressive strength and minimize tensile forces. They are also specifically reinforced to increase their tensile strength, since they are primarily designed to contain explosions from within. I have little doubt that one of those domes could shrug off a Phantom crashing into them.

More generally, in order to be successful a traditional armor piercing projectile needs two traits in particular: it needs to be harder than the target, and the projectile needs to be robust enough to not disintegrate on impact. Airplanes are neither of these; they're built out of soft aluminum and are built light to maximize payload, not to be robust. Consequently I would not expect an airplane striking a reinforced concrete building to ever behave as an armor penetrating projectile would.

The part that I'm a bit skeptical of is the suggestion that shrugging off a Phantom is equivalent to shrugging off a 747, which is more than an order of magnitude heavier. Throwing an airplane at a concrete building is like throwing a wet ball of modeling clay at a glass window. Likely to splat, like that phantom did, but if your ball of clay is big enough it might go through. A large enough plane might even knock the building off its foundation, rather than penetrate the concrete.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#506
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated, yes, I would say that people who refuse the vaccine are devoid of critical thinking skills.

Given that they have chosen that destiny willingly for themselves, what's wrong with that? I personally feel it's a bit more nuanced of a decision then you're allowing. What do the vaccinated care? Why does this unvaxxed life matter to them all of a sudden when they've had plenty of opportunities to care about life before but haven't?

I personally don’t care. In fact I think we should pay people who don’t want to get the vaccine to engage in monitoring so that we can understand the disease better. I also believe we should pay covid-hoaxers 100k so that we can infect them and then study why the virus is so dangerous for some people and benign for others. I think it’s a win-win for both.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#507
post #455
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, so your actions on that front will only improve your own life No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. > while being a bit more careful with covid will potentially prevent sickness in a lot of people. Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic.

> No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. Good thing the US doesn't have socialized healthcare and private insurers generally exclude preexisting conditions. > Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic. Funny how the "safety-ism" after 9/11 was pushed by the Republicans and now the Republicans are complaining abo…

> Funny how the "safety-ism" after 9/11 was pushed by the Republicans and now the Republicans are complaining about Democrats pushing safety measures against Covid.

So your answer is to go sophist ad-hominem, by putting me in a group you find unfavorable rather than addressing the content of what I said. Am I letting the terrorist win or am I killing grandmas ? therefore you can justify x.

> Except y'know most of these measures actually drastically reduce transmission

This is very un-specific, but aside from vaccinations & living in a country with island like borders, very little has been definitely shown to reduce spread.

> maybe this should be considered a national defense emergency and the US should invest a few more billions

I'm not especially against that, even though I do think that unfortunately in practice these things risk end up just being vehicles for cronyism rather than tackling the core issue.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird. I lived in LA at the time and I was in my early 20s. I remember my gf waking me up at 6:30am to go look at the TV. It doesn't feel like an historical or far-away event to me. It seems like the most pivotal moment of my life, when this country changed and everything changed. We were worried about LA being attacked, worried about bio/chem attacks. Suddenly there were no-fly lists, and things called TSA and…

> to all the conspiracy-fueled madness that led to 1/6/21, which is the only other day that began to feel like 9/11. THAT is an interesting, and wildly speculative, take.

I don't know what the other trajectory would have been, i.e. had 9/11 been foiled. But I do think it served as the ultimate excuse to curtail rights and freedoms. The long wars it led to both warped our society at home and led to two generations of militarization of kids. For instance, I remember how disgusted and shocked I was at the explosion of military displays at baseball and football games. This was all basically fascism using the attack on our free society to embed xenophobic militarism into every aspect of daily life.

It's speculative, yea. But without 9/11 I don't think we'd have a culture of giant military style pickup trucks rolling coal and waving flags (American or Confederate). I think the militia movement of the 90s would have stayed much more contained and minor without something to justify their claims of conspiracy and NWO takeover. And I think we wouldn't have developed the sense that we were all living in a disaster movie, and become so callous and inured to what we see on the news. I don't think I can or should summarize all this in a post, but maybe the best way to put it would be that it ended the American Century, and bent the arc of our civilization towards decay and self destruction. It exposed a crack in the foundation of the country that has grown, and keeps growing. I suppose that could have happened any number of ways.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird. I lived in LA at the time and I was in my early 20s. I remember my gf waking me up at 6:30am to go look at the TV. It doesn't feel like an historical or far-away event to me. It seems like the most pivotal moment of my life, when this country changed and everything changed. We were worried about LA being attacked, worried about bio/chem attacks. Suddenly there were no-fly lists, and things called TSA and…

> to all the conspiracy-fueled madness that led to 1/6/21, which is the only other day that began to feel like 9/11. THAT is an interesting, and wildly speculative, take.

The Daily from the NYT had an episode a few days ago precisely on this idea. Very interesting.

So not totally far fetched I'd say.

[1] https://pca.st/episode/6deccd04-ca45-404b-8537-c4bbe73fedb9

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