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9/11 in Realtime

911realtime.org

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Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#41

Post by bufordtwain »

sneak wrote: post #12
causi wrote: post #3

If you want to get a handle on how the War on Terror started and how everybody felt about it, I highly recommend listening to some of the live radio shows from that morning, such as the Howard Stern show. You look back now and question how we could've let it get so out of hand, but watching people react to it in real time takes you right back to the emotions it triggered. I don't think I've ever felt that degree of c…

It seemed like overreactions to me at the time, and it seems like overreactions to me now. I was 18 at the time and I was already old enough to know that you don't make big decisions when tired, angry, or stressed. What's the point of checks and balances and the rule of law if they all go out of the window as soon as an adversary does something bad enough to make enough of us sufficiently angry? Those aren't laws and…

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#43

Post by cmrdporcupine »

swozey wrote: post #8
causi wrote: post #3

If you want to get a handle on how the War on Terror started and how everybody felt about it, I highly recommend listening to some of the live radio shows from that morning, such as the Howard Stern show. You look back now and question how we could've let it get so out of hand, but watching people react to it in real time takes you right back to the emotions it triggered. I don't think I've ever felt that degree of c…

I don't have the time to dig around for examples but reading IRC logs (which I mention in another comment) is really ... interesting. I haven't read them in years but I remember the vitriol toward Muslims being absolutely astonishing. But it was ye olde 2000s..

It never went away. The religious right in the US and others discovered a wellspring of motivational energy (for their regular causes) that they could get out of people by pointing fingers at Islam, and they have never really let it go.

It comes and go in waves, but it's pretty crazy what an appeal to an old bogeyman can get you; at the time, George Bush talking about a "clash of civilizations" and appealing to old Crusades era mythos of east vs west, orient vs "western civilization" etc. was incredibly "successful" at accomplishing the goals that Rumsfeld and Cheney and others had set out for their regime.

The Bush/Cheney regime inherited a largely liberal, tolerant, and centrist populous from the Clinton years. The general zeitgeist and political atmosphere from back then looks so civilized and calm compared to now. And they leverage 9/11 to stir up a whole different scenario afterwards that has never stopped accelerating. The xenophobic far right has been in steady ascendancy ever since.

To this day, if there's a shooting in a mall or whatever, you'll hear people immediately jump to the jihadist explanation, even when it's clear that the bulk of terrorist type violence in North America doesn't actually take this form -- it's usually far right / white supremacist in inspiration, just as it was before 9/11 (e.g Timothy McVeigh, etc.)

I'm an atheist and no lover of any organized religion, including Islam, but it was dark and depressing to watch at the time and it continues to be depressing to see people manipulated on these terms.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#44

Post by btown »

Here is a compilation of recordings of the moment the second tower was hit - by which time both news cameras and amateur cameras were focused on the towers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YLm3pkAiJQ

So much of the world as we know it now can be traced back to this day, and perhaps this moment above any others - the moment we gained an innate knowledge that something sinister was going on, a deep feeling of fear, anger, and vulnerability awakening in the American populace with an immediacy that had perhaps never been felt in the country's history.

I vividly recall being a middle school student, seeing friends being pulled out of the classroom one by one, knowing that something horrifying was happening, not knowing details, not knowing whether I would be next, eventually understanding with dawning horror that some of my classmates had family members who would never come home. An entire generation felt this pain.

It's really important that projects and video archives like the OP exist so people understand not just the statistics, but the fundamental shift of people's worldviews that happened that day.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#45

Post by gigatexal »

I was there. Not in NYC but as I was eating my Honey Nut Cheerios before early morning (530-6ish am pacific time) JV basketball and watching the news (cuz I was a nerd in high school) I watched it all go down in real-time. It’s still a harrowing experience to this day.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#46

Post by Lord-Jobo »

blamazon wrote: post #35

There are so many incredible stories of heroism from this day, but, I will highlight that of Rick Rescorla. [1] After 1993, before 9/11: > Feeling that the authorities lost legitimacy after they failed to respond to his 1990 warnings, he concluded that employees of Morgan Stanley, which was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, could not rely on first responders in an emergency and needed to empower themselve…

A true, no bullshit, hero. I was never a boyscout, but 'be prepared" is a motto I try to stand behind.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#47

Post by ilc »

I was working in the airline industry when this happened.

My girlfriend (now wife) and I had just started on the way into work, we signaled each other over to the side of the road, and talked for a few moments... and I headed in to work.

I was in shock for weeks. I was ontop of the towers but 2 months before that, and possibly one of the best pictures of the two of us was taken there.

... I've been there. I know that place. I have roots in that city.

But I wasn't surprised as many Americans were. I knew this was very possible, though most of the scenarios I'd heard were far more grizzly than what happened. (Involving nuclear material and small planes.)

I always thought the Iraq war was a pile of shit, as were most of the actions taken quickly after that day.

Taking off our shoes, and the TSA are an awful legacy of an awful day. The terrorists did win. They encouraged us to give away our freedoms for safety theater.

So we did.

This site is proof... they won.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#48

Post by sanderjd »

keepamovin wrote: post #22
swozey wrote: post #7

This stuff is so difficult for me to watch again, I was a senior in HS. Reading IRC logs from back then is also really interesting. And Nanog had a really interesting slideshow/powerpoint deep dive on the infrastructure outages that occurred. And of course the SomethingAwful thread that's been posted before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7990991 RE: this specific site.. interesting UX/UI choice. I was hoping I…

I relate: was also a senior. I had an English final that morning, I think. Earth shifted. It was an overwhelming experience seeing it happen on TV.

I was a junior. I went to a boarding school and one of those weird memories that sticks with you is that I was unsure whether or not to go to my classes. No cell phones and pretty primitive email system, so it just wasn't clear. I went to one at like 9:30 (central time) and nobody was there, so that was when I realized "oh this is one of those nothing-is-normal-now things".

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#49

Post by tfandango »

I was laid off at the time so I watched this happen live on TV. Later I delivered meals-on-wheels while listening on the radio and discussing with all the folks I was taking meals to that day. So surreal. I remember thinking it was a terrible accident until the other tower was hit, then total disbelief that they fell.

Then a month later I went to work in a quarter-scale (I think) replica of one of the twin towers (BOK Tower, Tulsa, OK) and one of our clients was almost completely wiped out on 9/11. The few remaining employees were trying to rebuild the company and we were trying to help them by hosting the little thing we had sold them. All of their backups were also in the tower. Really sad.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#50

Post by swozey »

jack_codes wrote: post #36
swozey wrote: post #7

This stuff is so difficult for me to watch again, I was a senior in HS. Reading IRC logs from back then is also really interesting. And Nanog had a really interesting slideshow/powerpoint deep dive on the infrastructure outages that occurred. And of course the SomethingAwful thread that's been posted before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7990991 RE: this specific site.. interesting UX/UI choice. I was hoping I…

I was in the Army on a training exercise in Louisiana preparing to go to Kosovo. We were in a flight unit (helicopters) and loading up a convoy to the airfield. We got the call over the radio about it and thought, at first, that is was part of the training exercise. We get to the airfield, setup comms, and get chatter about it not being an exercise. Since they grounded the birds pretty much all week we basically stay…

I was 6months from MEPS. My Major dad told me to GTFO. I'd planned on going Army my entire life. That threw a real wrench in my plans. Thankfully I was able to get out of it since I hadn't signed at MEPs yet.

I lived in Norfolk VA and IIRC we had 3-5 carriers moored. They all dispersed away from the shipyard when it happened. 20-25k Navy just vanished from town.

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