[rginns]

I'd just finished a 12 hour shift at the local mill having just shovelled about 2 tonnes of wheat that had burst out of one of the relay pipes that had breached.
That was a great job (yeah right)

[Nibile]

The Spaniards said "Oh" and went back to sleep. Of course they did, they were Basque.

I hope they both left the aircraft via different routes, since as we all know, you should never put all your Basques in one exit.

I know the pun but I don't get it..
 

[GCW]

Putting all your eggs in one basket.

[Nibile]

Oh.

[Dr T]

Ill in student digs watching the whole thing live on tele...

[krymson]

Ill in student digs watching the whole thing live on tele...

That was a bit weird and off-putting, made the whole thing surreal. Class was stopped and our teacher put it on TV. It really seemed like something out of a movie at first and was hard to wrap your head around the fact this was something real that was going on right now.

That entire day was scary and tense since there were multiple attacks after the towers -- Pennsylvania, and then the Pentagon. It's not like the terrorists are going to go "ok that's it we're done" so you're never really sure if it was finished or somethign else bad was going to happen.

[SA Chris]

What's very interesting to me about this thread is the level of detail people remember of that particular day. No doubt we have no idea what we were specifically doing 2 weeks later.

Apparently many people are the same about what they were doing when They heard JFK had been killed

[Oldmanmatt]

I was sitting watching BBC world in a mates house in Dubai.

Odd. I'd recently left my job and had to leave the apartment that came with it, so Lili and I were staying in a Villa while my mate was away and we looked for a new apartment.

Bored really.

Think I was eating lunch.

I remember the screen switched to an image of the towers, smoke pouring from one...

The news readers didn't seem sure why, or even why the live image had been dumped on them.

Then the second plane went in.



Got a call from my mate, later that day.

He worked for Solar Gas turbines (a Yank company), saying they wouldn't be back as Solar we're evacuating all personnel from the Mid East because Bush was going to Carpet bomb the the entire region back to the Stone Age.


I wonder, sometimes, how close that actually was to happening?

Some of the stories that have emerged of the idiotic panic that ensued during the Cuban missile crisis and how close we really came to Nuclear Armageddon over the mere threat of a missile being emplaced and the loss of a single, one man, aircraft.

Well...


Makes you wonder, eh?

[SamT]

What's very interesting to me about this thread is the level of detail people remember of that particular day. No doubt we have no idea what we were specifically doing 2 weeks later.

interesting thread.

I was at work in a large open plan office in a towerblock in sheffield.  I remember looking at the beeb website at the looped footage like it was just not real, wondering if it was all faked/spoof, then as it dawned and the phone calls came in just being a bit stunned by it all.  I recall some folks just looked at it and went "Oh" and turned back to their work.  I thought how on earth can you watch that and just get back to your mundane crappy job without so much as hint of shock/interest.  Weirdos.

Eventually the internet a worked crashed (or the powers that be turned it off so the folks like me, with some sort of imagination/conscience would get back to work.

I distinctly remember walking away from work at 4 along the top of fargate in town, looking at peoples faces and picking people out - "you know.... you know..... you don't know yet, you know, you don't etc etc"  It was blindingly obvious who was deep in thought, concerned contemplation etched on their faces, or who was care free, joking, smiling.

I went home, stuck the telly on, phoned dad.  Eventually, after getting saturated on the same headlines, same looping footage, I grabbed my rucksack and went out to Apparent North bouldering.  Was a nice evening. Such a great tonic, you can forget about the shit stuff so easily.  I remember sitting on the stone trough, place to myself, looking out at the sunset and it suddenly returning to my mind again, bam! so I packed up,  sulked off home. Cant remember anything further.

edit - dont remember txting Jez though, sorry for probably ruining your day Jez

[dave]

Apparently many people are the same about what they were doing when They heard JFK had been killed

My dad alwaysnsays he knows where he was, and so do I. I was in a history lesson about the assassination of JFK.

[Bubba]

Eventually the internet a worked crashed (or the powers that be turned it off so the folks like me, with some sort of imagination/conscience would get back to work.

I remember all the news sites going down because of the traffic, though you could still crawl through to some of them using "www2." for a while. 

I was programming in Glasgow. Remember phoning Sel and telling her to get to a TV and then worrying about the in-laws in case London got hit as well.  Shocking day and I find it hard to re-watch the footage these days knowing how it all played out.

[namnok]

I remember it was a glorious sunny day and had planned to meet some mates for a boulder session.

 Got to manc piccadilly and missed train. Got next train with plans on getting a differnt way to hathersage. Got totally lost and ended up in sheffield before giving up and heading straight back home.

Got home to see the the towers ablaze. Called my mates who i were meant to meet and told them i wasnt joking just as the first tower fell. They left soon after.

[Baron]

My friend Matt has been to New York. He has a picture of himself in the viewing gallery at the top of one of the twin towers - taken on September 10th 2001.

[iain]

I needed human contact, I wanted to shake hands, to hug.

I understand that.

[JackAus]

Asleep. School the next day, its all anyone spoke about. Flew to the UK a week after though. Never seen a flight that empty. Was maybe 50 people...

[johnx2]

...so it's just me that only has a very vague recollection?  We'd just moved to Ilkley (blimey, which means it's the longest I've lived in one place). I think I was at work most of the day.

I must've been a bit caught up in the hyseria as I remember feeling releived that we'd sold our London house (to a city lawyer), as I thought city money might not be rushing into town*.

(I was on Gower St on the morning of the 7/7 bombs (round the corner from where the bus was blown up.) Clear memories of that day I can tell you. I've also heard about four IRA bombs go off, though only the no. 10 mortar bomb properly rattled my windows. There's no ambiguity about when it's a bomb.)





*This does not make me a bad person, or unusually self-centered (in my view). It does however make me wrong, as the house doubled again in price. Hey ho.

[burbistan]

On a campsite at Kiln Creek, Big Sur. We had a little radio we'd taken on the JMT and my missus was listening to it. Said she thought something was happening in NYC but maybe it was a hoax? We shared the earpieces just as the first tower collapsed. Soon obvious it wasn't a hoax. I thought of friends there then remembered I'd been to top of the south tower a month previously.

Then it occurred to me the other people on the campsite probably weren't listening to the radio. Opposite us was a red Mustang with New York plates. I woke the guy up and told him. He couldn't take it in. Said he owned a small firm run out of offices in one of the towers. He came round the campsite with me to tell others then raced off to find a landline. A soldier in a jeep came into the campsite from a nearby base to check people knew about the event.

We had to go and hang with mates in SF to see what would happen with our flights home. Stopped in Monterrey and saw the reruns of the towers collapsing on TV. Public opinion was already polarising between instant seek and destroy or more rational process.

We eventually made it home on our intended flights. I always wondered what happened to the Mustang guy's employees.

[outlawed]

I watched it in smoking room of civil service department i worked for. Finished my fags then went back to dealing with angry farmers. Whole govt compound where based went over the top mental. Like a mad lockdown for a week before back to normal.

Never felt different to living through London IRA for years to me. Had family member lose half face eye and ear in Victoria station bomb.

Thing i remember most is a tv reporter that night saying it would be a very brave American who rattled an IRA collecting tin in a Boston or New York bar tonight.

[seankenny]

I was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, having chips with some Taliban.

Clearly I didn't find out what had happened for some time afterwards, what with TV being banned in Afghanistan at the time.

[chillax]

In history class in secondary school. The teacher brought us all out of the classroom and into a little storage room which had a radio. I remember him telling us that this was history in the making. The whole scene was eerily reminiscent of something from WWII, a crowd of people huddled round a wireless, hearing news that would change the world.

[Oldmanmatt]

Silly observation...

But the Bunkers Facebook page hit 911 likes this afternoon.

Then.

Stopped.

Yeah, I know, spooky uh?


Seriously, glad to see another anniversary of that day pass without some idiot carrying out some equally pointless, inane, sickening, atrocity in the name of some fictitious deity or to celebrate the original idiots.

Mind you.

The day's not over yet.

[SA Chris]

I was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, having chips with some Taliban.

Clearly I didn't find out what had happened for some time afterwards, what with TV being banned in Afghanistan at the time.

Seriously? If so, amazing

[magpie]

What's very interesting to me about this thread is the level of detail people remember of that particular day. No doubt we have no idea what we were specifically doing 2 weeks later.

Apparently many people are the same about what they were doing when They heard JFK had been killed

There's a proper reason for it, it's to do with how different types of memories are formed and what part of your brain you store them in, I think.  I can't remember all the science but basically certain emotions triggered by some events mean that you create a different sort of memory from normal so they are easier to recall, seems more vivid and fresh than regular memories do and they tend to be of big, life changing or shocking events.  I watched a documentary on it and I remember thinking at the time, when they described those sort of memories, that one of mine was of September the 11th watching that second plane hit.

[seankenny]

I was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, having chips with some Taliban.

Clearly I didn't find out what had happened for some time afterwards, what with TV being banned in Afghanistan at the time.

Seriously? If so, amazing

Yes, seriously! I have pretty much the last tourist visa ever issued by the Islamic Emirate of Afghansitan. (If that isn't optimism, I don't know what is...)

[SA Chris]

Duly wadded.