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u/Milestailsprowe 14h ago
I was in fifth grade in Queens NY that day. I remember teachers screaming and crying. The day was over and we were told to read. Parents taking kids out one by one with names being called over the speakers. I was excited when mines was called till I say my mother covered in Tower dust crying.
This country was never the same after
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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 14h ago
I hope your mom was okay knowing what we know about the dust.
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u/Milestailsprowe 14h ago
She is fine. Just tons of test for years. It did lead to a skin thing for a while. I don't remember everything
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u/TUFKAT 14h ago
I can only imagine the horrors and struggle that your mom has lived with, and also you. Nothing but an internet strangers sympathy.
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u/Emotional-Ad9114 14h ago
wait what do we know about the dust? (I’m not american)
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u/sexykristinith 14h ago
The dust caused cancer. Lots and lots of cancer.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 14h ago edited 14h ago
Cancer that killed a good majority of the firefighters that survived. Funding that was attempted to be cut by mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson only to be defended by, of all people, the amazing Jon Stewart
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u/PrudentCarter 14h ago
I remember he fought pretty hard for it. He was seriously disappointed when they wouldn't even show up to the meeting for it.
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u/peachesfordinner BumBum Ouchie 13h ago
He did the impossible. He made them feel shame on their cold dead hearts for just a moment
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u/TemporaryMagician 13h ago
The more cynical take is that they never felt shame, but Jon's advocacy as a celebrity brought unwelcome publicity to their mistreatment of universally valorized heroes.
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u/Guiano 13h ago
I remember this story, and it’s not like I’m ignorant of the state of US politics but man. It’s always the ones who are supposedly full of patriotism who over and over take action against the needs of those that fought and gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. And their supporters don’t bat an eye.
I don’t fucking get it.
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u/Winter_Preference287 13h ago
You get it, it's just hard to accept there are demons who act like this for political points and call themselves patriots. Conservatives are very good at getting people focused on one issue while the rob you on 5 others. Just like a bunch of pick pockets, except their actions kill millions and as long as those super PAC donations keep coming, they couldn't care less.
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u/Shantotto11 14h ago
*Jon Stewart
The one with the H in his name is the Green Lantern.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 14h ago
Awwww beans you're right lemme fix that
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u/Space_Vaquero73 13h ago
Well they are both superhereos so it's understandable.
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u/Shantotto11 13h ago
The most valid takeaway.
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u/CrazyHorseWakaWaka 13h ago
Of all the celebrities, this is the one guy I respect. He fought for those that those in power decided were inconveniences to be swept aside and forgotten.
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u/Emotional-Ad9114 14h ago
was not expecting this thread to have a Green Lantern reference 😭
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u/Shantotto11 13h ago
I was. Jon Stewart is probably known second most for his advocacy for 9/11 survivors and first responders.
It took me years to figure out how to properly spell both of the their names correctly. I’ve been spelling GL’s name as “John Stuart” for longer than I care to admit.
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u/BadmiralHarryKim 13h ago
Mitch McConnell, Senator from Kentucky celebrated as coal country, took time out from trying to cut health funding for Black Lung, the most well known coal miner's disease, to also try and cut funding for 9/11 related respiratory care?
Hard to believe he took his eye off the ball screwing over coal miners just to stick it too 9/11 rescuer toos. Unless some of them were also coal miners?
Anyway, fuck that guy.
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u/Broke-Down-Toad 12h ago
Don't forget all the fighting that had to be done to get veterans who were exposed to burn pits covered by the VA
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u/mittenknittin 13h ago
Mike Rogers, who is trying to smear Abdul El-Sayed about 9/11 because he's Muslim, voted twice to cut funding for first responders
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u/Emotional-Ad9114 14h ago
oh shit, that sucks!
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u/HailMadScience 13h ago
So many toxic things. Asbestos, lead, PCBs, fine particle dust, and so much more. Anyone who got hit with dust in NYC that day is basically at high risk for dozens of terrible conditions and diseases.
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u/work_work-work 13h ago
Yeah, just driving by the ruins made my eyes tear and asthma kick in for months afterwards.
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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 14h ago
It was extremely toxic and many people who were exposed got really sick and died in the time after. Some are still here, but in bad shape.
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u/king_crescentmoon 14h ago
Asbestos was used in buildings back then plus all the damage to the building left the dust in the air extremely toxic. It’s been linked to multiple cancer cases, like exceeding the death toll of 9/11 itself! Our gov didn’t provide any healthcare to these ppl.
If you look up “The Dust Lady” you’ll find more/better info on the subject. 🩷
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u/Emotional-Ad9114 14h ago
omg that’s terrible. I remember my high school still had asbestos on the roof (and I graduated in 2021) and there were tons of protests by teachers and parents about it in my school and other old schools but the government did nothing about it.
and thanks 🫶🏻 I’ll look into it!
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u/warbastard 13h ago
Asbestos in old buildings is incredibly common and so long as it’s not deteriorating or being broken apart and drilled into (making the fibres airborne and breathable) it’s generally fine.
Two gigantic towers collapsing containing asbestos is a public health disaster. And it’s sad that America spent way more money fighting overseas than helping heal its own citizens.
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u/toot_suite 13h ago
Unfortunately every commercial or government or healthcare building constructed before the 80s, even 90s had asbestos in it. Vinyl composite tiles? Asbestos. Insulation? Asbestos. Pipe wrap? Asbestos. Void fill? Asbestos. Acoustic tiles? Asbestos.
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u/JesterInTheDark 14h ago
As others have said it caused cancer but another not so fun fact is that the cities administrations got the past 25 years have covered up the fact that the area was still toxic to be in for months after the attack. So if just the air was toxic for months after, just imagine what being there at ground zero would’ve done to someone
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u/SirDucky 14h ago
Because it was basically a vaporized mix of skyscraper materials, it was very bad for you to breathe in. Lots of rescue workers got cancer or respiratory issues
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u/Ghost-Music 14h ago
It has caused a lot of health issues, including cancer which has been responsible for deaths.
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u/MayDelay 14h ago
My story is exactly like yours. Only it was my dad picking me up at the school. Hugs.
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u/Potential_Cookie1837 14h ago
Is your mother ok today? What a scary experience for a little kid, I'm sorry.
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u/MrHasuu 13h ago
I was in fifth grade in Queens NY that day. My teacher brought us into the auditorium and played star wars to distract us. We didnt hear the news til our parents came to get us
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u/lux_et_umbra 13h ago
I wish someone had distracted me. I was 15 and alone with my grandmother who didn't pay attention at all. I cried for hours alone.
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u/A_Wizards_Apprentice 13h ago
I was in fourth grade at the time in long island. I remember watching in class. My teachers father and brother worked as firefighters in the city. They had to put my class with another teacher since she was distraught. Being a kid I don't know what happened but I think of her pretty often.
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u/GandhisNukeOfficer 13h ago
It's always interesting hearing the experiences of others. I was in 11th grade in PA and walked into Spanish class with the TV on, which was odd. I thought it was a movie at first. My teacher said it was a really terrible accident. At this point only the first plane had hit.
Then the bell rang, he turned off the TV and wheeled the little cart into the corner, and we had an otherwise completely normal day. I've read of people in the Midwest that had school canceled, parents all over the country that rushing to pick up their kids from school. Maybe one or two people left early but if they did I never heard about it. Other people online have often said classes were essentially canceled and they watched the developments all day.
We just had classes like normal. We even had to go to the auditorium for a chocolate bar fundraiser during third period.
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u/possibly_being_screw 13h ago
I have a terrible memory but it's crazy how much I remember that day. I know that's how memory works but still...
I was in a suburb outside nyc. Everyone's parents worked in the city. The teacher rolling in the TV, the teachers crying, kids slowly leaving the class room being picked up by parents. I remember a few kids who weren't picked up...their parents worked in fidi. The realization of why has always sat with me.
I was estranged from my dad at the time but I knew he worked in downtown manhattan. It was another year before I knew he was still alive.
What a surreal day. I remember getting home and sitting in front of the TV for hours watching what just happened over and over. Multiple families just on our block lost a parent that day.
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u/SquirrelDragon 13h ago
I was also in fifth grade, our teacher had the broadcast on and we watched the second plane hit
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 13h ago
We must be around the same age. I’m so sorry. I hope your mom is okay and healthy.
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u/ShinXalus 13h ago
NYC native here. I (11 yo) was in Brooklyn, but my sis (6yo) was in Manhattan for a field trip.
Her and her class had to traverse through the subway tunnel to get into Brooklyn just to get home. Mom got me as soon as possible. The skyline had a sickening tint that day which I'll never forget. My sis didn't get home until late, but thankfully got home with no injuries.
I honestly don't think any of us living through this event (whether living in NYC at the time or watching the horror on TV as we witnessed a catastrophe) has gotten the therapy we need to process this properly.
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 14h ago edited 13h ago
This was September 11, 2001 for my family. My sister died two months prior and my dad was active military. Living on the west coast, the attack was very early for us and I’m not sure what got my mom to wake me up but she did and in a very weird way I’m thankful for it. I rather have known what happened than hear it afterwards. Being a child, it was a very surreal day. I thought I understood death and its magnitude after my sister died but I couldn’t comprehend this kind of scale.
I know we make light of it the event on the internet (I’m totally guilty of that too)… However I’ve been seeing videos of personal recounts of people there in the moment and it’s made me check myself. My families life changed fundamentally but it pales in comparison to so many others.
There’s a certain account that animates personal stories (that I believe are largely NY/east coast based) called Story Corps. Every single post has made me cry.
For all those whose lives were changed through this tragedy, I’m so sorry.
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u/TheOnesWithin 14h ago
Did your father end up having to deploy?
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 14h ago
Yes. He had 6 to 9 month deployments from 2001 until about 2007. The most I got to talk to him was about once a month in a phone call. When he was home it was for about 2-3 months at a time. It was really hard on our family but we had a great support group.
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13h ago edited 13h ago
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u/Chicken_Menudo 13h ago
What unit? I was with 3/1 at the time.
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u/NoPrompt927 12h ago
Kinda wild to think I was from the very beginning and was there almost at the very end.
Our generation's Vietnam. My entire living memory is of knowing that somewhere, Aussie Diggers were operating overseas with US troops, to protect us from something I only have the vaguest memories of.
I remember seeing it on TV when I was 4, and my parents in a state of utter shock. I can't imagine what i would've been like to be standing to, wondering when the next attack would arrive.
I never joined the Defence Force, but I've got plenty of mates who did, some of whom worked with the US. Did you ever cross paths with any Australian Defence Force personnel?
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u/Fair-Bus9686 13h ago
My friends father was also deployed quite a bit after 9/11. I know it was hard on her too. I feel for all the military families that were missing their family members 🫂
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u/DEMACIAAAAA 12h ago
I get it, but it's also important to remember the families of the orders of magnitude more people they killed. And to vote so it never happens again.
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u/Chicken_Menudo 14h ago
Are you willing to disclose what unit he was with? I did deployments out of Camp Pendleton in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2008.
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 13h ago edited 11h ago
He was in the Air Force based out of Reno Nevada. He stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Iran. He’s been retired for a while now but I can ask him.Edit: my dad wasn’t in Iran. I misspoke. He previously was stationed in Qatar. I fucked up on this and I’m sorry for any confusion. It’s been a long time but that’s not an excuse to not have my facts right.
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u/Chicken_Menudo 13h ago
Oh damn, didn't even think about Air Force. Probably wouldn't have crossed paths then.
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u/kittens_with_swords 13h ago
My dad was in the Air Force during that time as well, stationed in Oman though. He worked on repairs before and after war damage, specifically C-130s. Doubt they would’ve crossed paths, but who knows!
My father eventually got medically discharged and was 100% disabled veteran status until he passed away June 17, 2025 from service-related illness.
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u/Kinkajou1015 Comic Crossover 13h ago
This answered my burning question of did he ever get to come home and stay home. Panel 6 made me scared the end was going to be a coffin with the flag draped over it.
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 13h ago
Oh god, I don’t think we could’ve survived that. I’m a total daddies girl. He came home and unharmed. We were very lucky in that regard.
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u/TrelanaSakuyo 11h ago
As a fellow daddy's girl, hold him tight and tell him you love him when you can. Have the conversations you keep putting off. I lost my dad earlier this year after a long health battle (not cancer for those wondering); I'm absolutely wrecked most days, and I was fully prepared for that day to come.
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u/peachesfordinner BumBum Ouchie 13h ago
My mom woke me up with the "you need to come see this. It's like some King Kong stuff" then the 2nd plane hit and we both just watched in silence
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u/holderofthebees 13h ago
Some King Kong stuff is crazy 😭 I can’t imagine my mom telling me there was some Godzilla stuff goin on and turning on the news to thousands of my countrymen very realistically dead
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u/No-Salad407 14h ago
Story Corps is a wonderful organization. They do a great job at recording personal stories from all different kinds of people. So many of those stories strike right to the soul.
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u/QuixoticCoyote 13h ago
I have always loved your comics and never knew you were also a military kid.
I relate to this hard. My dad ended up basically not a part of my life for large part of my teenage years, and it shaped basically the next 15 years of my life. When it happened I was living overseas and life changed overnight.
Thank you for posting this.
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u/caitlindrawings 13h ago
🫂 omg your sister. I am so sorry for you and especially your parents that is the most awful thing to ever happen.
I was also woken up when my friend called me I was unemployed and sleeping in. I went over to my friends house in my pajamas watching as events unfolded. I am grateful my friend called because I likely would have slept through a bulk of it and not found out until my job interview later that day was canceled. Job hunting got extremely difficult for the next few months.
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u/ayliv 13h ago
I was 15 at the time and at home sick from school..but same situation, my mom woke me up and told me something was happening. The 2nd plane hit right after I started watching. At first I thought “oh, how on earth did a plane accidentally strike a building?” But once the 2nd plane hit, the situation became much clearer. And I just remember both of us sitting in front of the TV, becoming increasingly horrified. I remember feeling completely unable to conceptualize or process the scale of what was happening. And being completely confused about what to feel in the moment while I was watching this.
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u/Euqcor 14h ago
I was at MEPS that morning (military enlistment processing station). I was supposed to go to boot camp that day. We were in the middle of some physical when a civilian employee pops in, says, “y’all need to see this.” We watched the attacks in the break room. My parents had to come get me and I shipped out the next week to Fort Sill.
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u/AustralianBattleDog 13h ago
Ooohhh fuck that didn't even occur to me and I work under the Air Education and Training Command umbrella. Tuesdays are swear-in/ship-out days for the military. Chaotic on even our smoothest days, so I can't imagine what that was like. I'm so sorry that happened to you. A lot of young men and women that day probably woke up thinking they'd be traveling the world and doing stuff in east Europe at most. Desert Storm was a decade in the past at that point.
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u/Euqcor 13h ago
Right. I enlisted while I was still in high school. Figured I’d be the first in my family to get a college degree. Things took a bit of a turn.
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u/DelkTheMemeDragon 14h ago
I was in middle school, and sent home. My siblings were younger, and the schools kept them. Both my parents worked, so I went home alone, turned on the tv, and watched it all happen knowing my grandfather was supposed to be in the Pentagon that day. (He was in a separate part and was ok, but we didn't learn that for almost 3 days with everything going on)
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u/Substantial_Station8 11h ago
I was in Kansas, 5th grade.
We all got called into the library and the tv on rollers with the antenna was tuned into the news channel…
I don’t remember anything of the day after that. I don’t remember going home, I don’t remember reading for the day, I don’t remember continuing studies…
I just remember watching planes blasting into towers and thinking of all my military family members going to war. Fuck, I was probably going to have to go to war. Fuck… we were going to have our houses turned to rubble like the Iraqis my uncle showed me Polaroids of
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u/Thatroyalkitty 14h ago
I was in school for a couple hours by this point in the day. Some memories never go away.
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u/yournamehere10bucks 14h ago
Same, it happened during third period in Grade 9. Heard about it after lunch when some others who went home over the break saw footage. Didnt really fully understand what was happening until I got home after.
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u/rob132 14h ago
I was driving up to college at the time listening to it on the radio. I sat there in stunned silence for a few minutes and then I was like do I go to class?
So I went into class. And this was before smartphones so no one else but me knew what happened. I raised my hand to tell the teacher and just as I was about to speak someone barged into the room and said that the school was closing due to the attack.
And she was like as a joke? And I was like no it's it's not. I heard it on the radio before I came in.
Oh, and I couldn't make a phone call on my fancy new cell phone because all circuits were busy. I've never seen that happen since.
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u/OutInTheBlack 13h ago
It was my freshman year at college. Upstate NY, with my family still in the city. I had a fancy new cell phone too and it took a few hours to get my folks on the phone.
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u/dj92wa 13h ago edited 13h ago
I hadn’t even been at school yet since we were on the west coast. It all happened while I was getting ready to leave. I still had to go to school with all of these really, really big questions, and nobody had answers. Adults couldn’t tell me what was going on. I think that’s what terrified me the most, that the adults I looked up to “who knew everything” suddenly knew nothing. We were told to not talk about it. Eventually they sent us home but it was weird day. My childhood ended in 4th grade.
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u/morningisbad 13h ago
I was in 8th grade. The first tower was hit during my second period class and the teacher turned on the TV for the last 10 minutes before class ended. Our 3rd period teacher hadn't heard, but she put it on for us. During that period, the second tower was hit and both fell. I distinctly remember holding hands with my middle school girlfriend in class.
During the next period the teachers made an announcement. One kid clearly hadn't heard what happened and when the teacher explained it, he said "cool!". I remember my teacher being absolutely furious and telling him to "get the hell out" and kicked him out of the classroom. Our parents all came to get us after that.
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u/SerenityFailed 14h ago
"Go home, your mom is here. And by the way, the towers fell. I know you're just a kid right now, but this is gonna shape your hell."
- Sean Tobin "Sourdough & Avocado"
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u/StrangeMagic92 3h ago
Fact. Little did we know at the time this was the beginning of all this bullshit.
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u/Norway643 14h ago
You know.. as someone born after the event.. I feel as if I can't grasp the full magnitude of 9/11. Like. I can fully grasp the tragedy of so many lives being lost. But since I never lived in pre 9/11 times I can't grasp the idea of why it was so massive
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u/TheTerrarian83 13h ago
I wasn’t alive either but I think it just shattered a lot of peoples world view. I assume there was an air of safety, or peace. From what I understand no one could have possibly imagined something like that was even possible. Nowadays it’s joked about and seems obviously like something terrorists could do, but before that, no one would have believed you if you said it was about to happen.
No human being would actually hijack a plane full of innocent lives and deliberately fly it into a building full of thousands more. Until they did.
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u/ptype 13h ago
This is exactly it. There were bombings before, there were plane hijackings before, but the absolute scale of it was unimaginable at the time.
Especially, imagine if you will, the real-time progression from "holy shit they hit one of the twin towers with a plane, a whole bunch of people just died", to "holy shit they hit the SECOND twin tower with a plane while everyone watched live. A whole bunch more people just died basically in front of my eyes", to "oh my god, they actually fully collapsed. These massive buildings just fell down on themselves. Fucking EVERYONE there just died all at once."
We had no idea any of that was going to happen until it did, and the tragedy just kept getting worse and worse on a larger and larger scale.
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u/TracerBulletX 10h ago edited 36m ago
The progression for us was: after the first one we thought it was an accident, the second one was the holy fuck what the fuck is going on moment. And then the pentagon one was like, all bets are off, what even is the full scope of this, how many more are there going to be, we thought it could be any scale at that point. There were false reports of missing planes and other targets all morning before things settled down.
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u/anothergaijin 12h ago
Don’t forget the Pentagon, and there was all kinds of unconfirmed reports of other attacks or things. It was panic, chaos and fear all over. For a while US airspace was completely shut down - every single non-military flight was grounded.
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u/matthewmspace 12h ago
And it was Ben Sliney, the National Operations Manager for the FAA, his first day of work. Talk about literal trial by fire.
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u/Disastrous_Grab_3322 12h ago
To respond directly to you. I was a junior highschool. It was so beyond belief that everyone was trying to figure out what could have gone so catastrophically wrong that a pilot was that low, in New York air space and hit the tallest building in the city. Not one believed it could have been intentional until the second plane hit. We were all watching tv.
Where I was it was I think still first period. We came in and we're all goofing around in homeroom. My school was small and the two oldest classes were about 40 kids. We were having fun since the teachers were like 30 mins late, two students were talking about how we were under attack, they just heard. There was some talk back and forth about how they were hearing wrong, and someone else pipes up saying it was true. I told them if something big was going on the teachers would say something.
Almost of cue our social studies teacher came in with a TV and said "something happened, some of you might have heard, we all talked and we think you are mature enough to watch with us. Four or 5 teachers sat in the back of the room talking in hushed voices while we all watched. We watched live as the second plane hit. I thought it was a recap of the first impact. My friend Ashley screamed.
We all sat in a classroom together and called out what we saw. It was almost like it was so horrifying that your brain couldn't fully understand what was happening. The people jumping out of windows.... You sat and you watched people.... Human beings... Fall forever... And all you wanted to do was was reach through the TV and save them. And in a macabre fashion the cameras kept zooming in. Forcing on them.... People with families, humans going about their day, someones son or daughter, and what felt like the would world just watched their last moments... Most didn't move. They just seemed to accept it.
Most people watched the news for a week straight. After the first day there wasn't anything new to report. Just more death and sorrow. While it is a VERY hard read/listen. The stories of the "the walking dead of 9/11" just added to the horror. First responders triaging and the people that were moving still, some walking, some sitting and talking with half their head gone, half their body gone, just in shock and their body didn't realize yet that they should be dead.
I'm sorry if there are typos or me trying to reword stuff doesn't make sense. It's a lot.
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u/CoffeeTeaPeonies 9h ago
The walking dead of 9/11?
I had not heard of this. Are there some resources to read about this?
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u/MusicHater 13h ago
It had been a scenario in fiction for years. The most directly similar is from Tom Clancy. Written in 1994, "Debt of Honor" is the story of a short war between America and Japan, with the climax being a pilot flying a 747 into the capital building during a joint session of Congress with the President attending.
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 13h ago
I think to give perspective is it was 2 fold
1 it was one of the largest terror attacks ever and so many people died. So just on the scale deaths was crazy. It also came and went in an instant, so although the death count was nothing like covid, covid slow boiled people building up over time as the new normal.
2 Americans thought they were untouchable and separated from the rest of the world. So all the worlds problems were a problem far away with nothing to do with them. With the cold war recently won this idea they were untouchable was extremely reinforced and when the bubble burst in a single day and they did not take it well at all.
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u/anothergaijin 12h ago
I think more importantly there is a 3rd factor - it was live and televised, and so many of us watched it unfold, utterly powerless to stop it, not realizing just how bad it was going to be but it was already past the point of no return.
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u/Buy_Moria 7h ago
To speak to your point we watched it unfold live. News coverage picked it up after the first plane hit. So a lot of people were watching. Meaning a lot of people were watching live as the second plane hit and then the towers fell.
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u/whystudywhensleep 12h ago
As someone also born after the event, it’s also hard for me to understand the reaction people have. I think it’s a combination of a few things. First is the fact that we were taught about 9/11 basically every year in school, being shown the videos of the towers in school and a bunch of documentaries and stuff. Second is (in large part due to social media), increased constant awareness of horrific losses of life both in the US and out of it, including US atrocities in the Middle East as a revengeful response to 9/11. And third, just the general acceleration of the US into fascism and the helpless, nihilistic emotional response that comes from it. So many fucking things keep fucking happening, so each individual event is less shocking, I have never felt like the US is invincible or infallible.
If a plane/planes crashed into a building in a similar scale to 9/11 next month, or some equivalent attack, I’d be of course extremely devastated for the loss of life and terrified for what tf is going to come from this, just like people say they were during 9/11. But I don’t think I’d be shocked. I wouldn’t think “how could this happen?!?” I’d mostly just be like “of fucking course”.
It’s hard for me to even picture what the pre 9/11 world was like. The mindset is so foreign to me
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u/ElectricityIsWeird 10h ago
You shouldn’t be shocked that your attitude was prevalent then, also.
I am not claiming mental or philosophical superiority here. I was freaked out too, mad at the terrorists. But, my friend’s reaction to learning of it, “So, the chickens have come home to roost?” really got me thinking.
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u/Later_Than_You_Think 13h ago
It's hard to think of something similar because now precautions are taken against this, but you might be able to imagine something like if one day you woke up and an unknown force had dropped a nuclear bomb on Chicago. Who did it? How did they manage it? How many of your friends and family were going to die in the coming war? Is there going to be a draft? Is the war going to be fought on American soil? Is this just the first part of an invasion? How could this happen?
Also, the towers took hours to fall. So we were all watching clear shots of scores of people waving for help from the upper floors while helicopters helplessly circled. And then people began jumping. And it wasn't just the towers. It was the Pentagon and the third plane that was supposed to hit the White House, but crashed in Pennsylvania since the passengers fought back.
No on knew who had hi-jacked the planes. It could have been Russia, China, or someone else. More attacks could be planned. The last time something like that had happened - Pearly Harbor - American got involved in a Total War that shaped that generation and the one after it for life.
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u/rxredhead 13h ago
I think what someone born after 9/11 can’t understand is how easy flying was before that. My dad had to fly out of town for work and mom would take us to meet him at the gate and watch the planes flying in and out before he landed. You didn’t have to plan arriving hours early for security and you only bought travel size toiletries to save space in your bag, not because they’d be thrown away if TSA got them
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u/No1KnwsIWatchTeenMom 13h ago
It's impossible to explain. I was in 8th grade, so wasn't an adult when it happened, but the world changed. I live in a different world today than I did before 9/11. Things like the Patriot Act, and the amount of fear that has become ingrained in our society...I dont even know what could happen that would result in the same level of magnitude. Maybe if AI goes rogue.
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u/pelko34 12h ago
The nicely dovetails into Far-Fennel-3032’s item #2 above. It was the dawn of that realization that we were not, in fact, untouchable. This fueled the fear that was used to divide us and do terrible things. Like we became more lizard brained, in a way. Idk, maybe that last bit is a stretch.
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u/j10brook 14h ago
I was in college, taking a test early in the morning. After the test the professor asked the room if anybody had family in NYC, a lot hands went up. And then he asked if anyone had family who worked in The World Trade Center, and a few hands remained up.
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u/JMoc1 14h ago
I don’t remember that day… but I remember everyone’s reactions. Even here in Minnesota, my family was told to hide their ethnicity because of the immense hatred the days after.
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u/Sea-Value-0 13h ago
There were attempted lynchings of people wearing turbans or religious head coverings in my state. A lot of Sikh men were targeted here because the racists assumed they were Muslim. I remember some neighbors being scared to go anywhere at night. It was a messed up time.
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u/Helstrem 13h ago
The first revenge killing was a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona. Last I heard he was still in prison and the victim’s brother still visits him.
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u/Lostinthestarscape 12h ago
I'm generally not for religion but when it moves people to that kind of unconditional compassion it is really quite impressive. I can get behind that aspect of it.
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u/WalterTexasRanger326 13h ago
Saw somewhere that the murderer died in prison a few years ago
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u/Chuckitybye 13h ago
I was friends with 2 brothers from Jordan and immediately called them to ask if they were safe, tell them I loved them, and ask them to be careful. They were crying telling me everyone was gathering at their mom's place
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u/noroadsleft 11h ago
My family hosted an exchange student from Azerbaijan for about six months a couple of years before 9/11. His dream was to be a doctor, and he wanted to graduate high school back home, then come back to the States to go to university. Then 9/11 happened. We used to hear from him by phone every couple of years after he went back home, and I remember a call we had with him after 9/11 where he said he was scared to come back to the U.S. because of anti-Muslim sentiment (his family was Muslim, but not especially devout).
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u/speakezjags 13h ago edited 11h ago
My wife's and her family are from Afghanistan. We hate this day for different reasons. I hate it for the impact the attack had on my childhood and understanding of death and violence at a young age. She hates it because after that day the racism against her and her family was cranked up past 11 for the forseeable future.
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u/SnooCalculations2227 13h ago edited 8h ago
Same, my dad's only 9/11 story was his boss calling him early in the morning telling him not to come into work that day, because people were attacking who looked muslim, and this was in california
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u/Four_Verts 13h ago
I was 11 when this happened and my (white) dad went into Dave and Busters to get a gift card for some friend. I wanted to go in too and my mom said I couldn’t because “people don’t really like us right now”. I didn’t really understand it at the time because we are southeast Asian, but then stories came out about anyone that looked Muslim.
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u/Decaying-Moon 13h ago
That's the one moment I really liked George W (in hindsight, I was in 4th grade at the time) because he knew what the reaction was going to be and he specifically call it out and said it was the 100% wrong way to treat our fellow Americans, and innocent people in general.
Might be a drop of water in a vast desert, but it still feels like something. Y'know?
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 14h ago
I'll never forget where I was. Mrs Fs fifth grade science class. I remember all the teachers left suddenly and came back crying. Ended up sending us home.
Didn't really sink in what happened for a while cause I was just a kid. But I also had no idea how it would shape my future.
And now every year on this day I climb 110 flights of stairs to remember those that were lost.
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u/-insertcoin 14h ago
Better than mine I was in 6th grade they pulled us all into the gym and wheeled in 3 tvs with the news playing, We were in middle school 4th to 6th grade.
I imagine it was the most traumatic thing that happened until the pandemic. I wonder how that played out for kids in school at the time.
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u/weirdwench1 13h ago
I was in kindergarten in Colorado. Mom turned on the little white TV in the kitchen because she wanted to know if a football player was hurt. And thats when we watched the second plane hit.
I was eating toast. We walked the block to drop me off at school. We made flags with glitter and stars and ripped paper while our teacher cried and kids got taken home one by one.
Mom picked up white carnations and handed them out to people who came into the store, then she had lunch with me in the mostly empty cafeteria. It was the good grilled cheese and tomato soup that day.
Even in Colorado, it was this weird numb feeling. We went up to the mountains for like a week after that day. It was very quite with out any planes.
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u/BlackTecno 13h ago
I was in kindergarten as well at the time, and I just remember being pulled out of school much earlier than normal. And while I didn't understand or really remember much, the way my parents acted that day makes me think of something gray. They're strong people, willing to shield me from such truths, but despite getting out early, I've never thought of it as a good day.
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u/weirdwench1 13h ago
Mom couldn't really hide it from me seeing as we just watched it together. But i remember it didn't make sense. I suggested it was not on the local news station, maybe it was on a different one? Could dad have changed it to a movie befor work?
It does feel gray. I think thats why I remember the food. Everything was quiet and soft but the food was still food and it was comforting
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u/LoveAndViscera 13h ago
In Colorado, as well, but I was 16. My dad turned on my bedroom light and said “get up, the world’s on fire.”
I sat in the living room watching the first tower smoke and felt like dad was overselling it. Then, the second hit and the news came in about the Pentagon and the fourth plane that crashed in the field taking every one of those motherfucking heroes with it.
They read the names of famous people who had died. I think one was a producer on Frasier or something. I knew I had to do something, so I pulled out the camcorder/VHS system I had hacked together to make my own movie trailers and set a bunch of news footage to Enya’s ‘Only Time’. That made me feel better.
Then, I went to work at the local library and I was having conversations with adults about it all day. People were coming down from camping trips to get the news. A woman my mom’s age stood at the front desk with me and cried and talked through how stupid she felt reading romance novels and I was 16 so I had no idea what to say to that.
It was a whole day of being professional while all these grownups responded to the crisis at or near my desk.
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u/Senasayori 14h ago
It seems like every twenty years in the United States, there's a defining event that everybody knows where they were at the time. The pandemic, 9/11, the Challenger, JFK, etc.
Hopefully the 2040s get something positive.
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u/x4000 13h ago
I was 18, working in an office building in NC. Only five stories tall, but I remember being afraid something would hit this building, too. A bunch of us crowded into a coworker’s cubicle where she had a live video on her monitor. The second plane hit, and she burst into tears; she had a friend on the top floors of that tower. All of the older people just stood around in shock, and this woman was about forty. So I just gave her a hug and she sobbed against me.
I don’t remember much else from the day. But it was terrifying and heartbreaking and nobody knew what was going on.
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u/Author_A_McGrath 13h ago
I was a freshman in college. A week on campus, and suddenly every classmate went from completely apathetic about geopolitics to insta-patriots.
It was the strangest thing to see. My classmates changed visibly, like they all suddenly wanted war.
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u/Pandaherbs13 13h ago
I was a senior in high school, driving my sister (two years younger) when the first tower was hit. Suddenly none of the radio channels were playing music, but we were too distracted to listen and turned off the radio. We got to school just in time to watch the second tower fall. I remember feeling horror and a sense of unreality. I honestly don’t remember anything else about that day, if we were sent home or not. But I’ll never forget the quiet, abject horror the entire country felt and I hope we never feel that again.
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u/boogiemath 12h ago
I was 6 years old and on the west coast of Canada. Mom woke me up for school and I slowly made my way downstairs just in time to see the second plane hit the tower on the TV. My mom was crying. I had no idea what was going on, or why it made her cry, but school ended up being canceled, even up here.
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u/masterjon_3 14h ago
My father-in-law is a navy seal. As soon as it happened, my wife saw him pack everything he needed to go overseas.
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u/smithstephaniel 14h ago
I was 17; it was my senior year of high school. I had computer processing/typing class first period, and my teacher had a strict “no television or radio while typing” rule, since we all had to wear headphones anyway. We had no idea what was going on until the end of class when the principal came over the PA system and addressed it. It was such a surreal day, and watching it play out in real time was such a strange jumble of emotions. That’s definitely the day my childhood ended, and I had no idea what to expect from the world.
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u/frycookie 13h ago
I was the same age, same year in school. Except I was suspended, so I had to go to work. I told my dad they were flying planes into buildings but he wasn't receptive. "Go turn on the news". It was a surreal and quiet day in the vicinity of NORAD for the rest of the day.
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u/CharacterSquare449 13h ago
It’s so weird to me seeing this comment as someone who’s currently 17 and in her senior year, 25 years after this day took place. If it happened today I’d likely have been in the same situation that you were, but I’ll never know that same feeling.
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u/Zomburai 14h ago
I spent all morning watching the TV coverage and reloading every news website I could find for updates. "Surreal" gets thrown around a lot, but honestly I don't think the word communicates the experience. I don't think it could unless you were old enough to know what life was really like in the 90s and to realize that you were in the aftermath on a random-ass Tuesday morning.
I went to the restaurant where I worked for some lunch and to pick up my check. Even just to get out of the house, take a break from the panic. I remember, and I will never forget this, an acquaintance of mine sitting in the lounge, inconsolably weeping in sheer panic, ranting that terrorists were going to hijack all the planes and crash them into every building. They were going to crash them into the mall, into the restaurant, into the community center, they were, in our town of 50,000 people. I've never seen someone in that level of sheer, unreasoning panic. Ever.
She was wrong in the literal sense, of course, but I think part of the reason I remember that so vividly was because she was right in a metaphorical one. The terrorists won. Their attack terrified America so much that we gave away our hegemony and superpower status to chase after vicarious revenge and imagined enemies. For one moment the world was united behind us and we threw it away for empire building and tyranny.
9/11 was the birth pangs of the 21st Century... and who are ever more terrified than new parents?
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u/Tenekah 14h ago
I was told I was playing ‘reporter’ for my grandma because I didn’t know why she was watching the tv so much that day.. my mom was pregnant with my younger brother and she told me that she was terrified of the world her baby was going to be born into. It was a sad day across the world
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u/nowherewandering 13h ago
I was a senor in high school when it happened, we had a substitute teacher that morning, he was an older man about mid 50s or later. We started hearing whispers coming in about a crash and he asked us what happened when someone told him a plane hit one of the towers, all he said was "My son works there" then left the room leaving us alone confused until we turned on the TV in the room watching the news until some staff saw we didn't have a teacher. It's one of those moments that haunt me because I never even knew his name or if his son was ok.
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u/catswithbatsandhats 14h ago
I was 15, coming up on 16. My younger sister was barely 14. We watched in class and she didn't (she was in middle school).
I was in NJROTC. We watched the second building hit in that class. Our class leader told us that this was not an accident and it may not happen tomorrow but we would be going to war at some point. He told us this was the time to decide if we actually wanted to enlist or not.
I decided I wasn't cut out for it. It seemed logical before the attacks because I was in a military family but the reality of going into war, even though at the time that would have been limited as a woman, really hit me. Most of my classmates enlisted when they were old enough. I never got judged for not. Not everyone is cut out for the military.
My sister didn't have a sense of how serious it was. After a day she was frustrated that nothing else was on the TV. I don't judge her for that, we were kids.
But it still strikes me how we were only a year and as half apart but we saw it so differently.
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u/AngelWingsYTube 12h ago
Its understandable....i was 1st grade i didnt understand was wondering why no cartoons were on. Why i couldnt leave the house. I knew something bad happened but i didnt get what or why it affected so much.
Its hard to grasp the situation as a child.
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u/Ralife55 13h ago
I was seven, I remember getting taken out of school but no one told me why. Being seven I just rolled with it and didn't ask any questions.
Several months later I was at my grandmother's with my family and they were talking about it on the news, showing the towers on fire.
I said "oh wow, what happened". My grandfather got, I would argue, unreasonably angry at me, practically screaming "what happened?!" In response before going on a tirad of asking me questions and being very mad when I didn't know the answers to them because I didn't know what was going on.
I was seven, and here I had a sixty something year old man being curt with me for not keeping up with geopolitical events. Worst part was none of the other adults spoke up for me. If anything they looked disappointed in me for, again, being seven and not keeping up with geopolitical events.
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u/BreakfastNext476 14h ago
Was at school when the news hit that it happened. Teachers allowed us to head to the library to watch the news
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u/Helstrem 13h ago
I was in California, unemployed thanks to the dotcom crash and my roommate woke me up to tell me one of the towers had collapsed.
I was taking a C+ class at College of Marin and the guy who sat next to me would have been near the top of one of the towers with his co-workers, but because of the class he’d gotten permission to fly out to the meeting on the 11th rather than the 10th. Only he and his boss, who was looking for parking after having gotten doughnuts when the first plane hit, survived from his company.
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u/leela_la_zu 14h ago
I was 12 and in gym class when they made the announcement. It was made multiple times by teachers and over the loud speaker. Then during history class a friend was told her mom was safe. The teacher told her in front of the entire class. She took her shoe off and threw it at our teacher crying and yelled, "what do you mean?! of course she's fine!"
My dad, who was divorced from my mom, picked us up from school early that day. My mom worked in customer service for a large airlines. She was not able to come home for a long time, and when she did come home she cried all the time. Later that week we attended a memorial service for the many local first responders who lost their lives.
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u/ZombieButch 14h ago
I was 30, and was working in downtown Oklahoma City just down the street from where the Murrah Building had been. My wife was 6 months pregnant and freaking out. It was a tense day.
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u/MarylandCat 13h ago
I wasn't alive yet, but my mom was. It was her 28th birthday and she was driving to work and had her CDs in since she didn't like to listen to the radio. When she arrived some of her coworkers were freaking out and one was screaming about how one of the twin towers were hit by a plane.
A friend of my mom said that is was a small plane (many people assumed so at the time) and many in her office crowded into the break room where there was a TV. Just as it was turned on the all watched Flight 175 hit the south tower.
She didn't celebrate her birthday for close to 15 years. Its her birthday today and it's still very rough for her knowing how many peoples lives were lost.
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u/TrogledyWretched 11h ago
Hey, my birthday was the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami, the greatest tragedy in recorded history, so I feel that
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u/FVCarterPrivateEye 13h ago
My mom was pregnant with me when it happened, and she was in the hospital because my pregnancy gave her preeclampsia, and my dad was super tired and groggy that morning got a phonecall from his sister who lives in New York right across the river from where the twin towers were, which meant she saw it happen live right from her window
She was completely freaking out and talking so fast that he couldn't understand her at all, and my mom in the hospital bed across the room said to him in fright "come look at the TV" because it was showing the footage, and my dad said "...did one of the towers just fall?" And my aunt screamed into his ear "BOTH OF THEM!"
According to my parents, the doctors at the hospital all stayed professional and kept their backs to the TV and just kept doing their job while my parents were both gawping with their eyes glued at the TV on the wall corner of the hospital room
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 13h ago
My god. Bless those doctors… they knew if they did turn around they couldn’t take care of your mom (and you).
Living on the west coast, I’ve been removed from the enormity of it but visited NYC for the first time in 2022 and went to the memorial site. It shook me to realize its scale. I didn’t grow up with sky scrapers so seeing what was is devastating.I’m glad you got to come into the world safely and hope your family is doing well. Give your mom and aunt a hug for me.
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u/defaultgameer1 14h ago
4th grade, we were brought into an assembly, principal told us what happened. I didn't really understand what it all meant. My dad kept us home the next day, and I started catching bits of the news.
It's so hard to put into words how everything changed after that day.
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u/chasesan 14h ago
My damn school kept it from us. They made it a half day and I didn't find out until I got home what was going on. I entered the front door and my brain skipped a track as the TV was playing on repeat and I found out what happened.
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u/Middle-Let9645 13h ago
Yeah. My mom did a similar thing except she was better at it. I was eight at the time, and my mom was on a homeschool craze at the time, so she was able to keep me and my brother from finding out for an entire year and I asked what happened on September 11th. To this day I don’t know how to feel about it. I get I was young, and she was just trying to protect me, but there’s some things that shouldn’t be kept like that.
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u/kurimiq 14h ago
I was in a global meeting and someone from Dublin told us that we had been attacked and what happened. You could see everyone’s jaw tense and the room got deathly quiet until one of the people said in a quiet yet somehow menacing tone “well that’s it then…. We’re at war”
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u/Playful-Profile6489 13h ago
I have never understood the common refrain of "now we're at war" as if we weren't waging war in the Middle East for a conservative decade before 9/11 and bin Laden hadn't declared war on US military forces in 1996 and US civilians in 1998
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u/dsdsds 13h ago
We, Americans, felt invulnerable. Wars happened “over there”. Mostly it was dictators killing their own, and maybe the US was involved, maybe funding, maybe supplying weapons, but not openly, overtly at war. Most of the people in any country are just going about their daily lives, and have no control.
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u/merpixieblossomxo 13h ago
It's strange to me that nothing so big has happened in the 25 years since, considering how many wars that the United States has been involved in either directly or indirectly.
Is it because our national security really is that much better as a result of it, or maybe just that citizens aren't made aware of anything else, or has there really never been another attack on American soil?
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u/matthewmspace 12h ago
Security has gotten a lot better. The TSA didn't exist until two months later in November 2001 and wasn't fully in place at all airports until late 2002. The 2005 UK bombings also forced even more security, which is how the UK became essentially a surveillance state.
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u/GiantLesbian 12h ago
We were not that far out from the Cold War at this point. And a lot of people had been raised with
the understanding that if strikes on American soil were on the table, then nuclear war was on the table. I feel like a lot of people forget, there was not just a fear of war after 9/11 there was a fear of nuclear war. Which is exactly why that “weapons of mass destruction” lie worked so well.→ More replies (1)
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u/throwawabcintrovert 14h ago
I was in first grade and they made us stay inside for an 'air pollution day'
Of course there was a rumor running around about what was really going on and then I guess our teachers realized this so they told us what happened. They had us draw the twin towers for them. I lived in Texas and had no clue that these buildings even existed at that point.
And then I went home and watched it on the news with my dad who was so shocked that he was still in his underwear
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u/yokozouna_ed 14h ago
I was 12 in a town about an hour north of New Orleans. When the first tower was hit, classes stopped immediately. We all turned on the TV in the classrooms; if kids were in a room without one, they were rotated in and out of the library or one of those rolling stand TVs was brought to the room. We all sat in silence periodically broken by quite whispers to each other trying to piece together what was going on. The teachers had no answers for us. Our parents were picking us up by the time the second tower was hit. Our parents seemed to know about as much as the teachers. The kids only knew that something BIG big just happened and not some buildings accidentally getting hit by some planes.
I wouldn't understand the true gravity of what happened until like 2 years later; it changed so much no matter how you look at it.
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u/trash_babe 14h ago
My parents had the same conversation that night. My dad did get deployed, first to Afghanistan then Iraq. He was a year from his retirement from the Air Force in 2001 and didn’t get to retire until 2007. Did your dad get deployed too?
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u/Quirky-Mood-833 13h ago
I was in 7th grade, homeroom. My teacher had the tv on in the corner and it was just silent. No one talked, we just watched trying to figure out what was happening. Not too long later my mom (a local govt employee at the time) had left work and came and picked me up from school. She was terrified. We lived in the Bay Area, and she heard about the plane that was bound for SF and left work immediately to pick us up. I’ll never forget seeing the footage on the news when the towers collapsed.
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u/Lisylis 13h ago
I am not from the USA so maybe it's something cultural but I do not understand why so many classrooms made everyone watch this on TV
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u/uk_uk 13h ago
Because it's "History live".
There are a few moments in history that shaped the world in "before" and "after". 9/11 was one of these events. Or Pearl Harbor, or Attack on Poland in 1939, Challenger, moon landing, Chernobyl etc etc etcWhen you as a teacher/parent know "this will change the world in one way or another", you need to gather the kids to witness that too.
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u/JayPlenty24 12h ago
No one knew what was happening and the biggest concern at the time was more attacks.
I think the adults wanted to know exactly what was happening.
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u/Zephyr-Fox-188 13h ago
It was broadcast on every news channel, and a lot of radio stations. For a lot of people, they NEEDED to know what was happening. I know some of them didn’t want to keep kids out of the loop about what was happening. It was initially believed to be a accidental tragedy, but after the second plane, people genuinely thought it was either the beginning hours of an invasion by our near-peer adversaries, or a mass terror attack that could span the entire east coast
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u/Splatter_bomb 14h ago
I was in grad school working in a lab. The internet was frozen solid we could only get a single terrifying image to load. Ended up dusting off an old radio to listen to the news, no TVs in the lab.
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u/Rosian_SAO 13h ago
I keep telling this story but I doubt I’ll stop. My aunt was in the second tower to be hit, working at a call center. There was an announcement over the intercoms that said a plane had hit the North tower, and everyone had to stay seated. My aunt got up, got her brother-in-law and six of coworkers, and they all left. They caught the last train to leave the area, right before that tower fell. They would have all died had she not trusted her gut, and they’re all still alive today. Love you aunt Helen ❤️
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u/Rylos1701 13h ago
Wow! I remember Survivors from the 2nd tower said announcements told everyone not to evacuate.
Glad your aunt chose life over a job.8
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u/BigWilly526 13h ago
I was in 6th Grade in Brooklyn, my whole class saw the 2nd plane hit when we went to the window to look at the smoke, I later saw Tower 2 collapse and after that you couldn't see anything, the smell in the air, the dust, and the paper scattered in the air I still remember it to this day, the smell of burning plastic will give me a panic attack
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u/dakotanorth8 13h ago
The second tower, happening live.
The confusion. (Live, anchors weren’t even sure what just happened)
The “…no way…”
And the confirmation.
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u/Donk_Honkula 10h ago
Middle of High School.
They turned on the TV.
All those poor people.
Everything stopped and then pivoted on that day.
Friends and people I love signed up for war with noble intentions. For love of country. Only to be sent places under false pretenses, used and abandoned.
The Patriot act. I remember reading of the details and thinking It was terrifying. That this was the catalyst for nothing good in the long run. That power once given, historically, is almost never relinquished willingly.
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u/reddot_comic Finessed Impropriety 10h ago
There hasn’t been a good outcome for anyone except those in power.
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u/cyanraichu 13h ago
Wow lotta top comments from then-fifth-graders. I'll join the chorus with my contemporaries. My fifth grade teacher got called to an emergency meeting and then came back and told us what happened and turned on the news and we all just stared. We didn't have any more lessons that day. My mom cried and she's not a crier.
I wish I could have been an adult in a pre-9/11 world. I know it changed a lot of things but I'm not able to appreciate how as well as some others.
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u/Shandd 13h ago
I remember being in O'Hare ready for my first plane ride when we all saw the first tower go down. Chicago was a nightmare that day, and it's stuck with me forever
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u/TheActualGrayOwl 13h ago
I was born too late to witness it myself. But damn did I get to grow up watching the way our country chose to respond to it...
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u/Akitiki 14h ago
I was in... kindergarten? Little building beside a church, 20-odd kids. I remember being in the playroom and it was like everything went silent. Heard the news in the next room on the mounted tube TV, I remember very clearly passing through the threshold just in time to see live feed of the second plane.
I don't remember too much about my childhood but that one sticks. I can't say I was horrified, I was like 5. But I recall feeling the weight.
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u/CaydeTheCat 14h ago
I was living in Silicon Valley working for a startup...4 years out of college. A college friend of mine on the East Coast woke me up at like 730a Pacific time and told me to turn the TV on to any channel and hung up.
Took my brain a couple minutes to wake up and realize this was for-real real.