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
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.
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.
There are only podcasts and recordings from first responders and people on the ground. I've only run into them on occasion. But it's not the dust thing. It's people that we so badly injured by debris falling. Or people that responders had no idea how they got where they were found. Try searching for first hand stories. The one that stuck with me was a lady that wanted to call her daughter and she was just sitting there and the back of her skull was gone. Something fell off the buildings and sheered her skull off. But she was just sitting there in shock talking normally....
The towers collapsing created a dust cloud that encompassed part of the city and there were videos of shocked people emerging, covered in dust, walking funny like they were zombies of ash.
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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