I am a horrible monster.

A good many amazing threads have been lost to the mists of time, which is why I decided to post this.

Let's remember for a minute: there was incredible pandemonium immediately following the attack. So much so, in fact, that it eventually knocked out the Internet as CNN and every other major news site was knocked offline due to the traffic. It, alas, also took out these very forums - but not before a record of it unfolding before our very eyes was recorded.

I'm certain some of you have been looking this thread, and others just curious. I experimented with a variety of ways of figuring out how to package this (ZIP files were giving me a headache) before I finally settled on this: the way it was meant to be presented.

NOTE: WHEN USING THE LINKS BELOW, DON'T BOTHER CLICKING ON THE PAGE NAVIGATION. YOU WILL GET "INVALID THREAD"

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 | 16 17 18

Threads 1-15 are the real-time thread, 16-18 are after the fact when the forums reopened.

I figured now would be the perfect time to repost these in public, now that emotions have cooled down and cooler heads are (hopefully) prevailing. I'm not going to take credit for this; I am simply the historian. But these are one and a half hours of the most compelling reading in the history of these forums - live and free exchange from a variety of people, the very essence of the Internet.

I close with the following words: NEVER FORGET.

Silent Strider

I got mail from the NYPD two days ago. They found my bag at the trade center, and I get to go pick it up tomorrow. You betyour ass I won't forget.

The imitation Pope can be recognised by his foul mouth and impressive skateboarding abilities.

The IRC log of #somethingawful when this all happened was interesting reading as well. Obviously it's a little more disjointed (as IRC tends to be), but interesting none-the-less.

__________________

| Secret Pirate Island - a.k.a. .au Portal 1 | matt.secondaryfusion.net | Oz GoonCon! |

Will choke to death for food.

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There's a band from here called I am the World Trade Center. They should do their next show while being on fire.

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Crikey! The Aussie Goons Cam Portal!

I am unfunny, unoriginal, and can't spell at all

Oh, I saved that thread as well. And I was in IRC for much of that day, but not near the time it happened.

__________________
Giggity giggity giggity! Heh, heh, alriiiiiight!

I'm ashamed now at what I posted in that thread.

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e/n

I am unfunny, unoriginal, and can't spell at all

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emilbus came out of the closet to say:
I'm ashamed now at what I posted in that thread.

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Giggity giggity giggity! Heh, heh, alriiiiiight!

(core dumped)

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HauntedRoad came out of the closet to say:
I got mail from the NYPD two days ago. They found my bag at the trade center, and I get to go pick it up tomorrow. You betyour ass I won't forget.

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quote:

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SpeedFrog came out of the closet to say:
The IRC log of #somethingawful when this all happened was interesting reading as well. Obviously it's a little more disjointed (as IRC tends to be), but interesting none-the-less.

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I have to remind myself that it was happening in real time, because reading some of the comments there really pisses me off. Some of the hate and some of the stupidity, honestly probably more the stupidity, but I don't think the people being stupid even realize it now when they reread it.

"Blank Space!"

It's weird how at first everyone was joking about it.

Then they weren't.

Also:
Darth Versace is apparently an esper or something. Check her post on the second page to get a glimpse of her frightening third eye vision.

Edit: BEAT YOU GORDON FREEMAN. HAHA

__________________
"Behold I Am Become Death.
Destroyer Of Threads"

Superbus Via Inscientiæ

Holy crap, DarthVersace is a psychic. Check out page two.

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I wasn't posting on the forums when it happened, so this is all new to me. I understand people joking about it now, I mean we joke about history in retrospect in here, but I was suprised how a lot of people were joking about this as it happened. I was just so shitfaced that entire day, I expected to see a little more disbelief and emotion than HA HA I BET A LOT OF PEOPLE JUST DIED. COMEDY GOLD. I don't think this is the best thread to illustrate your point of never forgetting 9/11.

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Fake Lowtax clone, or am I?

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Dr. Gordon Freeman came out of the closet to say:
Holy crap, DarthVersace is a psychic. Check out page two.

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__________________

quote:

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Dr. Gordon Freeman came out of the closet to say:
Holy crap, DarthVersace is a psychic. Check out page two.

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I treat everyone equally.

quote:

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monkeu said:

WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

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__________________
Logix is my hero.

(core dumped)

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elpintogrande came out of the closet to say:
I have to remind myself that it was happening in real time, because reading some of the comments there really pisses me off. Some of the hate and some of the stupidity, honestly probably more the stupidity, but I don't think the people being stupid even realize it now when they reread it.

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OH, I SURE POST A LOT

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Hope they've got a good fixer-upperer...

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Caboose on the MANTRAIN!

jesus. just reading my post brought back so much bad memories i started tearing. i had to goto a psychiatrist and be put on anti-anxiety medication after 9/11. number of trips to the hospital thinking i had anthrax afterwards? 3. granted i was already going to a psychologist, but that day definitly didnt help me get any better.

ps. my father and all his employees made it out safely that morning.

Administrator

quote:

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SpeedFrog came out of the closet to say:
The IRC log of #somethingawful when this all happened was interesting reading as well.

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Fake Lowtax clone, or am I?

Number of times "Holy shit" said in thread: 17,280

(core dumped)

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NickLess came out of the closet to say:
jesus. just reading my post brought back so much bad memories i started tearing. i had to goto a psychiatrist and be put on anti-anxiety medication after 9/11. number of trips to the hospital thinking i had anthrax afterwards? 3. granted i was already going to a psychologist, but that day definitly didnt help me get any better.

ps. my father and all his employees made it out safely that morning.

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Will choke to death for food.

quote:

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Euronymous
Registered: 12-69
Moderator

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Hayama fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 06:32

Silent Strider

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kill9 came out of the closet to say:


You were there?

Call it curiosity, or at least wanting to hear some firsthand account, but I'm interested in hearing just how the NYPD came to finding your bag there, and the story behind this.

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Well, I work for Verizon in NYC on Pearl Street, which is about six blocks away from the WTC. I was in my office when the first plane hit, and my buddies on another board posted about it. Pretty much everyone in my office went to the elevator bay to watch. It was horrible to see, but it was just an accident, you know? So that was how I had a picture perfect view of the second plane hitting. at that, they evacuated our building. I'm right across the street from One Police Plaza,and the cops out there were asking anyone who knew first aid to go to the towers. I'm an EMT, so I went.

The following is my next post on the other message board I frequent, after everything happened:

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I am alive

But barely.

I got to the WTC before any of the collapses. I had treated several people for minor injuries, a few burn patients and a guy who had a sucking chest wound from jet shrapnel, I turned to help a woman having an asthma attack and heard this gigantic cracking sound. Looked up to see tower number one break and fall. Got trampled and fell, wound up essentially across the street from the WTC, burind in about 8 inches of soot and ash, thinking I was going to die any second. I got hit in the head and back by fist-size pieces of concrete, and then stood up as the rain of rocks stopped. I was choking on ash, throwing up and trying not to pass out. I made it to a police cruiser, jerked the door open and got inside.eventually i made my way down the street to a bar and got inside just in time to see the second tower collapse on tv.

The bar i was in actually straddled the entire block, it had windows on both adjoining streets. A gigantic wave of debris came rushing down, cracked the glass on both sides and engulfed un in complete darkness.

Eventually i made my way uptown, the EMT's decided I wasn't going to be able to help more than i was going to slow them down, bloodied up and all.

So i'm in another Verizon building, this one on east 30th street. I'm more or less ok, covered in bruises, scratches and blood (mine and mr. sucking chest wound's), my right ankle is about the size of a grapefruit and I think I may have cracked a rib. Other than that, I'm ok. They've got a new set of clothes and some hot food on the way for me, and if they ever open up the port authority, i should be getting home tonight.

Don't try and call me, my cell phone is off line as i lost my charger in the debris of the WTC, as well as my one and only car key, and my daytimer with checks and whatnot. Thankfully I had my pass, my bus ticket, my wallet and my cell phone in my pockets. (big pockets)

I'll write again later...

Chuck/CSD

---

I eventually got home by ferry that night, but I had written my bag and such off as lost. I went back to look for it that friday, but I couldn't find it in all the rubble.

here's a link to a pic of the scene, that shows where I was when the first tower collapsed. (big pic)

http://www.magicalcheese.com/uploads/ChuckS/groundzero2.jpg

Now tomorrow I get to find out how much of my stuff is left.

__________________


jeffraider and Tw0am adopted me. Talk to them if you hate me.

Why don't I have a custom title by now?!?

As sober as this all is, "NEVER FORGET" is already a phrase associated with the Holocaust and you'll find it in just about every Jewish cemetary you look in... I should hope we can find others (especially since I think the Holocaust was, in every respect, worse than 9/11).

I am a horrible monster and I pray for death.

I saw the second plane hit from Castle Point in Stevens Tech. I was on my way to class and I looke to my left and see a plane coming in very low and banking very hard. And then I saw the explosion. The girl next to me screamed out "HOLY FUCK!" I froze, solid. The entire campus was pure chaos. Students had their TVs hanging out their windows so people outside could see the coverage on the news. They set up a blood drive that was really make-shift in the gym and a lot of people, like myself gave blood. A lot of the medical efforts were set at Stevens, but it was never covered on the news. I'm not dissapointed, just found that odd.



I remember it like it was yesterday and I will never forget it.

Edit: Looking over the saved thread, it's a damn good thing I didn't look at the forums for a few months during 9/11. I can't believe the ignorance displayed.

/dev/jesus_christ fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 06:31

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HauntedRoad came out of the closet to say:


Stuff

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Silent Strider

quote:

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I sell out for boobs came out of the closet to say:


I know the possibilities are low, and I wouldn't have asked if I didn't see hauntedroad's story, but did anyone on the forums die from the 9/11 attacks? I just had to ask even if the odds are extremely low.

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Forum Veteran

I remember having the TV on behind me, and the forums in front of me. It was all we could do, post in disbelief. That was a long day for me and everyone else in this world too.

EDIT- And I must say, some of the things said in that thread were pretty harsh, but I just have to remind myself that most people didnt understand how bad it really was.

__________________
?!?!?!

sick body sick mind

Bahahah. The mood swing is hilarious.

I'm happy to say I'm not ashamed of the way I reacted to 9/11. Mostly because I didn't react. Except for flaming the kneerjerk idiots in CE.

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Does it look like the Tower is leaning to anyone else?

Kinda puts the leaning Tower of Piza to shame.

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__________________
click to donate food for free!

old sig month

I am now protecting grandma

Wow. I never actually saw the original thread, as I was in shock and glued to the television. What a day indeed. I've also had to supress the urge to hit reply and say "you FUCKHEAD" a few times.

The enormity of the situation still hasn't really sunken in. My grandparents went to NY over Thanksgiving, and they were very sobered by it. Maybe the distance I have from NY makes a difference. I just never expected something like that.

I'm going to jail.

GunOwner had some powerful pictures, from his cousin or whatever. I think the thread has been archived, I think.

I read that thread for about 30 seconds, right before I went to school that day, and when I came home, nothing was working. My net was killed, TV had shutdown, except for news broadcasts, and Sacramento was virtually empty.

Eeerie. This is making me shiver right now, bringing back all the emotions I went through that day.

__________________

SASGA - Something Awful Sacramento Goon Alliance, Motherbitches.

Forum Veteran

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Monkeu:

WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

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__________________
?!?!?!

Will choke to death for food.

I still remember my experience that morning. I woke up and saw one of my roomates watching the news. I tried to watch, but was too busy getting ready for school. So me and my other roomate went off in my car. I get to the parking garage, and I cant get in, because I forgot my pass, so I drove back home. I walked back inside and never left my television for about 2 days straight as I watched everything unfold with my roomates. I still cant believe that watching history unfold before your eyes has to be so tragic.

__________________
Register for gOONcON!
Register for gOONcON!
http://www.gooncom.com/

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Pledio came out of the closet to say:
Eeerie. This is making me shiver right now, bringing back all the emotions I went through that day.

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Maybe I missed it, but didn't GameQuoter break kayfabe and post something in the midst of all that? I'd really like to read it if anyone has it.

__________________

Newbie.

That picture of just the north tower standing alone after the south tower had collapsed really hit me, because that was the first scene I saw when I found out what had happened. I was watching the TV and I thought they were doing a replay of the '93 bombing, then I stared... and stared... and realized there was only one fucking tower, then I saw LIVE on the top corner of the screen, and I dropped my glass.

Reading through those posts was really odd, almost like reliving the day, since I was getting all my information on the Internet. It got me a bit choked up, I'll admit. I still have a great deal of disbelief in respect to it, like I just can't understand that the World Trade Center is GONE, and so many millions of lives have been disrupted.

We're still in the early steps of a long, hard battle against these people. This is extermination. It takes patience, intelligent, tenacity, and perseverence. When someone says the words, "never forget," to me, that means we cannot stop until justice had been done.

If we do, then we truly have forgotten.

__________________

Why me?

I don't get very emotional, but this one teared me up a bit as I progressed from page to page.

People start out joking about it, and I laughed at a couple..

But then pages in, it turns to dread. "Holy shit." "Oh my God." The realization sinks in that this is really happening.

Very emotional.

__________________

I am a worthless fanboy. And I worship Bluedandy for making this sig for me.

My posts are irrelevant since I haven't bothered reading the thread.

thank you, i was looking for this, its how i remember the day, because i checked the forums before any other media right as i woke up.

__________________
I'm sorry my posts suck so much, I'm honestly not trying to be a jackass.

I'm going to jail.

quote:

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CW Melchior came out of the closet to say:
Maybe I missed it, but didn't GameQuoter break kayfabe and post something in the midst of all that? I'd really like to read it if anyone has it.

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__________________

SASGA - Something Awful Sacramento Goon Alliance, Motherbitches.

Forum Veteran

I remember reading through that thread, minute by minute, after the fact. Re-living the experience over and over. Well, the experience of watching it at least.

Thank you for archiving it, I will be sure to keep a copy.

Forum Veteran

Thank you for posting that, I never got the read the thread as I was in tears in front of the television because I had my Girlfriend in NYC at the time.
Some of you were fucking psychic in that thread.

Ps, listening to Everclear-Wonderful while reading that thread made me close to tears again.
emotional.

damn, i just read that entire thread.

I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I went on my daily routine, reading the forums as soon as I awaken. Ahah, funny! Some idiot crashed into the WTC! Then another! Oh boy, what a coincidence. Then the Pentagon... then more rumours. I go to school and tell some of my buddies, and they're in disbelief. "You're fucking joking to me." was pretty much the concensus. In math class, I got the radio and hooked that up, and that was all we did in that class. You could really notice the silence and shock that went throughout the room when the towers were reported to be falling. I pretty much skipped the rest of the day to follow the thread and go to the irc room while having the TV right next to me.

Not traumatized, but a very, very memorable day.

edit: re-reading that thread is literally giving me chills down my spine. Thanks again for posting it.

Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 07:27

The truth will set you free

Wow, I remember I was at work and had no access to a TV. That thread was the way that I found out about it, and also the only way for 6 more hours that I got any information about it.

Forum Veteran

Reading all 18 pages brought back so many bad bad memories. I had to go to work right after the forum died and I just couldnt do it. That thread made me feel like it was 9/11 all over again, I think im going to sleep restlessly tonite.

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?!?!?!

Here is a screencap of GQ's reply.

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~conwelkg/funny/Photoshopped/GQ911.JPG

PLEASE don't fuck with the jackass from now on!

Thank you very, very much for posting that thread. It's brought back many memories that I'd rather never forget.

Thanks again.

__________________
-KillDash9 (NOT TERRORIST)

That was my only source of news on the day. I also was disgusted by the amount of rettards who didnt realise that there is a time to stop trying to be funny. AL was one of them. I thought better of him for some reason.

I made a thread the next day asking if OnOg was ok. I guess he was because he was quite a distance from the wtc.

If you are reading this OnOg could you tell us what happened after? did you go and get involved trying to help?

__________________
Thankyou for reading my sig.

Goddamn Sexual Tyrannosaurus

I rememember waking up, turning the tv on, and shouting "HOLY FUCK" and running into my parents room, nearly naked, and yelling about the WTC being on fire..

Reading that thread has made me tear up like I was going through it again.

I dance for the Japanese men.

Very interesting reading, thanks for archiving it. I missed the forum's reaction to the events because I was stuck in Newfoundland for a few days.

I was on a plane to New York while the events were taking place so we had to be diverted to Canada, the pilot could only tell us what he'd been told by ATC which was very vague. He told us there had been some kind of suspected terrorist activity in the city, and we assumed it was just a bombscare at the airport or something. Eventually once we got on the ground they put the BBC world service over the plane's P.A. system and we found out exactly what had happened. Horrible memories of knowing my sister was living right next to the WTC but having no way of contacting her to see if she was ok.

It turned out she watched the second plane hit from the roof of her building, which must have been terrifying.

All this terrorism stuff is highly unpleasant. Hold me.

__________________

"The humour in Friends seems to consist of making a "pouty" expression to every remark that another person makes." -Mr Apollo.

Those who are capable of entertaining doubts of my work are not worthy to speak to me.

I remember waking up around noonish becuse my phone wouldn't stop rining. I didn't have class till the mid afternoon, so I was trying to get a lot of sleep.

Anyway, my dad, who works in the Pentagon, said that he was calling to tell me he was all right. I had no idea what was going on. He said "Patrick, you odn't know what's going on, do you?" and as he said that I instantly knew what was going on. God, it was a terrible sensation, I realized that my generation had just earned its "Where were you when...?" question.

I thank you for archiving the thread, by the time I was up the forums were down- so was everything else.

By the way, I get partially erect when I watch the Harry Potter movie.

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SpeedFrog came out of the closet to say:
The IRC log of #somethingawful when this all happened was interesting reading as well. Obviously it's a little more disjointed (as IRC tends to be), but interesting none-the-less.

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<SA-ItchyWoolPants> OMG! THE WTC JUST GOT HIT BY A PLANE >
<CoolHotStud13> Anyone wanna chat to a 13/m/idaho? pix, msn, icq.


Sorry, couldnt resist

</hijack>


I remember waking up to hear the news. My mum woke me up and told me America had been attacked and i remember calling her a "fucking liar" and told her it wasnt "cool" to joke about thing like that, i remember saying it wasnt April fools day and all that.
Then i saw it on the news and it hit me

__________________
i hate you

come lie next to me

you and me are one

i was actually watching the morning local news and drinkign my morning gallon of coffee when the story hit... i saw what happened and spit out a mouthful of arabica goodness, then sat there forzen, mouth wide open, for about a half an hour... after i came to, i didn't feel like going to work (i felt like dying), so i calle din sick... my boos just told me "it's ok, william, we're ALL calling in sick today." i knew exactly what he meant.

If it really is me.

I was watching the Matrix and during the part when the helicopter crashes into the building, my friend who recently moved to New York messaged me on the AOL instant messenger device and informed me that the World Trade Center got attacked. It was really weird....

Will choke to death for food.

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NickLess came out of the closet to say:
ps. my father and all his employees made it out safely that morning.

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Forum Veteran

11th of september is my birthday but since i live in Australia it happend around 11:00pm

i only heard about it by chance, cruisin a GBA board somewhere
thanks for the thread

__________________

Click the pic to Join

You're educated retarded.

I was just watching a talk show that involved bare boobies when I heard it. I decided to watch the boobies for another 20 minutes and then changed the channel for the news.
Later I tried to get on the Interweb but basically every site I tried to access was down or very, very slow. I wasted my time on IRC.

I dance for the Japanese men.

I woke up to a ringing phone. I don't usually answer the phone unless I am awake and I feel like it, but I was so asleep I did it without thinking. My auint started to scream in my ear and cry that we had been attacked, and THEY had taken out the pentagon and WTC. She said we were being invaded. I freaked because an invasion would change things a LOT. WTC has changed things, but an invasion.. wow. I started watching I think just about as the second plane hit. It was unfuckingreal. I went to check the forums, and they were dear, which served only to scare me ever more. I had to relieve a little of the pressing anxiety, so I made a totally inappropriate image macro.



I wasn't trying to be irreverent, I just needed some release, so even when the forums came back up I didn't post it. I think I've posted it once since. If it makes you feel better, the actual translation of the Arabic text is "Egyptian cookies are the best"

__________________

Full time stalker of the unwitting OhHappyDay.
Proud forum parent of Wykyd. and Katylies

I am a horrible monster and I pray for death.

Thank you for archiving this, you've done a great service to the SA Goons.

I found out about the 9/11 badness in a rather odd way...

I had been on a roadtrip with Tube, staying at LHMX's house. We all had played the PS2 rather heartily that night, and slept well into the afternoon.

By the time we got up, we were all pretty hungry and stopped at a Subway to get some sandwiches. As we walk in, we notice that Bush is on the radio, but we are unable to hear what he's saying over the din. We start to order our food, and I overhear one of the employees talking about a plane hitting a building.

"What's going on?", I asked.

The sandwich artist looked up from the fine cuisine he was preparing and said "A jet crashed into the WTC".

That sucks, I thought to myself. We finished lunch and piled back into the car. On the way back we turned on the AM radio to an all-news station. What we heard shocked us. I felt myself beginning to panic. When we got back to LHMX's we flipped on the television for the first time.

Dear Lord, I have never felt so angry, confused, numb, sad, and panic-stricken at the same time, and to such an extent as this. I couldn't believe what had happened. As the images of so many lives lost replayed over and over, I felt such a deep sadness in me, and a growing hatred for those at fault. I wanted to scream, but resorted to silently crying.

The drive home that early evening was unsettling, the freeways in Los Angeles nearly empty. When I got home I watched the latest updates on CNN. I also had a couple glasses of wine.

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01131982 came out of the closet to say:
That thread made me feel like it was 9/11 all over again, I think im going to sleep restlessly tonite.

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I dance for the Japanese men.

God, that brings back a lot of memories about that very strange September night (I'm in Australia). I remember reading the first few posts on that thread, just before I signed off for the night, thinking it was just a fire on a few floors. Then someone posts that a plane hit it, then I go to cnn.com, which was hammered, so I asked my parents if anything had been on TV, again nothing so I kept following the forums.

Then half an hour later every TV and radio station was playing live CNN and BBC broadcasts, and I'm talking to all my friends on icq telling them to turn on their TV's. I stayed up most of the night watching the events unfold, it still freaks me to recount everything that happened. It was one of the most uncertainty filled nights I've lived through. The entire next day I spent at university listening to the web-broadcasts between classes and reading the newspaper in class.

You may enter up to 50 characters.

I remember after walking in to network engineering from math and hearing everyone talking about it. A few of us just joked about it at first, since we had no clue what was going on. And then after that for the rest of the day I skipped classes and watched the news.

__________________

My adopted newbie is Saura. MAKE ME PROUD!
My adopted goon is AnimeFreak. MAKE ME PROUD!

I'm different.

Jesus. Brings things back.

It was odd timing for me, since just a few days prior I had been thinking about how my generation had no defining moment, no shared pain. No Kennedy assassination, no great war. I was thinking how it wasn't fair that we had no great moments in common, and how I wanted to have lived through history.

Watching CNN that morning, I just kept thinking "No I don't no I don't no I don't..." over and over. As if to say "I didn't mean it" to God or something. Eesh.

Go Johnny Go Go Go Go!!!!!

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Comte de Saint-Germain came out of the closet to say:
God, it was a terrible sensation, I realized that my generation had just earned its "Where were you when...?" question.

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Very true. It happened around 1.45 p.m. Irish time and I was at home getting ready to go to England the next day. Someone on a local message board posted 'omg turn on your tv two planes have hit the World Trade Centre!!' and I was 'oh piss off and stop messing', but when I did put on Sky News

What made me feel angry was just after the first tower collapsed they had some financial expert knob-end on discussing what the catastrophe might mean for the futures market - like fuck off.

It's intersting to go back through ICQ transcripts with friends...definitely makes you relive the moment...

Forum Veteran

Wow monkeu is a fucking foghat.
"Watch Bush start a war". Like it was unwarranted.
It would have been so much better to sit on our asses and do nothing. Yes. Sure. Right. Idiot.

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Nimrod "Felcher" Soames:
I can't believe that they got the Pantagon.

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LOL, yeah we expected the Pentagon could outmaneuver a plane.

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straight edge

Okay, three attacks so far-- anymore?

I'm staying the FUCK away from the Liberty Bell!

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Gold.

JRock fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 10:47

HAIL TO THE CHIMP!

I was in bed watching the late news (the plane hit at 11:45pm on 11/9 here in Australia) and I figure I must have turned it off less than 5 minutes before it all happened.

So I slept through the night, unawares, then at 6 a.m. my Mum comes in and wakes me up, "did you hear? terrorists have attacked the USA, the world trade center buildings are destroyed, then a plane crashed into the pentagon and another one was supposed to be headed for the white house!."

For maybe 10 seconds or so I just had that silent "oh shit oh shit oh shit the world is falling to bits what the hell is going on" feeling then I turned on the news and watched it for a couple of hours.

Then I remember the local TV stations feeding us CNN live (we NEVER get CNN on free to air TV) for about a day and a half, and how CNN jumped the gun and reported on gunfire that a reporter had witnessed in Kabul (remember the shitty videophone images?) and then the following 24 hours where there was no real new news and they just repeated the same footage of the plane hitting every 15 minutes etc.

__________________
CLICK HYPERLINK TO LEARN OF IMMORTAL SECRET! LIVE FOREVER, TODAY!

idioteq fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 11:10

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Mickazee came out of the closet to say:
It's intersting to go back through ICQ transcripts with friends...definitely makes you relive the moment...

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Mike Patton removed by court order.

The Pickity Witches have stolen my stitches.

Awww no USA flag sigs?

The comment I hated the most from that whole event, be it on the forums or otherwise was, "It's just like in a movie!"

Shit, I'm not going to even BOTHER reading this right now. Mainly because I posted some pointless hate-fueled stupidity about nuking whoever was responsible, and also because I had a three fucking day long anxiety attack after where I could barely move.

My recollection:

I woke up, watched the news, and around 8:30 (the first hit at 8:45 or something, right?) I went into the bathroom to take my regular dose of medicine and brush my teeth. I came out and there was a special report on Fox 5 NY that SOMETHING just crashed into the building. It didn't look that bad yet, and people were still looking at it and theorizing on whether or not it was a small plane or a missile.

This is the same network where the desk anchorman and the field reporter had a little fight-of-words that was featured on The Daily Show a while back. And they started arguing about whether or not it was a small plane or a missile (the field reporter thought it was a missile because it exploded outwards or something). The field reporter said something like, "Well you think what you want to but there's no way..."

And then the second plane hit. I heard my dad yell "Oh shit!" from the kitchen. Up until the second plane hit, I had just thought a small single engine plane had accidentally collided with the building. I was so upset I didn't really want to go to school. But my dad told me I had to, and he drove me. (My car was in the shop.) I don't remember what we talked about it on the way there, but when he dropped me off I walked past the bookstore and there was a guy with a radio explaining to some students that they WERE huge passenger jets, and everyone on them was gone - including one that just crashed into the pentagon. I decided there was no way I was going to be able to stay in class today, but my dad was already gone so I went anyway.

My friend was listening to the radio, and everyone (a lot of people stayed home) were clicking through various news sites, trying to find one that wasn't shut down from all the bandwith hogging going on. My teacher walked in, and after a brief discussion (including how this can't stop our lives), he started trying to get everyone to calm down by starting an easy lesson on Quark. But I decided I needed some air, so I left. My friend followed me, and so did the rest of the class. On the way out I saw my professor talking to the Dean, saying how it's not right to keep kids in class today - he couldn't even if he wanted to. The Dean agreed, but I didn't stick around to see what else happened. I went outside, called my mom, and waited. I kept looking up at the sky, looking for planes, but there were none. I thought it was pretty eerie, and seeing a plane in the air might have actually helped ease my anxiety a little - nothing seemed normal.

When I got home, there was that footage of debris chasing a large crowd ID4-style through Manhattan playing everywhere. Finally I switched on Comedy Central (God bless you, CC, your devotion to playing FIVE FUCKING CONSECUTIVE SNL RERUNS FROM THE WORST SEASONS OF IT EVER know no bounds.), and fell asleep.

The next three days were a total blur, as I was shaking and sleeping off my anxiety too much to know exactly what was going on. Thankfully, I came to grips with the fact that everyone I knew was okay, and I snapped out of it.

THE ENDINGS

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Roads? Where we're going we don't need...roads.

I did my own bit of archiving on 9/11, but didn't happen to catch this thread. Thanks.

I do remember that day as if it were yesterday, as I suspect most people do. Living in NY, every broadcast channel was out on 9/11, except for CBS. But that didn't matter, because my main source of information was the forums and IRC. Why just get one source of information, when you can have hundreds of people all reporting in to one central location?

After running to the roof, and seeing the plume of smoke rising from downtown, I ran back to the lounge just in time to see the first tower collapse. Then, was in my room to catch the second tower falling. Like so many others have said before, this is our "Where were you when" moment. I can only hope we have another of those moments, specifically "Where were you when you heard they got Bin Laden?"

Oh, and for my own bit of archiving, I give you the SA Goon Cam Portals All Cams page from sometime either late on 9/11 or early on 9/12. The cams run a wide gamut, ranging from the tasteless to the touching. All red X's are either ones that were red X's on the day, or cam pics that I deleted because they hadn't been updated since August. Hope my hosting doesn't crap out.

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Rockin' the old-skool sig for the month of March!

schnitzelbonk!

Then as now, I didn't have a cable connection, so I effectively didn't have a TV, per se. For some reason my folks never called me about it. I wasn't a forum goon at that point yet, in fact I don't think I was aware of Something Awful yet.

Anyway, I left for classes at about 9:36-ish.

I live in Northern Virginia, just South of the Pentagon, so as I drive on my way to George Mason University, the Pentagon is just off to my right. Just after I departed on my way to class, I saw a plane fly past, and found it very curious that it was flying as fast and low as it was, and not even in the direction of Reagan National Airport. It really dogged my mind all the way to the access ramp onto the capital beltway, whereupon my "C'mon, nothing ever happens to/near me, and when it does, I don't see it firsthand" reflex took over. I should mention that my car radio wasn't working very well, so I'd left it off. Understanding the news would've been an effort, the reception gets so bad at certain temperatures.

When I got to the campus student parking lot, someone was parked next to my space whose radio was working fine, and the announcers were reacting to the news that the World Trade Center was on fire, and that the North tower had just collapsed. I refused to assume, even at that point, that any of that stuff had happened, but I was pretty sure something unbelievable had just happened in New York. I'd already forgotten, believe it or not, about the plane I'd just seen.

Once I got into class they told me what was up. They even had a picture on the net of the Pentagon on fire! It was only then that it hit me-I'd just seen a hijacked plane en route to the Pentagon as it made its "final approach".

quote:

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OldSenileGuy came out of the closet to say:


Oh, and for my own bit of archiving, I give you the SA Goon Cam Portals All Cams page from sometime either late on 9/11 or early on 9/12. The cams run a wide gamut, ranging from the tasteless to the touching. All red X's are either ones that were red X's on the day, or cam pics that I deleted because they hadn't been updated since August. Hope my hosting doesn't crap out.

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I dance for the Japanese men.

quote:

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elpintogrande came out of the closet to say:
I have to remind myself that it was happening in real time, because reading some of the comments there really pisses me off. Some of the hate and some of the stupidity, honestly probably more the stupidity, but I don't think the people being stupid even realize it now when they reread it.

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Majestic is dead, and my Maiden sig died with it.
Adopted newb: Track6Track7

HERE COMES THE CYCLOPS!

code:

[08:58] <iscariot> wtf happned to the world trade center?
[08:58] <Hee-La> plane flew into it
[08:58] <Hee-La> ?
[08:58] <Hee-La> not sure
[08:58] <Hee-La> some sa bitches yelling about it
....
[09:02] <iscariot> dude
[09:02] <iscariot> oh shit
[09:02] <iscariot> WTF
[09:02] <iscariot> WTF
[09:02] <Hee-La> holy fuck
[09:02] <Hee-La> what was that
[09:03] <iscariot> another impact
[09:03] <Hee-La> was that nother plane??
...
[09:05] <iscariot> mr. bin ladin is a winner

iscariot fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 12:26

I'm high as a kite and my teeth are green!

Taken from the pier a block from my apartment the next day.

http://glasyalabolas.homestead.com/files/skylineMED.jpg
The big one. (870K)

If anyone still finds this as humorous as they did on they day this happened (I remember seeing quite a few assholes on this forum) please post your address here so I can visit you and throw you through a fucking wall.

"I AM THE DUNGEON MASTER!!!"

I just remember not being able to sleep AT ALL for the ENTIRE NIGHT....then I turned on the teevee to several thousand people dying in the span of an hour. Traumatized? You betcha.

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I demand that Kid Icarus gets a leaf blower.

Forum Veteran

My memories:

9/11 was a Tuesday, one of my 8AM-class days (Mountain time) so I was completely oblivious to the world when i got up. No TV, no forums, no nothing. I did what I always do, wander to class in a semi-conscious state. My English prof came in looking a bit tired and disorganized - strange, for a meticulous guy that generally looked spotless. He said "Has anyone not seen the news?"

About half our class just blank-stared at him. "Planes hit both of the Twin Towers this morning." Dead silence.

We stumble through class, and afterwards I haul ass to the media building. My journalism prof is already there, as well as the head AV guy, who has hooked up the bigscreen (normally used for monitoring) to cable so we can see what's going on. We spend the next two hours just watching CNN in complete silence. I knew it wouldn't do any good to try and call friends, as Eastern phonelines would probably be jammed up beyond reason, and I couldn't get through anyway.

God damn. The only thing I can remember from that morning is wanting to contact a couple of friends who were both serving in the military, to see if they were going to be called.

And the stories that got passed down over the next week about the passengers that took that plane back...

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You've registered for Gooncon 2k2, right?

Caboose on the MANTRAIN!

I was sitting in my office as I am right now when my wife called and told me a plane had crashed into the WTC, she asked what friends of mine were in the building. As she was speaking to me the second plane hit and she was screaming. I told her I had to make some phone calls. I knew a lot of people in the South Tower. Most made it out, but three of my friends didn't.

Technical Superhero of the Gods

The Television Archive has the 9/11 broadcasts from quite a few channels stored and available for streaming ... it's extremely unsettling going back and watching it all "live" again.

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I support... something. If you support something, add this line of text to your sig.
Can't access the forums directly due to router problems? Try using saproxy.evercrest.com instead!

TROLL

I look at this, and I still don't feel anything. It's just hard to get worked up over 2,000 deaths, especially with all the drunk driving deaths, murders, rapes, and other horrible things that go on every day. Futhermore, any initial upset I felt was proportionally muted as the bodycount fell from the initial estimates to something in the neighborhood of 1/25th of its original value.

I dunno. Maybe I'm a horrible monster, but I just can't feel anything for 2,000 anonymous, random strangers. Likewise, I don't feel bad about the fact that those 2,000 anonymous, random strangers likely wouldn't have felt particularly bad if they were informed of my death. ("Erasmus who?")

Sam Jain hit on me at Denny's.

quote:

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]L33t_Hax0r had this to say about Robocop:

quote:

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jet sanchEz had this to say about Robocop:
Hrm, yeah, says at cnn.com that a plane has crashed into it...hope it isn't some terrorist attack or anything nutty like that.

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what the fuck do you mean!?!??! terrorists probably did cause the plane to crash into the Werld Trade Center.

now they got the world trade center... just like they got aaliyah!!1!!

*Wahhh

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MARCH = OLDSKOOL SIG MONTH, OR WHATEVER

I will bask in our disaster if it'll phase us out.

Just wanted to say, thanks for doing this. For lots of us that were at work that day, the forums were the only source of up to the minute news we had. There's been memorable threads here before, and there will be again - but no thread will touch this one as far as historical significance goes. Or even the way that these forums came together after that, with all the different nationalities having tributes in their sigs, or giving moral support to us Americans. It's times like these that make this place really special. Sorta sad to think that now we joke about it, make tasteless photoshops about it, and so on.

__________________

I have adopted Prodigy as my Newbie, he likes mansex and potentially, sex with men.
March be "Old Sig Month" - werd?

TROLL

quote:

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SemiBadAss came out of the closet to say:
Sorta sad to think that now we joke about it, make tasteless photoshops about it, and so on.

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That is a pretty wild thread. DarthVersace post is amazing looking back on it. Especially at that point when not many people were pointing fingers.

On another note, I live in downtown Washington, DC, about 8 blocks from the White House. I heard the explosion at the Pentagon, and saw as the news gave a view. From the angle it was shot from Lafayette Park, it looked like a plane had crashed into the national mall or the capitol. Someone else said there was a car bomb at the department of state, literally about 3 blocks from me. I lent my bike to a guy from ABC news to deliver batteries and tapes, because traffic was so gridlocked. I hope our kids never have to feel so uneasy about being in America as we did that day.

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TFTIL My site motherfuckers.

I will answer your questions about Gore-Tex.

Wow, that's amazing to go back and read. I still recall looking at that thread, and my sister calling me at work totally frantic, she though the world was going to end, as did a lot of other people.

I just up and left work. I went home and watched the events unfold on television right in front of my eyes, and I cried. I hadn't cried forever. It was so overwhelming, callused news anchors stumbled over their words; everybody was in a slight state of shock.

I watched the first tower collapse. It was too much for me. I grabbed an old TV in the closet and went back to work and plugged it in next to my desk. My co-workers and I all stood stunned as we watched the second tower fall. There wasn’t anything to do or say that made sense.

This event has changed everybody’s lives, no matter where you live.

Thanks for having the good judgment of archiving that.

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New and improved sig, thanks Sensy!

goodn just got better!

Wow, that really makes me mad how the news companies were giving so much god damn speculation and flase rumors at the time.

I seriously remember this like it was yesterday, considering I was sitting on the same seat, staring at the same computer, in the same office I was on the 11th. Very early in the morning I was trying to do some catch-up work on last week's stuff, and this co-worker walks into my office saying nothing but "A plane just crashed into the WTC." The complete lack of understanding of the magnitutde of what happened is shocking to me today. I simply remember thinking "WTF ??" when he came back with news that another plane crashed into the second building. That was one fucked up day.

TUCH MI PEEPEE!

Reading through the thread made my stomach tighten involuntarily. Lots of strong emotions.

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Veinte y Dos - Cuatro = Diez y Seis
GPF, Internet Personality(TM)

Kool-Aid r0x0rs my s0x0rs.

I'm gonna read through this in a few. I still remember seeing the second tower fall on TV (which I didn't know was the second at the time). I thought it was a drunk airline pilot and cracked a few jokes, but then when I heard what it was, I quit the jokes and was just stunned by it all. I wasn't a regular poster here at the time when this happened so thanks for the reading info.

Forums Historian who sucks at backups

It was a disturbing day, if not month, and it still haunts me to this day.

It was very scary that morning as I got up and then when I walked upstairs, the TV was on. I looked at the TV and there was a giant fire coming out of one of the towers, then a few minutes later I saw the second plane hit LIVE. After all of that, a few hours or something later I saw the towers collapse. Very, very disturbing.

What made it even worse is the fact that I thought my uncle worked in that tower since he worked in New York for CitiBank as a systems adminstrator. It turns out he is in another building but it was a scary few days wondering about him.

At least now they've managed to take about 45% of the rubble away.

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Something Awful Timeline (1999-Present)

I found the thread more infuriating than anything else. I did appreciate the thought though.

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Would Bush's missle defense have stopped this?

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NA NA NA NA I'm just a Love Machine!

Thank you very much for posting that. It reminded me of what that day REALLY was about.

For all the goddamn commerciasim that has went on with this, it is really hard to remember how it actually was. With the 'buy this for 9/11' 'we care about 9/11 so buy our stuf' 'here is a tribute to 9/11 done horribly so buy stuff from us and our sponsors'. The horrible tacky American flags plastered on people's cars.

It's funny how Americans have to ruin pretty much everything. 'Never forget'? Look at cnn.com. Most of the time they have lots of other news and just a tiny corner dealing with current events on middle-eastern and Asian developments.

While a small percentage of this might even be good intentions, it doesn't help me at all. Whenever I see 'WTC Commerative' crap, I ignore it. The death of a few thousand people in an instant (and some not so instantly unfortunatly) as an attack on a group of people just because they don't like is nothing that should be made light of, and the person responsible has no common sense that is built into simple animals... but I would have thought this would have made people take a look at themselves. Alas, it just made all of our weak points even weaker and people think that it is okay.

Again, I thank you for reminding us what it REALLY was like, and what 9/11 and the WTC disaster REALLY means. Its strange and rather sad that an archive on the Internet of a bunch of geeks talking has more effect than anything else.

NON-SEQUITUR

Thanks for the archive. I missed the thread completely the first time around for related reasons. I have a cousin who worked their and between the chaos I got caught up in at work, combined with my family trying to get ahold of him, I was away for the entire week. Thankfully, he had quit the job a month before and was at a new firm upstate.

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Old sig month huzzah!

I wasn't posting here when that went down but my experience was similar. I live in Brooklyn and I didn't have to be in the city until 10:30 so I was just getting up when the first plane hit. I knew something was terribly wrong because I had never heard so many sirens. I mean it's NY, we hear sirens all the time, but I had never heard so many non-stop. In retrospect most of those sirens I heard were the first responders that lost so many lives including my neighborhood fire dept. which lost over half their squad. As soon as I turned on the TV I was naturally shocked. I watched the second plane hit on TV and I was stunned. I tried calling my sister in the city but of course I couldn't get through. Thank god for IM. I was able to quickly communicate with her and my parents in addition to my coworkers and other friends in the city.

I ran to the roof of my building and watched the scene with a few other people. It was terrible. Cops had blocked off the roads, you could see gridlock and panic everywhere. As we were watching the scene in horror someone said somthing about the towers possibly falling. My quote was "No way! Those are some of the strongest and best designed building in the world. No way they'll fall dammit." About 30 seconds later the first on ewent down. I almost fell to my knees. I wanted to vomit. I was so close yet I could hardly hear it. I felt a wave of silent screams and death. I went downstairs in shock. I went to another message board I moderate where a similar tableau as what was posted here was unfolding.

That next night I had a moment of clarity during a typical news marthon. I was sitting there watching a scene at ground zero and I knew that I had to do something, anything. I couldn't sit there anymore. My girl was almost frantic as I put my shoes on and grabbed my skateboard but I said "Please don't make me feel bad for doing this." I went and volunteered with the Salvation Army at ground zero for about 5 days. It was hell on earth and I saw things that I'm still trying to process.

Being down there, I was struck by the unity of purpose and selflessness being displayed by a group of vastly different strangers. People were down there risking their lives without a second thought, just trying to do anything to make it better. Despite the abject horror of the situaion, I left there with more faith in humanity than I ever possesed before.

If you'd like to see a more in depth account of my sister and I's experiences as documented by her emails to my family during those days check out her archive site. It also has some pictures that I took while there and some ones of the city and it's reactions.

http://www.warriorpalace.com/wtc

Please take a second and sign the guest book if you can.

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http://www.warriorpalace.com/wtc/

DJFucknasty fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 14:38

I dance for the Japanese men.

Good gravy, that was a hell of a day. Thank you for archiving that thread-- I followed it from the VERY FIRST message until the SA forums went down a couple of hours later. It was actually kind of funny, in a way, because since cnn.com and most of the other major news sites were down, *I* was the major news conduit in the office, as far as what was going on in NYC. Then they got cable working.

Got a call from my dad at about 10:00am: GO HOME. Got a call from girlfriend shortly thereafter: I'M GOING HOME. (She worked in the Prudential, one of the largest buildings in Boston, so she had good reason to be extra skittish.) Then the towers fell, and my boss made everyone go home.

I cycled home, as I usually did. It was the strangest thing. Gridlock in the whole city. My normal smugness at being able to weave through heavy traffic easily on the bicycle wasn't there, though. Too much of the traffic was people screaming into cellphones and blaring emergency vehicles.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch, holding my girlfriend's hand and humming "99 Red Balloons" by Nene, and watching the news.

Hell of a day.

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Don Incognito came out of the closet to say:
Awww no USA flag sigs?

The comment I hated the most from that whole event, be it on the forums or otherwise was, "It's just like in a movie!"

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What was that? This is not a chawade! We need total concentwation! Now. Do it again, this time, with feewing.

Just like now, every single time I saw DarthVersace's sig in that thread, I had to grind my teeth. Thank goodness people get yelled at for that sort of thing now

As for the 9/11 events, the only part that brings me close to tears is the photo of the german policeman putting down the flowers at the US embassy. I don't know why, maybe because it conveys everyone's helplessness, the ability to only show a token gesture, or how people around the world unified for a little while, but I have to say I learned a lot about humanity.

Somewhere, deep inside, there's a lot of good, kidness, and support within us. And no matter what people say about the inherent evil or apathy or anything else about humans - I have a lot more faith than I did before.

Learn to swim.

Great archiving job! I got the news from that thread when it was just a few pages long, it's kinda spooky to see it again.

I'm evil, and would like you to waste your money on me

That day sucked.

Interesting to read that though, it was just after I'd registered, still had the newbie avatar and everything. I guess it's good to have a record like that, that you were personally a part of, gives it more impact, lets you really remember what you felt. Pictures just won't do that. What I remember thinking is "Fuck, this was well planned, what's next?". My dad working so close to the white house asn't exactly a fun idea either.

Thanks for archiving this.

I AM ERROR

I was in Manhattan that day, but I couldn't see from where I was. Actually, I didn't even know it was happening until I got to work and loaded up SA.

I was on the train in at around 9:00, and I overheard somebody in my car talking about a plane. Whetever he was talking about was getting a lot of interest, but nobody seemed really concerned.

Then I took the subways from Penn Station up to 110th St., but for some reason they were running really slow, and they were incredibly crowded.

Then I got to work, loaded up SA, saw the huge thread, and turned to the woman at the desk next to me and said, "Ummm... What's going on?"

From that point on, I kept up on the Internet, reporting to the rest of the office what was going on (thanks to SA while it was up, the IRC channel, and a UK news page that happened to be accessible). They didn't know about the Pentagon at that point. I couldn't call home due to the phone lines being swamped, but I managed to get my office on the cell phone (just long enough to say, "I'm OK, tell my parents"), then talk to my mom on AIM.

Not too long after I got there, somebody charged in from the office next door and said, "The towers are collpasing!" We all went over and watched on a 2" portable TV while they fell.

Sometime after noon, I headed from the office where I was to the nursing home two blocks away. Their supply clerk was really broken up about it - I've never seen a grown man wail like he did. I ducked into the server room to continue the AIM conversation, and try to decide if I should stay then night or try to get home.

Around 5, the MTA's web page was reporting the subways were operational up to 34th street, and limited trains were running out of Penn. So I signed off and started the thre blocks to the subway station. The bell at St. Johns was tolling (never heard it before that day), and there was almost nobody on the street. Really creepy. But the subway showed up and ran to 42nd Street. So I had to walk the last 8 blocks.

That was just really weird. I started off the wrong way, then got my bearings and headed towards Penn. I wound up behind a group of executives of some sort, they seemed mostly unfazed by the whole situation. But even they thought that walking down the middle of 7th Avenue during rush hour was a truly odd experience. I don't think I saw a single car on the orad - just a couple of taxis pulled over to the curb with the drivers just sitting there watching the smoke. A couple was getting mad at one driver because they apparently wanted to go somewhere, and he wasn't driving. I just shot them the evil eye.

I go to Penn just as a train to Huntington was arriving. So I piled on (the train was packed), called home, and we took off. I think everybody on the train swung around to see the new skyline as we got out of the tunnel, but it was already getting dark, and we couldn't see very well. Also on the ride home, I saw that the Scientology building in Hicksville had set up a "Grief Counseling" booth outside. That really ticked me off for some reason. Later I'd find out about their whole preventing-people-from-getting-real-help deal. Bastards.

But I made it home around 8:00, and the boss decided to skip going into Manahttan again until the next week. The next week, I actually had to go to the Empire State Building for another client. ID checks, metal detectors, X-Rays... That was quite a switch from the last time I was there.

I still have a pair of LIRR tickets dated 9/11/01 in my wallet. They'll probably be there for a long time yet.

Leonard "J." Crabs in training!

I was at college in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, that morning. When I got there around 9, someone said that a plane crashed into a tower, but everyone assumed it was a Cessna and we went right back to class.

Class went as normal until 10:30, when we took a break. By then, I'm sure people knew, but no one had thought of going door to door and announcing it.

So, I was clueless until I went outside. Someone had a cell phone and said another plane had hit the other tower and a third hit the Pentagon. I did think of Osama right away, but mostly, I was still taking it lightly. How could a tower that big come down?

Then I went back upstairs, to the library, where there was a TV, and saw the image of one tower standing where two should have been. There was already a crowd around it. Someone was crying, saying that their sister worked in the building. Someone else was asking how the CIA blew it that badly. Most people were just stunned. So was the announcer, who kept saying something about the Washington Mall, the State Department, the Capitol building, and Congress all being bombed.

I ran back to class and managed to stammer out the information to the people milling outside of it, who, by then, had realized something was wrong and were listening to a radio. My face was probably as white as it's ever been.

I immediately knew I had to either go home or help downtown, but there was probably nothing I could do- I have no medical skills and if there was anything they had plenty of down there, it was manpower. The subways were shut down, so I walked to the nearest bridge, the Queensboro, where I joined the exodus out of the city. On the way, a guy with a car had the door open and the radio blasting a live report from downtown; the reporter, crying, was saying that the second tower had just come down and thousands were dead.

When I got to the bridge, ten or twelve of the longest blocks in my life later, the scene was surreal. There were a few people who were laughing and joking about a day off, but most were either as white faced as me or crying. It was like a slow motion marathon in reverse. One side of the bridge was entirely emergency traffic; occasionally, when the EMT's and fire engines passed by, some of us would cheer them. The other was a mass of people walking out, except for the occasional emergency car that would be slowly trying to drive the other way through them. I'm pretty sure what was going through my head was a mix of 'I think I'll have to volunteer if the draft comes up' and 'Osama Bin Laden is a dead man'; I was almost sure it was him, but I was really not willing to think about the towers just yet.

And then we hit the middle of the bridge, where the cloud of smoke I'd been seeing and smelling the whole time turned into a bird's eye view of the site.

That was still the only time I've ever seen it live. I've been downtown since then; I've gone to the Greenwich Village Halloween parade even though no one else I asked would, simply because I needed to make a statement to myself; I've seen it on TV about a thousand times.

But what I saw there is something I'll never, ever forget.

Stay safe, everyone.

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Green Rawrimtouchasaur

Ohio Goons: Read meeting forum Lord13 fucking owns

quote:

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Huge_Midget came out of the closet to say:
Here is a screencap of GQ's reply.

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~conwelkg/funny/Photoshopped/GQ911.JPG

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Forum Veteran

I feel the need to harm anti-orp after reading that archive.

Pretty girls make graves...

I was surfing when it happened. I came back and found my dad's girlfriend sitting on the porch watching tv. Right when I walked in the door I saw the second plane hit...

Usually when I get out of the ocean I take a shower as soon as I get home. That day I just sat on the couch shaking.

I called one of my friends and yelled at him to wake the fuck up and he said something along teh lines of "shut up i'm trying to sleep." He hung up on me...

Twenty minutes later he calls back and says "holy shit."

Watching peter jennings break down on tv was too much. I had to turn it off. I don't remember if I ever showered. I remember that I was visibly shaken, but I didn't cry.

I went out surfing again the next day. The whole time I was thinking. I live about an hour from dover airforce base and I kept seeing jets flying overhead... more than usual. I kept thinking that it was such a large scale attack that more was probably planned. I didn't even catch any waves. I paddled out past the break and just drifted with the current. The ocean is the calmest place I know of... especially in the morning.

At that time I still didn't now all the details. I kept thinking about all the people that died. About war. Nuclear war. War on our soil. Martial law being instituted...

I thought about death...

And I finally cried...

As I floated around on my board the day after the attacks I cried.

Reading this thread brought back so many painful memories.

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Immortality Bandwagon

Get in the jail.

Ugh, I remember this.

My fucking school didn't even let us listen to the radio, and told us just that 'planes have hit the towers, and go back to work.'

Most teachers were nice enough to turn on a radio though. My principal is a fucking scumwhore.

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Ohio Goons: Read meeting forum Lord13 fucking owns

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jest came out of the closet to say:
Ugh, I remember this.

My fucking school didn't even let us listen to the radio, and told us just that 'planes have hit the towers, and go back to work.'

Most teachers were nice enough to turn on a radio though. My principal is a fucking scumwhore.

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Fuck, I wasn't in school but I'm confident we would be allowed to have watched the coverage (College started the week after )

ntd fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 15:43

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Erasmus Darwin came out of the closet to say:
I look at this, and I still don't feel anything. It's just hard to get worked up over 2,000 deaths, especially with all the drunk driving deaths, murders, rapes, and other horrible things that go on every day. Futhermore, any initial upset I felt was proportionally muted as the bodycount fell from the initial estimates to something in the neighborhood of 1/25th of its original value.

I dunno. Maybe I'm a horrible monster, but I just can't feel anything for 2,000 anonymous, random strangers. Likewise, I don't feel bad about the fact that those 2,000 anonymous, random strangers likely wouldn't have felt particularly bad if they were informed of my death. ("Erasmus who?")

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Hiruko fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 18:13

WaxLubeInsertRepeat.... Lowtax is MY greek sex god

I bearly remeber that day.. just being in class and watchingthe tv and thinkingthe whole time that it was a big joke.... and now after reading your threads from that day.... kinda makes me want to fucking cry again..

The as the minute shit was so drastic and insane that for a moment everyone was on the same boat.. and then like 2 days later.. the fucvcking media just ripped it to shreads with their god damn "America at war" banners and their music and now that i remeber what it ws like on that day i feel really bad about being so against everyhting that has happened since then...

And again i have made no sense ... gomen... Oh and thanks for giving me something other then studying to do.

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My abusive father is Starscream
I suck at Comedy and all of my attempts have failed.
I am easily bannable as no one loves me

..I think in that moment I could have done almost anything, seeing men, women and children fired upon, people who were not armed fired upon by policemen. August Theodore Vincent Spies

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Hayama came out of the closet to say:
Jesus Christ, how can anyone EVER say that about the WTC attack, let alone while it's still happening? I know it's just idiotic trolling, but... ugh...

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Why the fuck is anyone arguing with Lobsterdork? Pity him, he obviously can't afford his lithium. (LITHIOWNED) | August Spies, et al. 59 A.D. vs. The People of the State of Illinois. "the principles of the northwest side group were more strongly anarchistic than those of the other groups. It was called an 'autonomous' group.."

I am stalking all the women on this forum.

wow, I remember reading all that. Its amazing, living through the events of that day. I almost broke down rereading all those posts.

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March is 'use your old fuckin' sig' month!

Battler Bunn: He Robs the Hun

9/11: Chicago
I would have been walking towards the train station when the first plane hit, and on the train to Chicago when the second one did. I didn't hear anyone say anything, so had no idea anything was out of the ordinary until I got up to my office.

In the hallway outside our suite's door, I could hear that high-pitched electronic whine that a television makes coming from the office next door. I didn't think anything of it, and went into my workplace, where I heard everyone who was there in the conference room watching the little TV. I asked what was up, and they told me that a plane had crashed into each of the Trade Center towers.

Like everyone else here, I thought "Cessna or Piper Cub or something," but then they told me that they were big commercial airliners. I said the obligatory "Holy shit," (and my heart started sinking and pounding) and then we realized that A) the upper floors of the Sears Tower are across the street from us (we're on the 61st floor of the building next door), and B) looking past the Sears Tower, we're high enough up that we can see O'Hare International Airport, and some of the straggling planes that hadn't landed yet. Also, at this point I (like many others, I'm sure) immediately said "Osama bin Laden did this." We all knew it right away.

Of course, it was at this time that the news was talking about a fourth plane that was missing, last spotted (so they said at the time) in eastern Ohio. We honestly thought that it could easily have been headed towards the nation's tallest building, not 150 feet away from our window (and by this point we also knew that it was being very quickly evacuated). We cleared out of there in the next hour, taking care of some things and calling loved ones, etc., saying we were leaving. By this point, though I didn't actually see it happen, we were hearing reports that the towers had collapsed. I honestly couldn't believe that until I got home at about 10:30 a.m. CST and turned on CNN, which happened to be showing a replay of the first tower going down.

The drive home (I got a ride with a co-worker rather than head into what I'm sure were pretty frantic conditions at Union Station) was pretty surreal - we had AM 780 on, and they were just carrying CBS's audio feed, so it was Dan Rather talking about what was going on. Since pretty much the whole Loop was being evacuated, basically all of the traffic was outbound, and that in itself was a chilling image, because if anyone else was like our car, we kept an eye on the Sears Tower in the rearview mirror, wondering if we'd see it get hit too. Shortly after I got home came the first reports of Flight 93 down in PA, and honest to God, I knew instantly, the second I heard that a plane had gone down in the middle of nowhere, that the passengers had done something. I just knew it. That's still the story out of all of this that emotionally effects me the most. Articles about it, no matter how small, still bring tears to my eyes.

I do remember seeing the beginnings of the SA threads, as the news sites were all down, but by the time I got home SA was also down and Lowtax had the simple index page up that explained why. I spent the whole day in front of the TV, obviously, and recorded about four hours of it. Someday, I will show those tapes to my children, assuming I have some, when they are old enough to understand what that day was like.

I had a friend who was also on an inbound train when it happened, and his wife called his cell phone with the news. He said no one else on the train seemed to have heard yet, and he wasn't sure whether he should stand up and make an announcement or something. As far as I know, he did not, and continued the ride in silence all the way to the city (at which point he turned around and got on the next train out).

I sure gave my sister a rude awakening that morning - she was still at my parent's house because her college hadn't started yet, so she was sleeping late. I called right after I got to work, and woke her up. I said "Turn on the TV NOW." She said "What? What station?" (still half-asleep) I said "any station. Doesn't matter." Right then, I got another call (the boss, telling us all to go the hell home), and then went back to my sister's line. Apparently, that had been right when the first tower collapsed, and she had turned on the TV seconds before it happened. I can't imagine how awful a wakeup call that must have been for her.

Enough of my rambling. Actually, I have one more story from that day to tell, and it's an interesting one. The week beforehand, I had read William Manchester's The Death of a President, which is a fantastically detailed look at the week of Kennedy's assassination. In that book, he talked about how on the day it happened, a lot of people were so upset that they drank and drank to attempt to steady their nerves, but the liquor had no effect. On September 11, I was really a nervecase by the time I got home, and so I decided to test this effect. I drank more than enough liquor to usually get me so drunk that I'd be sick and pass out eventually, but as had been documented, it had no effect. Well, it did take the edge off my nerves, but I felt no intoxicating effects whatsoever even after six or seven stiff drinks. I guess that if the mind is shocked enough, it can override the body's reactions to things.

How's your pluck?

I remember this thread. SA is where to go first for news.

I was oblivious to what was going on until I was on the way to work. I just hadn't logged on that morning nor watched the news or anything. So heading north on the 405, I heard Danny Bonaduce say that Disneyland was closed, and then people were being spinner on the radio. It took forever to find out what had happened. When I got to work, everyone was quiet and bummed. I read the forums a bit, and then a bunch of us went to the kitchen area to watch stuff on CNN. About a half hour later, we were told to go home.

Anyway, thanks for saving this archived thread. Whoa is all I can think, and it gave me the chills reading it. 0n0g's pics, Al's grief, and so on made me go back to that day. Scary stuff.

cotton fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 18:21

Capitalism gives me a HUGE boner.

Wow, I was just thinking about posting a thread about this on your 9/11 retrospective. Here's what I remember.

I remember I first heard it on the radio on the way to school. I heard something about a plane crash and New York and I thought they were talking about when a plane hit the Empire state building back in the 40's or something, so I payed it little mind. About 20 minutes later when they said that ANOTHER plane had hit, I payed a little more attention. News was scarce and there was very little info coming over the radio, so when I got to school I went to the bookstore and some guy had a CNN stream up on G4. It was really grainy footage but you could make it out that the thing was on fire. I thought it was pretty bad and then my friend told me that the Pentagon had been hit too and I seriously thought he was joking.

So I went to class and didn't think about it too much, but after class I went to one of the lounges which was now crowded with people in silence. I vividly remember seeing the footage of the towers falling playing over and over for the first time. The clouds of dust and fire raining down... it seemed like a movie. It was just such a shock that you couldn't believe what was happening. At that point they were estimating death tolls in the tens of thousands. It was definately one of the most surreal things I've ever had happed, I just couldn't seem to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened.

I went to my next class and then had an hour before I had to go so I just sat and watched the TV in silence the entire time. I remember it was the first time I could sense a very apparent uneasyness in everyone. People were genuinely scared. You could see it in the faces of the anchor people. Even they didn't know what to say. No one knew what to say.

I remember I got home and my whole family did nothing all night. Just sat and watched the news. I don't even remember if we ate supper. The forums were down so I was on IRC for a few hours. And aside from a few fucktards who thought it was a comedy goldmine, (I won't name names.) everyone was united in their shock and sadness.

It was an event unprecidented in all of our lives I'm pretty sure and the world is definately a different place after it. It could sadly be the defining event of our generation. The boomers had JFK and Vietnam; we get terrorism. It'll be one of those things when your older, "Where were you when the planes hit or when the towers fell down?" And people will always remember that. That's about it.

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MeTa came out of the closet to say:
I also was disgusted by the amount of rettards who didnt realise that there is a time to stop trying to be funny. AL was one of them. I thought better of him for some reason.

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SCARY BEARS (this is the only sig i've ever had. like O'Doyle, i rule)

Sunshine Moderator

I give cancer!

The forums went down due to the incredible number of posts right as events were transpiring. Lowtax left them down, because he couldn't understand why people would even care during a time like that. I could understand both sides in that some people rely on the forums to share their emotions and it was a very emotional day, but then again the "comedians" already had photoshop fired up.


When Lowtax decided to reopen the forums we had a mini-admin conference to decide how we were going to handle things. It was decided that we'd take a hard line approach and explicitly let people know we weren't going to tolerate stupid jokes while the fires were still going. There were a few people who were "OMG WHY ARE YOU DRAWING THE LINE?? YOU HYPOCRITES!!! IT'S FUNNY PEOPLE DIED! LOL!" but I think more people appreciated than resented it.

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Forum Veteran

Does anyone know of a site that shows the current progress of the cleanup ? Im kind of curious as to what the area looks like 6 months later.

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?!?!?!

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Hiruko came out of the closet to say:
STUFF

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Laopooh fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 18:22

9/11 Houston: Where was I on that one September day?

I had an MIS class at 10AM Houston time, so I woke up at 7:30 to account for the hour-long drive out from the suburbs and to have breakfast and such. My radio was set to 7:15, just before the first plane hit the tower. They were talking about some accountants believing Enron had a little explaining to do with their finances. I dismissed that as bullshit - it was Enron, the asskickers of the energy market and single-handedly keeping Houston out of recession. That all is another thread.

I turned on the TV a couple minutes after the first plane hit 1 WTC. Katie Couric was saying something to the effect of "Well, this is bad, but it looks like the tower will make it. It sucks, but..."
"Yea," I thought, "it sucks, but I gotta keep moving."
I turned off the TV and I took a quick shower to keep up on what was happening; after all, it was the World Trade Center.

I looked at the clock turning the TV back on: 8:02AM. Great, thirty minutes to make sure I was gonna make it to school.

As soon as I got a picture and turned the cable box back to NBC, I saw a single airplane in the center of the TV screen. It looked out of place, it was flying about a thousand feet off the New York skyline. I knew right then what was happening. "Oh...SHIT!"
Three seconds, two, one, I watch a Boeing 767 full of people crash into 2 WTC in a huge ball of flame. People were jumping out of the towers. NBC, in all their search for ratings on that morning, panned the camera following a man and a woman jump to their death, holding hands right to the end.
I was stunned, I couldn't move, I felt like Mark McGwire took a baseball bat to my stomach and this was his Home Run Derby. I sat there for a few minutes while the whole world went apeshit. Cars were screeching to a stop. My phone was ringing. My parents were at work in a school and inside Houston. My sisters were in school. The Civil Service siren went off. It had sat unused since 1971 and today it went off. It was thundering. If the world was truly to end, it would be in a hail of noise much like 8:02AM.

The phone was m grandmother. She's sort of paranoid of the world in her age, and she said she was filling up bottles of water for war. I calmed her down and told her Houston was not under attack and to keep watching TV until someone or something in Houston did something. I made sure the school district wasn't letting my sisters go this morning, and the PR person on the phone said the schools were under control and in lockdown until the National Guard moved in. Good.
After sorting everything out and somehow staying sane through the next thirty minutes, I headed out to school. The last thing I heard on TV was that an explosion was heard at the Pentagon. Again, the Civil Service siren went off. School was UH, and it required a trip through Downtown and into the south side of town where numerous oil refineries operate. The actual trip was alright, and during that time, both towers fell, a "car bomb" went off at the State Department, flames were seen at the White House, a plane was not accounted for off Portugal, out of range for the RAF and the Air Force.
I climed out of my car at school, and a squadron of F-18s screamed out from the southeast, persumable Ellington AFB north of Clear Lake. A plane flew low overhead heading north. Two of the fighters escorted the jet as it made a 180 just before downtown and proceeded to Hobby Airport to the south. People ran for their lives. Girls screamed and jumped back in their cars. A few in ther cars turned around and left. I forgot my backpack at home. I coudn't stay here because I had no means of note-taking, so I headed back home. It was a perfect day to skip classes.

Meanwhile, at UH, I had two friends there. They had an English class at 9AM, and they had heard the entire tragedy on the same radio station I woke up to. When the first plane hit 1 WTC, they called a former pilot and asked him his assessment of the situation. "Accident, " he said. When the second plane hit 2 WTC, the normal rationality of news radio collapsed into people saying, "Oh shit!" and the ever popular "Get off the damn radio!" They had their class fine. When they left, they had had enough of being near downtown and headed to another friend's apartment near the Texas Medical Center. Driving down Old Spanish Trail (well, Houston Goons may know), they were stopped by a National Guard roadblock and diverted to side streets. They said FBI agents were stationed with MP5 machine guns. National Guard in combat gear walked in columns, and two M1A1 tanks guarded the roadblock. Stil more men and tanks were rolling down the street to get to Texas Southern University. Being so close to downtown, the school was evacuated and I later learned it was used as a forward base to intercept a land attack on Houston. They must have had no communication with Washington or the chain of command. They made the apartment at 1PM and spent the rest of the day playing Counter-Strike. That day, everyone played cs_747 and everyone was a CT.

I floored my poor, aging Oldsmobile driving home at 105mph. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Jets screamed overhead. A supposed cyberattack shut down gas stations across southeast Texas (later, it was just a crush of people fueling up in anticipation of further chaos). That was the scariest ride home. I turned on the TV to see the smoking ruin that was lower Manhattan. I called my grandmother to tell her I was back and to reassure her again that Houston was safe and everything was on the east coast. Then, I sat down and I cried. I didn't cry during the end of Seinfeld, or during Grave of Fireflies, or when my great grandmother died earlier that year. This was too much. I felt how my friend who used to live in Sarajevo during their war felt. Is this the day I die? I eventually gained composure back and returned to school at 1PM after the Mayor of Houston spoke and then I spent the rest of the day reassuring fellow classmates we'd survuive to see 9/12. I saw 9/12, but I didn't sleep that night.

A lot of the same fears arose when Flight 597 crashed in the Bronx a month later. They lost a lot of people in that neighborhood on the 11th. I'd like to visit there one day. If I ever have money I'd build a statue to firefighters there.

Thanks for posting that archive. It brought back memories and I SA was down when I got a chance to read it.

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SA RPG Contest

korranus fucked around with this message at 03-05 around 18:25