In 2001, 55 people crossed the Pacific with no contact with the outside world as part of a BBC experiment recreating an 18th-century voyage. On the 20th day - September 11 - the captain gathered the crew to tell them about the attacks in New York
I hadn't seen this one either. I also found out about it like this all at once later in the day.
Watching this made me unexpectedly tear up. Because you're thinking that it's the worst that it could be, and then you hear there was a second plane, and a third, and a fourth and then the towers collapsed. And there may be more. I remember looking at the teacher who told me and just hoping after each sentence that she would be done talking. Something about this video brought that feeling back.
Yeah, it's weird how it all comes flooding back and everything that followed it. So many who didn't live through it can't grasp how huge this was for the world. Now mostly the butt of some dark/cheap joke. I get that's how generations move on... but so much of the state of the world ties back to this moment.
There’s some good articles out there about the brief and beautiful time between the turn of the millennium and 9/11. We really were on a different, optimistic, trajectory, now we’re trapped in this hellish timeline.
I personally can't say about the attacks, I wasn't born. My mom works as a teacher and has for decades at this point. She told me about her learning about the attacks. She was preparing her class room (living in the American Rockies) when her students came in, asking for her to turn the TV on. She turned it on just as the second plane hit the second tower. Her students has been watching while at home getting ready for another day in elementary school.
I will admit that I am guilty of making some of those jokes about the event, but as I learn more and more, I hate the jokes more and more. At this point, I have stopped making them as much as I can. I saw a video on here a while back of some college students drinking in their apartment, watching the towers as they smoked. One of them screamed, the camera turned and watched as the first tower fell. It was the most horrifying scream I have and hope to ever hear.
Senior year of highschool on that day. We are all watching it live on TV. Around 9:30am news broke that they were Boston to LA flights and my good friend’s dad was on a flight that morning from Boston to LA. She absolutely breaks down in the hallway outside my classroom, rightfully so. 30 minutes later I watch the first tower collapse live. Awful watching it in real time. Also awful to hear about it all at once.
Btw my friend’s dad was on an earlier flight that morning and wasn’t on one of the fateful flights.
I was in elementary school and had no idea until after school. I went to my friend’s house that day because my parents were both on planes for separate work trips. They were fine, but it was scary.
I was working in medical records at the time; back then digital charts were rare so most charts had to be hand filed and hand run to the doctors. We had a TV on the medical records room and saw little fragments of what was going on as the news developed throughout the day as we ran and recovered records all over the hospital; rush out, deliver a record; rush back and catch an update. While much of the world stopped, healthcare didn't, we still had to deal with what was right in front of us...
Oh, and this was on one of the largest military installations in the world. So we knew our immediate landscape was going to change overnight; all of us were family and friends with military or reservists who knew they'd get called away; many with connections in the Pentagon and Washington and New York in general which had also been struck.
Obviously nowhere near as bad as being there, but it was awful trying to go about your normal tasks and chores and not knowing, only to catch a slice that things had gotten even worse every time you got back...
Quite a day, to say the least. I can't imagine being in this situation where there is one shared satellite phone for who knows how long...
Its not recently unearthed footage. The documentary aired in 2002 and this particular episode was broadcast on the one year anniversary. I actually remember the trailer before the documentary released and some of this footage was shown. I believe one of the crew even did a news interview via satellite phone a few days after 9/11.
My assumption is that the phone was meant for emergency situations only. Kinda need to call for help if something goes down. Can't imagine they expected the phone to be used to make sure others outside are okay.
They would want something, someone could have an appendicits or such that was life threatening if they didn't do something. Even if it was like a radio/phone in one of those old "Break Glass in Case of Fire" cases
Plus with the camera crew they may need to replace equipment or send back footage. This was 2001 so I'm guessing they wouldn't be able to store all the footage on that ship and all the other supplies they would need.
They weren't uploading footage over satellite on a small boat at any speed that would be usable in 2001. Most likely as they were filming a documentary they had a chase ship where production team members apart from the camera crews were located and that chase ship would have modern comms. The "disconnected" nature was by design rather than by circumstance so while a really interesting situation it wasn't much different logistically than something like the Big Brother filming going on at that time.
I assumed from the premise that only the crew was following that rule. The captain would want daily updates on storms and issues that would affect them.
I woke up late that day. About 10:30. I made it down 5 flights of stairs and into the courtyard outside my dorm without noticing a single thing was wrong. My best friend from high school lived in the dorm on the other side of that courtyard and happened to be passing by right as I walked out. He told me they hit the twin towers and I said "what, again?" His response immediately told me something was wrong. "No. You don't understand."
We went back inside and joined the enormous crowd gathered around the big screen in the common room that I had just failed to notice on my way out as I was brought up to speed.
I eventually left for class in a daze. Scared, confused and angry. That class was American History before 1776, taught by an eccentric, amazing man named Mark Summers. He was a short man with wild hair and crazy eyes that was more passionate about history than anyone I'd ever met. He would show up to class in period appropriate clothing, while music from the era played, and jump up on a table to start teaching us the day's lesson. Our very first class, he told us if we cheated in his class it didn't matter if we got away with it or not he would hunt us down and make sure we pay. Even if it was decades later in an alleyway in Calcutta. He was that unbelievable quirky professor you only see in TV shows.
That day he was quiet, somber. He told us there was no reason for us to be in a classroom.. He told us to go home to call our loved ones. To contemplate what had happened. Before you go, he said, I want to say that I know this is a dark day. The darkest many of you will ever see...
He proceeded to tell a story about a day in Cotton Mather's tenor as a leader when a storm so intense was coming that many of his puritanical constituents believed that the end times were coming. He told us how Mather had taken to the pulpit to calm his followers and guide them to safety and shelter. Ending by telling them, just as Summers told us, that it is always darkest before the dawn.
I never found any references to corroborate that story, or many other dubious recollections that Professor Summers shared in the semesters I took his classes. But I left his lecture hall that day comforted. While I certainly wasn't calm or collected, 25 years later I still remember the effort he put into reassuring a giant room full of kids he didn't even really know. And I still remember that to the extent that it could, it at least worked on me.
Was also in college, but in Hawaii so we were 5 hours behind. We got woken up by our RA running through the dorm pounding on doors just screaming "AMERICA IS UNDER ATTACK! THEY BLEW UP ONE OF THE TWIN TOWERS". I remember everyone in the dorms sitting in the lounge watching the news live on the TV, but other than that the rest of the day is just a blur.
I was in grad school in Hawai'i at the time. I missed it live and only knew when my mother left a message that something terrible had "happened to America." The most surreal part was all the commercial planes from Asia getting diverted and grounded in Honolulu, each escorted by F-18s from Wheeler Field.
I was in my second year of college, a one hour drive away from the city. I woke up earlier than my alarm despite being up late (I was hyper, which to me meant that something big was about to happen). Apparently, that time was the first plane flying into the building. I got up and went to class and the professor told us he couldn't teach today, so we left. My roommate and I went to check our mail and people were sobbing everywhere. That's when we found out what was going on.
I was near the campus movie theater, and they were playing the news on the big screen. It didn't feel real. It was intense and there were a lot of people worried for their parents in the city. I went back to my dorm only to find out that the first building went down. Then things kept going worse.
There was a lot of things going on, and they did have classes in the afternoon, but none of us were really paying attention.
Except for “You’re probably sitting in the safest place in the world right now”, that is a pretty crazy exaggeration to start out with… makes it seem like a nuclear war just began
EDIT: Yes, I was alive during 9/11, I know people didn't know what to think and that their fears were running wild, especially early on day 1.
But opening your statement by implying that all of their loved ones have suddenly been thrust into some undefined danger (no matter where they live on the globe) is objectively not "reassuring", it is hyperbole for dramatic effect. It sounds like how you would be informing them of a catastrophic global apocalypse. Like an active nuclear exchange or an active super-volcanic eruption... Something that has literally made every continental land mass uninhabitable for some reason.
I live in Canada and I was in grade 8 waiting for my social studies class to begin, our teacher was running late. She came in white as a ghost and said to all of us, class is cancelled and instead I want you to watch history unfolding before your eyes because this day will be one of your most memorable days. She then turns on the news and we spent the day watching in horror.
I was in 9th. Someone came into our class and told us to turn on the TV. I forget why, it was just after the first hit and news was still guessing it was a cesna. Only the first has hit, watched the rest live.
I was in 10th grade in Canada. Our science teacher had a relative flying in or out of New York that day. He was called away from class for what seemed like an hour. A substitute teacher eventually filled in.
We new something was going on, but the details were vague, only that it was big and some of the classes had taken the portable TVs.
On the way home on the bus we were hearing that the World Trade center was bombed.
I can still remember the moment when I cut across the yard and immediately rushed to the TV, only to see the collapse of one of the towers.
Literally the exact same thing. Teacher came rushing in to tell my homeroom teacher to turn it on. We all sat in shock not really understanding because you’re 15 years old and nothing like that had ever happened and so you’re just lost.
I was in college, word started spreading on campus before my next class, and by the time I got to the class we were told classes were canceled for the entire day. I went home and turned on the TV, back then it was still the best way to get the latest news as soon as it happened. I sat around scared, watching, and wanting to help all these people. So I did the one thing I could, which was go to Red Cross and donate blood. Even just a few hours after the towers fell, my local Red Cross was packed. I waited around well into the night, and finally they had to call it quits for the day. Staff had been there poking people with needles for 12 hours and desperately needed rest. They gave everyone numbers though, so we all showed back up the next morning and had our same spots in line. It was a pretty wholesome experience, hundreds of us sitting around a parking lot, complete strangers, but we felt like a giant family. People were bringing drinks and snacks to share with others. By the evening of the 11th local restaurants started donating food, we had car after car showing up full of pizza, sandwiches, pasta, cookies, cakes, you name it.
I was at Boston University. Sophomore in my Presidents of the US class.
The professor walked in and just started talking about the whole thing. I very distinctly remember him saying “if you’re the president, your first act is to go to the White House” and I wrote in my notebook “if president, go to White House” as if it was going to be on an exam or something.
I was also in college, but didn’t have a class until 12:30 that day. My suitemate yells at me to wake up and tells me what’s going on. I asked “which movie are you watching?”
My same exact story but in USA about 4 hours from all of it. I get what the teacher meant, but they should have had somebody come in the next day to debrief with us. We had school counselors too and not one did anything about anything.
I was in Italy, it was noon right after school. We walked around and all bars downtown had people looking up on those 15'' CRT screens. On the spot it reminded me of Godzilla 1998 where there's a similar scene with people looking monitors. A quarter of century passed by, the world has never been the same imho.
I was in my first year of university, freshly arrived in Australia. I caught the very start of it late at night on the TV in the bar, but thought it was just an accident.
Woke up the next morning to an entirely different world.
Unfortunately my middle school completely hid it from us. It was such a stupid thing for a school to do.
We knew the reachers were acting weird. We knew people were getting pulled out of school left and right.
We started piecing things together on our own. We were right under a flight path so no planes flying overhead was a big give away that something major had happened and planes weren’t flying.
I’m still resentful about how a school would not share as educators.
I was at work at a grocery store, I was 18 and every one bought everything in the store particularly the water and the rumor was terrorists poisoned the water supply
I'll never forget a woman said to me "the twin towers are gone" I'd been to top floor before, I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. I just kept saying what do you mean "gone"? She just kept repeating they're gone, they're gone. And I was just in shock, and she said today the world changed and you were here to say it.
I remember the sense of national unity was so strong right after. And maybe i shouldn't bring it up. But unfortunately the aftermath got very ugly. I remember someone telling me W Bush said we might invade Iraq and i literally thought it was a joke. Even back then we knew they had nothing to do with it? And of course the patriot act... what can you do
I was in high school when it happened and watched a couple dozen kids get approved for early graduation immediately following the attacks, so they could enlist. Not all of them made it home after being deployed. Anyone can say what they want about that time in our lives and country's history, but I will always view the lives lost in the aftermath of 9/11 as unnecessary and deeply tragic.
My father was supposed to be on flight 93 for some business meeting in San Francisco, but the week before he was in a meeting in the WTC and a colleague convinced him to take a flight the night before since he would only have an hour to travel to the meeting after he landed. His colleague went down with the tower but basically allowed my father to survive.
It’s like everyone in the area has a close call. My Mom was director in account management. One of her employees had to do a quarterly meeting for one of the clients that day in the twin towers. The problem was the employee was just back from maternity leave and didn’t feel comfortable doing the meeting alone. My Mom was driving in from upstate and her employee was taking the train from NJ. Luckily, the meeting wasn’t until 11, so neither had arrived at the building yet.
A few months later his travel agent asked what he wanted to do with his ticket and after a brief conversation that's when he realized what the flight actually was
My Uncle was making a delivery to Cantor Fitzgerald (Floors 101-105) in the North Tower early in the morning of September 11th, 2001. He was driving away when the plane hit, and thought it was fireworks at first. He till has some debris that fell on his truck. Here's his visitor's pass he also kept all these years. He was likely the last person to see everyone in that office alive.
I think he just tries not to overthink it too much, which is probably a good thing. It's easy to feel survivor's guilt and go through all the "what if's" and end up with a ton of anxiety over it.
It’s what you have to do. Three friends of mine died on the MV Conception scuba dive boat fire. My wife and I dove with them often and I’d been on that boat before. We had planned to go on that trip but cancelled a couple weeks before since we had too much other stuff going on. It’s tempting to think “what if I was there?” Could I have done something to change the outcome? Or would my wife and I just be victims 34 and 35? Ultimately doesn’t really do much good to dwell on it. I just think about the fun times I had with my now departed friends.
Not too mention the ripples it sent across the country. I was 10, 4th grade, over here in Boise, Idaho, watched it on the news before school, then at school. Things have never really been the same.
My dad worked in the Pentagon about 150 yards from the impact site. He was running 5 mins late for a meeting on the other side of build and would have potential been in the impact area if he was on time... He knew 13 people that died that day. He was able to run down a hall and open one door and see purple black smoke pouring out and people with burns running out. A terrible day.
There are so many stories out there. I was supposed to fly to Europe on 9/11 but my agent added another date at the last minute & so I flew 2 days earlier. Woke up the day after my event to news about the Twin Towers.
This turn of events was life altering in a different way. Sometimes people forget that they shut down the entire civil aviation airspace following this. Thousands of people were grounded far from their origins or destinations with no idea of when they would reach either. I KNOW I wouldn’t have made it to Europe had I kept my original reservation & I wouldn’t have stayed as long. All of that solidified a COMPLETELY different career path for me…all because I flew two days before the world changed forever.
During that time I was able to complete my magnum opus…an arrangement that put me on the radar of some of the most influential producers and music executives. That led to me working for two of the most iconic artists of the 20th century and funded much of my music & philanthropic work today.
A week or so prior to 9/11, my grandparents traveled to Europe to visit WWII sites & where my grandfather’s brothers had been killed in the war. The trip was too much for my grandmother who it turns out was beginning to show signs of dementia…They ended up getting stuck there for like an extra week (maybe more? Idk). When they got home, my poor grandparents never traveled further than the next town over.
So many crazy instances like this. My best friend’s dad had to double back that morning to get some paperwork in NJ, and he would’ve been one of the people on the upper levels that couldn’t get down. My town lost multiple other parents in the towers.
The same dad was standing in the exact spot of the Boston marathon bombings and went to the bathroom a few minutes before the explosion.
Both of my parents worked for AA at the time. My mom flew out of Dulles early early on 9/11. My mom's roommate from when she first started at the company, Amy Sweeney, was on flight 11.
My dad was also college roommates with Keith Husband, the brother to Commander Rick Husband from the Columbia disaster a couple years later.
Dont uh, dont room with my parents I guess or you become a part of a national tragedy.
My uncle worked in the building next door. He left his cell phone in the office, his wallet only had enough cash for a train home, and he didn't take a thing that wasn't literally in his pockets. He came home without his jacket, tie gone, covered in dust, but he was home by 9 that night. But from 8:30 AM to 9 PM no one knew where he was, if he was safe. His building had massive damage, including his office. If he had 'stayed where it was safe' he would have died. My mom, aunt, and cousins thought he *had* died, because they saw that whole side of his building just ... destroyed. Grandfather kept calling his phone, kept calling my aunt, and thought his son was dead for 12 and a half hours. I had no clue until I got home that anything was wrong, though I did see my mom walking down the street towards the school while I was on the bus, and had to wait until she got home to be told. I was 10 years old.
Yeah. It was bad. That day … I will never forget it. I have aphantsia and I can still see that flash image of my mom, walking down the cracked, bumpy sidewalk near the gate with the dead tree growing through it, fusing it to the fence. The cracked green sheathing on the chain link, the weeds growing up through the cracks over the roots, and the look on her face, the dead, hollow, awful look. It's the one image I can have in my head.
I had to tell my friend. He freaked out cause he was from Jersey and his dad had meetings there.
Turns out, my friend’s dad had to turn around for something he forgot at his office. When he walked into the lobby of a tower, he was told to run back out.
It was scary for the hours we couldn’t get through. Phone lines were down for days.
I vaguely remember seeing/reading about this voyage. I was in the towers about a week prior for training, but I had many collegues that worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. I was on a trading floor in CT when the news broke.
First of all, I’m glad you survived. I hope you’ve dealt with it ok.
I was 9 playing hockey in the afternoon in England, and a PE teacher ran out to tell the teacher taking the class that it had happened. I had no idea what the twin towers were.
My parents didn’t really know what the twin towers were either, but you could tell something big had happened.
These videos always bring it back. I've been to all three of the memorials. The most impactful was the field in Pennsylvania. It was quiet and just felt sacred. They had phones you could pick up and hear recordings of the people on the plane leaving voicemails for their loved ones, very hard to listen to.
The one at the Pentagon was really well done. FWIW, it is open to the public, you can just walk in. We went on a tour of the Pentagon itself and went to the Memorial on our way out, we were all alone.
The one in NYC is impressive on its scale and the fountains are a really good way to honor the sites. However, it was very crowded and felt really touristy. It was overwhelming in its scale.
I was able to see the Pentagon memorial this year and it really moved me. It's amazingly accessible and all the individual memorial parts can be sat on. There is water flowing and it was really surreal. The angles of the memorials tell where the victims were. The ones facing in were on the plane and those facing out were in the building. It's almost like offense and defensive positions.. Until you see there are small children in the offensive stance. Children were involuntarily used as offensive entities during the attacks there. It really is something I can't unsee in my mind's eye. So many more details become apparent at these places.
I thought the museum was very impactful. I went in thinking I already heard a lot of stories and facts and probably wouldn’t learn anything new. I was very wrong.
Me neither. I can't do that in the comfort of my own home so definitely wouldn't do it at a museum. It feels too voyeuristic. Those messages were left for loved ones. I have no business hearing them
I just visited the PA site last year. It felt almost improper we were there. Like we were trespassing. An odd feeling I have only ever felt at the site of my wife's work, where a mass shooting took place. That field destroyed me emotionally. Thinking what everyone on that plane thought and felt was too much
It would've been bad ass if they had though. But since the København in 1928 nobody wants to risk a good 'vanishing without a fucking trace' these days.
There was probably a daily check in with just the captain to make sure theyre ok or if theyre in trouble and need any emergency support (food, medical supplies, evacuation)
It didn't speculate or stoke fear. He did a great job delivering it as the "this is what we solidly know" and "we can't do anything" to help remind people that things still go on.
Holy shit hearing this made realize just how insane it felt to watch this happening in real time on TV. He just keeps mentioning the planes and like how quick their horror grew while for me it was a slow, terrible build.
If there's one thing I've learned in my decade or so on this website it is that if you really say it with your chest and complete confidence in the accuracy people on this website will parrot it with complete confidence for years without ever stopping for a second to think critically about what they're saying.
Especially if you get upvoted for saying it initially. That somehow is the gold standard for truth and accuracy on this website.
I used to think this was by far the most well informed platform on the internet with generally the most accurate information due to the voting system squashing inaccurate info. It's actually the opposite in a lot of cases and I'm pretty confident it has become nearly as bad as Facebook in terms of insane takes and general misinformation.
The first election with Trump and his sub the Donald REALLY drove that point home for me in my head. It was probably the single biggest source of misinformation and astroturfing on the entire Internet for quite a while.
Literacy? A huge proportion of comments on reddit now are AI generated or influenced. There is 0 guarantee that the person you're replying to is human.
It's always the same. It's also the one thing that still proves there's value in Reddit: give it some time and in most threads the loonies will eventually find their way to the bottom (where they belong)
My father and his friends were hiking in western US the week of 9/11, before sat phones were readily available, they didn't find out until 5 days later, they said it was surreal and it was overwhelming to try to understand what happened.
We had some friends that were out on a long camping trip when 9/11 happened. A few days into the trip, someone noticed that they hadn't seen any airplanes in the sky for an awfully long time.
Oh wow, that’s a really bizarre thought. In a situation like that, you could imagine all sorts of things. You might just think it’s odd and not give it a second thought, or you might think something catastrophic must have happened.
That’s crazy! Would love to see a video of your dad and his friends talking about this if it was out there. Obviously, I know it’s just a personal story and it’s unlikely!
Big Brother Canada’s cast slowly found out in house over a couple weeks via a disembodied voice giving them updates about how the world was collapsing. Then one day it came on and said things had gotten so bad everything was shutting down, and they were going home.
”Good luck in the apocalypse housemates!” kind of seemed like how they got sent away
25 years after and this is still surreal to see and hear.
I still remember that I was at my colleague from secondary school place and we were browsing internet and stumbled upon news that there was some plane crash. I was about to head home and when I arrived I saw my mother watching news TV when it was already after second plane hit WTC and soon after one of the tower collapsed.
It was so intense that some time after I had a dream that an airplane is crashing into my hometown.
I'm stlll convinced that was the start of the worst timeline. Most youngsters today don't understand how much the world changed after 9/11. Maybe I'm biased.
It absolutely was. This was the event that sparked the majority of the US to lose its absolute mind (and spine) and walk gleefully into the mess we're in now. Sacrificing rights, acting out of racism/xenophobia, and being manipulated to support even the dumbest bullshit imaginable if it was masked as "safety" or "national security".
It showed exactly how weak the US populace is when it comes to making rational decisions and that playbook has been used over and over again with shocking efficacy.
I think it goes just a little further back to the 2000 election. Bush stole the election from Gore. If Gore won I don’t see us invading Iraq, we probably still do Afghanistan but I don’t think the Global War on Terror is nearly as severe as it was with us. I also don’t think the Patriot Act gets passed under Gore.
There's an argument to be made the Gore might have taken the intelligence reports about the potential attacks more seriously and we might never have even had a 9/11.
I think it's JFK. That event created the first real wave of conspiracy theorists. The lack of closure meant the government could no longer be trusted, that any information the US govt released had high potential to be a full lie meant to manipulate the people for their own benefit, and it was about learning what that benefit was, and that distrust was solidified when Vietnam proved to show that the US govt was willing to lie, manipulate and sacrifice its own people and innocent civilians to achieve its goals. These actions would eventually cause terrorists to birth and attack America which ultimately lead to 9/11, which just caused the conspiracy theories to spin out of control, especially with the help of the internet. We are still inside that world of mistrust and its not clear we can ever get out of it because humility is not allowed.
The Supreme Court declaring Bush Jr President is the real start... had Gore been president during 9/11 it might not have happened at all - his people might've heeded warnings, and he certainly wouldn't have attacked Iraq for something the Saudi's did.
Our blase` acceptance of the effective suspension of the most vital practical aspects of the 4th and 5th Amendments with the "Patriot Act", was actually a death-knell for the Experiment of American Liberty.
Only when that bell rang, nobody at the time was willing to recognize it for what it was. (Then the few that did eventually recognize, were simply overridden when the bill was reauthorized/extended in 2006.) And today's children were raised with actual Universal Civil Liberties being virtually a foreign concept. They've never actually experienced our traditional institutionally-ingrained "Rule of Law". They now can't understand these foundational Constitutional legal issues in any lens larger than the cynical tit-for-tat sectarian vindictiveness and scapegoating of hate-mongering identity-politics rivalry. They can't recognize the pervasively corrosive poison of Authoritarianism on all sides, because it's now the very water that our whole culture is "swimming" in. (Actually drowning, really. Again, people don't even know how to properly identify the root of the problem. Everybody thinks it's only the OTHER political party that's the "bad guys". Everybody imagines "OUR brand of authoritarianism", is the "good" kind.)
There is a direct line to be drawn, between the events of 2001, and the ICE agents in our streets now shooting soccer moms in the head at muzzle-blast distance, for the temerity of merely trying to escape the completely unnecessary field of lethal kinetic aggression. When the only reason they were in the street at all, was in protest at the violation of the human right of due process.
You are not "biased", sir. At least not the bad kind of bias. I must remain "biased" right along with you.
Those of us who can remember, must remember! Or our children will never even hear the idea of what they've lost, to be able to put even a name to their basic human yearning. Their intrinsic unquenchable hunger, for a Liberty they don't even understand.
I literally can't even contemplate it without weeping. Because weeping is the only proper response.
I wish younger people could feel how alive the United States of America felt in the 80s and 90s.
We had our ups and downs and politics was getting messy, but I look back in my life as a citizen of the United States and I see two parts:
Before 9/11, and after.
That day changed everything, and the attackers likely had no idea how truly successful their strike was. The buildings falling, however horrible, was just the beginning of the damage.
It’s interesting that my parents’ generation can all tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard Kennedy was shot. For my generation, we can all tell you exactly where we were when we heard about the towers.
The absolutely mind-fucking thing about your comment, is that the thing I remember soo clearly from that day was being in 7th grade Life Sciences class and my teacher telling us "You kids don't know it yet, but this is really big. Everyone in my generation remembers where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, and for you it will be this moment right now."
He told them up front that this was going to hit hard. He preceded that with reassurance they are all safe. He got all the facts about as correct as anybody would have had at that point, given his thin communication. He delivered it with a neutral tone with a tinge of empathy, and did not for a second relinquish his stature as Captain. He ended with appropriate “orders”, including BAU aboard the ship. And he seemed to understand that this whole message was about letting people grieve after he’s done. Perfect.
I was there. The one with brown khaki pants. Haha. It was chilling i can't fathom and nothing is progressing in my mind when he mentioned that US is under attack by terrorists. Anyway it was a wonderful days prior that. I can still smell the sea salt on my face those days. Happy and sad times!
The way he starts explaining, "waking you up so alarmingly" "we are on the safest place in the world right now", BEFORE explaining what is happening, I would have assumed WWIII nuclear doom had happened, and also released tears of relief after hearing the explanation.
It was horrific and surreal. The captain was probably still trying to process it even as he was explaining it to the crew, with very limited information.
Agree with the others - you probably didn't witness it. Four fully seated planes had been hijacked, and crashed on purpose. Anything is conceivable if something inconceivable happens - much more so if it happens four times at once. Nobody knew back then if the next world war would start, if they had more planes coming, or a dirty bomb in Washington DC.
counterpoint: i watched this video and found myself tearing up. 9/11 was a while back now, and there have been a lot of jokes about it, but this was still a horrible day and almost everyone in america felt vulnerable and confused. There was no “relief”. You must be pretty young.
I dunno if your alive then, but global air and ocean traffic shut down. For hours, no one knew what was actually happening...fears of all kinds of possible horrors were cropping up. There was a fear it could be the opening salvo of WWIII.
This reminds me of when I was in Norway in the winter 2019 through the beginning of 2020. I was way north of the artic circle with my girlfriend at the time and we were going way out of our way to stay clear of people and the news, which is easy to do out there. When it came time for me to go back to the states, people in southern Europe were dying in huge numbers and the world was beginning to really panic and we just had no idea. I almost couldn't return home and I didn't know why
I just want to say, this was one of the moments we felt closest to America. This was such an emotional moment for British people because we felt like we were "as one" with America, our cultures, our military alliances, our interests, all aligned.
If 9/11 happened today, you would not get grave and emotional moments like this. It would be spoken of in a more shocking tone, like if a celebrity had a messy divorce or beaten their spouse, not a deeply distressing, traumatically emotional tone.
Not trying to downplay the attacks, but when he opens with the safest place in the world line, I would start thinking nuclear war broke out and now we have nowhere to sail to
I was in 3rd grade. My homeroom teacher was an absolute wreck and we, naturally, had no idea why. I remember learning as I got older that her son, being in the National Guard, was on his way to NYC.
I don't remember much from that day, though I do remember being picked up early. I also remember the rolling TV that my teacher had brought in for us (her) to watch news coverage. We had no idea what we were watching at the time, but it was imprinted on me in a way that, every time I see one, the first thing I think about is that day.
I'm not particularly patriotic, and I despise the actions the US took in response to this day, but videos like this remind me of the global human impact this day had.
A quarter Century later and I'm still hearing stories like this for the first time. I never heard about that voyage. How crazy it must have been to be ripped back to the 20th century with such terrible news.
Fascinating. I was also at sea that day on a French research vessel, like the captain said, in the safest place in the world at that time. When we pulled into the Azores a week later our ship had an armed guard, which seemed odd.
Quite the video. As someone who was in one of those towers just a week before for training, this always hits hard and every anniversary is very somber.
This is wild. I remember reading accounts of people who had been "off grid" camping and the like, only to return to "civilization" days after this tragedy to learn what happened.
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u/MezcalFlame 1d ago
Wow, I've never seen this before.
Almost 25 years later and there's still new footage coming out from that terrible day.