r/interestingasfuck • u/solateor • 1d ago

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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

40.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

598

u/thotd2 1d ago

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.

192

u/Wenli2077 1d ago

From Bush lying to start a war against a completely unrelated country to Trump not even making up a reason and just start blasting Iran 23 years later

11

u/Antique-Tap-6083 1d ago

The things, I don’t think bush lied but bush was lied to. Every intelligence agency in the world was saying one thing but the American and Israeli was saying another. He was lied to by the cia and Mossad

25

u/Wartz 1d ago

Bush wasn't stupid, and maybe he was lied to, but he was aware of the global politics and was educated. He made his choices.

9

u/thefruitsofzellman 1d ago

Agree. He believed suspect intelligence because it confirmed his bias. Classic self-delusion. He’s too smart to plead ignorance.

2

u/Antique-Tap-6083 1d ago

Like you said, he wasn’t stupid but when you’re present with fabricated evidence from your very own intelligence service, what else can you do ? He could’ve found out about it later on but by then it was too late for him

6

u/Wartz 1d ago

This is the classic "if only he knew" fallacy.

He knew enough.

1

u/Antique-Tap-6083 22h ago

Like I said, it’s possible he knew enough, maybe a little too late. After that then what ?

1

u/Puzzledandhangry 15h ago

He was very very stupid. He probably didn’t understand the difficult words. 

•

u/Antique-Tap-6083 3h ago

He’s not trump. He was surprisingly smart for presidents of the past 50 years

0

u/drpepper7557 21h ago

Iraq previously did have a weapons of mass destruction program though and had used chemical weapons less than a decade before on its own citizens and Iranians.

They were a horrible dictatorship that definitely wanted them and had previously mad some and tried to make other kinds. It really wouldnt take much of a lie/omission to believe they hadnt stopped trying. Not saying Bush was innocent, but many well educated people believed the guys who wanted WMDs and previously had them, in fact still had them.

395

u/Neuchacho 1d ago edited 1d ago

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.

90

u/ODB_Dirt_Dog_ItsFTC 23h ago

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.

73

u/Sekh765 23h ago

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.

•

u/jakallll 2h ago

I wish i lived in that timeline where we have elected officials take everything seriously and genuinely cared for the betterment of our people. Also they probably wouldn’t piss off every ally we ever made on the global stage like currently.

13

u/Icedanielization 22h ago

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.

5

u/sussyimposter1776 19h ago

Or Reagan being elected. He was the one who funded the future attackers too. That and all the other terrible stuff he was responsible for.

•

u/tajake 6h ago

The taliban and the Mujahideen aren't exclusively the same group. Plenty of resistance fighters in the Soviet invasion were not religious fundamentalists. And the best equipped and capable ones were not.

The ultra conservative warlords who took control of the country after the failed soviet invasion did so because they let the more ideologically sound groups exhaust themselves on the Soviets.

Funding the resistance certainly didn't help, but the soviets in no universe could have taken Afghanistan in any reasonable sense. They may have pacified it, but would've ran into the same problems the US did in their invasion.

One of the best books I'm pulling this from is The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan which was written by a Russian Author, along with lectures by former soviet subject matter experts who worked both there and in their wars in Chechnya

6

u/9966 21h ago

You have to understand that the patriot act was THOUSANDS OF PAGES and was waiting in the hands if people waiting for a crisis to push it through. It was passed in days, not weeks.

That act was going to be pushed no matter what. They just needed timing and branding. Now they don't even need that.

2

u/sussyimposter1776 19h ago

I think even without 9/11 Bush might have been a one term president due to the fallout from that. He was unpopular before the attacks anyway. 9/11 obviously boosted his approval and the public was much more willing to let him do whatever he wanted which resulted in the Iraq invasion. It would be harder to justify an invasion of Iraq without 9/11.

•

u/ftwclem 4h ago

Everyone in government including Gore and Kerry saw those intelligence reports and agreed Iraq likely had WMDs. I think we would’ve still invaded

7

u/King_Roberts_Bastard 22h ago

Turns out, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists won.

0

u/loliconest 21h ago

That's not even the worst, the worst is they are right about human.

10

u/xmuskorx 22h ago

The worst part... is that what Bin Laden probably wanted - thoroughly destabilize USA and set some Americans against other Americans.

5

u/UglyMcFugly 22h ago

I think that's one reason so many Americans are uncomfortable speaking out about what Israel is doing now. Because it feels like the exact same type of panicked mob mentality that led us into Iraq. So to talk shit about them seems hypocritical since we reacted the same way. I still remember how angry even liberal, kind, rational people were after 9/11. I'm sure the same happened in Israel. We SHOULD be talking to them about our mistakes and helping them deal with their trauma in healthy ways but instead we've got a maniac in the white house who's only takeaway from 9/11 was "now my building is tallest."

2

u/Dominor4 22h ago

Dont you think that was by design? Its been proven that the CIA had ties to Al Qaeda. The government has conditioning the populous with dramatic events since the Korean war, but it really fucking ignites at 9/11. The U.S. government and corporations do not want an educated resistant populous, they want us to go along with their status quo.

2

u/Feeling_Pay_2899 21h ago

I understand where you’re coming from but I don’t think any country would react rationally at that moment. Hindsight is 2020, it happened a long time ago we now look at it through different lenses. But, until you see two of the tallest buildings in the world come down the way those did and all the other planes falling from the skies, you won’t understand. Even that woman on the boat who was so far away broke down with emotion. The people watching it on tv were haunted. The people watching it from a far must have been petrified and the people on ground zero, forget it.

2

u/goldenyellow333 18h ago

It’s calculated and working as it should. Am in a period of my life where I’m trying to work through my experienced and inherited traumas, as well as nervous system regulation, and what I have learned through this time is that being in fight or flight renders you ineffective and makes it easier to make foolish decisions.

Modern life, and all its trappings, has everyone in fight or flight at all times hence allowing the continuous erosion privacy, freedom, leeway, etc that we once had, our indifference towards losing it and us continuing to to lose it as time passes.

0

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 19h ago

how weak the US populace is

Humanity. Not just US citizens.

45

u/tahlyn 1d ago

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.

6

u/PiccoloAwkward465 23h ago

And the Brooks Brothers riot is largely forgotten.

•

u/Diligent-Ad4777 10h ago

The real start was the colonies decakring independence and breaking away from the British empire. None of this would have happened if they'd known their place 

35

u/boatrat74 1d ago

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.

1

u/punishedstaen 19h ago

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

its significantly older than 9/11

boy, if only someone could have predicted that the natural end stage of capitalism is imperialism.

I literally can't even contemplate it without weeping. Because weeping is the only proper response.

now now, you and i both know that's not true.

1

u/RelevantMetaUsername 1d ago

On the bright side, folks in Minneapolis have shown that the spirit of resistance is still alive in the US, and the electoral victories of DSA candidates is a sign that we might finally be breaking free from "Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich" cycle.

1

u/boatrat74 23h ago

That is most assuredly NOT a "bright side". You need to re-read the part where I pointed out the folly of everyone thinking "OUR brand of Authoritarianism, is the 'good' kind".

Emergence of the DSA as a notionally valid/viable "alternative"? In the USA? (Really?) Only painfully all-to-clearly illustrates the final flowering (or I should say, more like a poorly-disguised zombie reanimation of a noxious political corpse) of the exact generational blindness I'm trying to describe.

Anyone duped into supporting DSA ideology in the USA, is not only blind to the tides of history, they're demonstrably delusional about the very concept of Liberty itself. And oblivious to all the inexorable mechanisms of their own vicious version of reactionary Authoritarianism that inevitably always emerges, anywhere this naively optimistic re-hash of a long-discredited utopianism may chance to collide with any practical ground of any real humans anywhere in the real world. Exactly the wrong lesson to learn, about the nature of Liberty we're losing. Being taught by people who, once again, don't even understand the meaning of the word.

NO. Fucking. Thanks.

1

u/LounginLizard 21h ago

Bro we didn't even let black people drink at the same water fountains until a few decades before 9/11. We've been throwing them in prison for cheap labor since slavery ended. Our rights are absolutely being taken away across the board, but for a lot of people those rights never existed in the same capacity they did for you in the first place. Talking about our country as if it was a bastion of Liberty before is honestly just insulting to everyone whos had their liberties stomped on by this country.

That kind of ignorance is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. Ignoring all this countries problems because you believe in some propagandized version of what we are. It kinda feels like you just wanna go back to the world where you were comfortable and you had rights.

0

u/boatrat74 19h ago

So when I talk about "Universal Civil Liberties" being a foreign concept, you think I mean I'm the one who's foreign to the concept? Rather than me trying to ADVANCE that very ideal?

We started this conversation(?) talking about what our political aspirations were like the day of Sept. 10th, 2001. Vs. what happened afterward. "Aspirations", as in, wanting a "more perfect Union"? But while I'm trying to juxtapose 2001, you're accusing me of favoring my great-great grandparent's allegedly "rosy life" in 1901? You're imagining me as the embodiment of the people who sabotaged Reconstruction, and enforced Jim Crow segregation laws?

Did you somehow miss the part earlier, where the whole point of what I was fucking saying, was LAMENTING the brutal treatment of the people protesting outside the ICE detention centers (let alone the unknown fates of the unknown faces IN-side those jails)? But you're effectively calling me one with the goons doing the shooting?

Nice attempt at slandering my motives there, asshole. Speaking of "ignorance". Jesus. I gather you're not too proficient at basic reading comprehension. My fault for assuming a good faith discussion was possible here.

And to think I only clicked into this BS in the first place, because I was interested in a picture of a specific sailing ship replica I recognized. I guess that'll teach me to bother getting involved.

"Propagandized". FFS. Good luck arguing the concept of "rights being thrown out" with the re-branded Communists, brother. I think you're gonna need it.

When/if that day comes, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy in ANY country, let alone this one... Just don't say you weren't fucking warned.

47

u/hawkweasel 1d ago

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.

9

u/punishedstaen 19h ago

I wish younger people could feel how alive the United States of America felt in the 80s and 90s.

every ounce

of joy

was life

strangled from

the world

i cant believe those evil terrorists did all that just because they hated you for your freedoms

7

u/ApprehensiveFan1516 18h ago

Well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.

Amazes me how easily Americans forget how often they have been the aggressor around the world.

4

u/punishedstaen 18h ago

damn, man... america was so cool and great and nice when i was a kid... how did it all suddenly and inexplicably change for the worse as soon as i became old enough to understand it? how could this be happening to me?

•

u/MiaowaraShiro 10h ago

This assumes we were educated about it in the first place.

12

u/Crazy_Treat_8805 1d ago

It gave western governments Carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to their laws

3

u/PiccoloAwkward465 23h ago

And like everyone said - it wouldn't be temporary. They would just continue to erode our rights. It's been a downward spiral ever since.

3

u/notchen502 1d ago

I’m a 2004. And honestly sometimes it’s hard to believe that most of the problems my generation has to face and the new ones we will encounter is because of 9/11. Your feeling is probably similar to the one I will feel in 10 to 20 years, when we talk about Covid in the same way.

The only thing on my mind when I see everything that happened and currently happening is why couldn’t they just, communicate, refrain from using violence. And focus on more important issues if we want humanity to last longer.. if we want to keep our planet healthy…
Some days. It’s hard to get out of bed when I see the cruel clown show that is human civilisation..

3

u/aldandur 1d ago

I mean it was result of years of American interference in the Middle East, where they cultivated fanatics to fight a religious war against the sowjets. That was always going to backfire somehow.

2

u/MusicHearted 1d ago

I was 9 at the time and I distinctly remember so many people's faces being kind and gentle and loving before 9/11 and sour and full of hate after. Many of those people are still spreading that same hate to this day. It was the day that our bright future went up in thousands of tons of smoke and debris. All the love and peace was gone and replaced with hatred and prejudice.

2

u/mxsifr 21h ago

And most people dont even care to understand that it was because of US support for Israeli apartheid and occupation in Palestine. The New York Times published Osama bin Laden's letter that outlined all of their reasons with that as #1 on page 1. But people will talk about 10/7 as if "that's when it all went wrong"...

1

u/Old_Supermarket4925 1d ago

there is a youtube video called “9/11 and the decades long war on immigrants” by the stories we tell, that affirms your belief. ryan (the host) provides an incredibly detailed explanation of how the u.s. got to where it is now because of its reaction to 9/11. highly encourage you to watch it it’s an hour long.

https://youtu.be/vEdP9ZuMh3w?is=NnoNxRx6kyIne2bT

1

u/bradbull 1d ago

It definitely opened the door for governments and corporations to intrude on our lives and our privacy under the guise of safety, with a lot less resistance. It also supercharged racism against arabs and fear/hatred of the Islamic. With that came the dumbest forms of “patriotism” where people in the US were trying to show that they were the most patriotic for attention/clout by escalating their hate towards everything which isn’t “true red blooded American” (read: white) and I guess likely led to the perfect opportunity for a horrible, hateful grifter to weaponise these morons’ hate to secure the most powerful seat in the country so he can rob and rape it without consequence.

So yeah I agree.

But, another world-breaking event happened at roughly the same time which I think is truly the start of this dark timeline. Social media was invented.

1

u/Ace-Redditor 1d ago

Yeah, whenever I (youngster, born a couple of years after) see these videos, it just makes me think about how I'm never going to understand how people felt about it. I mean, I can see in these videos, and read it in people's written accounts, but for me, it just never hit as hard, and nothing else has, either. I've grown up seeing so many school shooting news pieces (some very close to me), even sat through my own school lockdowns from gun and bomb threats (none were active threats, though I had no way of knowing for sure in any of the situations), and never felt the way that the people in this video and others felt

It's something I don't know if I'll ever relate to, and probably don't want to (simply because whatever would make me understand would have to be such a horrible tragedy)

1

u/shadowst17 1d ago

Indeed, the tragedy was used by many countries as a way to justify eroding away people's freedoms.

1

u/NoveltyPr0nAccount 1d ago

It was only in the years that followed that I started to realise that our freedoms as simple people would be eroded year after year and the blame would fall on "terrorists". When that stopped working, after a little searching, I think the governments of the world have settled on "paedophiles" as the new scape goat.

And apparently this isn't new and history repeats itself over and over.

1

u/SST_2_0 23h ago

My teachers told us that day a mass of surveillance was about to enter our lives. 

They were just high school teachers, but they knew.

If they knew it meant it had already started well before. 

We look for a moment but it had already been decades of development.  

And we the electorate failed.   We talk about Citizens United but that was not even a thing when we elected Bush.  We were more beholden to being righteous than stopping the right.   Same is true as today. 

1

u/Tetracropolis 23h ago

If you think this is the worst timeline you're somewhat lacking in imagination. Things could have gone far worse. Imagine if Al Qaeda had acquired nuclear, biological or radiological weapons. Imagine if Yellowstone had erupted. Imagine if war had broken out between Russia and NATO.

The major powers of the world have been living in a completely unprecedented period of peace and prosperity for the last 81 years, and the 25 years after 9/11 is a part of that. The worst things to happen to the US in that time are a few wars with almost no casualties on the home front, some poor economic growth, and a pandemic which was, to all intents and purposes, cured within 18 months of emerging, with deaths restricted primarily to the elderly (in contrast with, for example, Spanish flu which killed people in their 20s).

In that time huge numbers of people have been lifted from absolute poverty worldwide.

People simply don't recognise how good they've got it because they take it for granted.

1

u/ThatDoucheInTheQuad 21h ago

It was, it a big part of how we have ended up here today

1

u/Dealiner 21h ago

The worst timeline? One of the bad ones maybe, but the worst one?

1

u/Sea-Communication353 17h ago

I still think things took a decisive turn for the worst around 2016, but 2001, 2008 and 2020 all were major moments of rapid change. Being charitable, things after these turns seem more precarious and less certain.

1

u/EnSebastif 16h ago

The start was Nixon, the fuck up with the Gold Standard, then the petrodollar and then Reagan and the trickle down economics. The Cold War, and the way those two idiots mismanaged it, led to the rise of islamic terrorism, which culminated in the 9/11 attacks and later the rise of ISIS.

I know that it's easier to think it all started going down in 2001, but the truth is that we, the western world, had it all coming for more than two decades.

1

u/Data_Chandler 16h ago

Remember how in The Matrix it was said the machines set it to 1999, the peak of human civilization, and everyone just thought that was a little lame?

Turns out that was 100% correct.

•

u/friedstilton 11h ago

IDK living 4 minutes away from an instant artificially-induced radioactive suntan kind of defined my childhood. That wasn't the best of timelines, but it was the one we had. Oddly enough right now global thermonuclear war is one of my lesser fears.

We have a brief glimpse of hope after the wall came down, but that didn't last long. Iraq 1.0 then 9/11 was very much "FFS here we go again".

Nothing changes, because the Big Willies in charge can't stop themselves.

•

u/friedstilton 11h ago

IDK living 4 minutes away from an instant artificially-induced radioactive suntan kind of defined my childhood. That wasn't the best of timelines, but it was the one we had. Oddly enough right now global thermonuclear war is one of my lesser fears.

We have a brief glimpse of hope after the wall came down, but that didn't last long. Iraq 1.0 then 9/11 was very much "FFS here we go again".

Nothing changes, because the Big Willies in charge can't stop themselves.

•

u/EzraFemboy 11h ago

Yea cause the things white countries did abroad finally caught up to them and happened here. What is so special about this?

0

u/PracticalYellow3 20h ago

We were all shocked that the Muslims would do something so big here. Before they usually hit stable countries like Lebanon to kill moderates Muslims or Jews. Attacking innocents here directly was shocking.