9/11 anniversary, where were you when it happened and was it a conspiracy?

Tail Docker · 11-09-2014 12:22PM

Rayanne2010 wrote: »

I was picking up my around the world tickets in usit in city.. I had booked to go to LA on way home and remember thinking will I be okay?

Little did I know.. that when I got to bali a few weeks later and wore an american flag vest top that I would get stalked & approached by nasty looking men.. my intuition told me to leave promptly and glad I did.. cas the very same nightclub got bombed a year later and approx 180 tourists killed!

Phew, that was a close one. I'd say you were sweating.

Greenmachine · 11-09-2014 12:26PM

I had come off a night shift and decided to stay up to reset my clock. I was channel hopping and ended up on sky news. The first plane had already crashd into one of the towers and the reports were talking about how many people could be in each of the tower at any one time. It was all unbelievably surreal, then word started coming in of other hijackings. I saw the second plane as it went into the tower. One day I will never forget.

Spudzzmurphy · 11-09-2014 12:32PM

I was laying concrete slabs in my backyard at the time,funny how these things stick in the mind so well,like Lady Diana's death and the like.

Tail Docker · 11-09-2014 12:38PM

Spudzzmurphy wrote: »

I was laying concrete slabs in my backyard at the time,funny how these things stick in the mind so well,like Lady Diana's death and the like.

Apt user name - Slab murphy.. I remember coming back from Dublin airport, hearing it on the radio, traffic was absolute bedlam across the M50 and N7, gridlock. Took 2 1/2 hours to do a 1/2 hour drive.

Dartz · 11-09-2014 12:38PM

Came home from school. Was unimpressed by the special effects in the film on the telly.

****ed off upstairs to the Playstation.

Wondered why the film was still on at 6pm.

And am utterly ****ing sick of the same topic year after year.

typicalstudent · 11-09-2014 12:39PM

Interesting story regarding 9/11..
My mother was in America at the time, Donegal woman in the big shmoke! She was over on a 2 week holiday with some guy she met in Ireland from America and her friend, as well as her friends severely disabled son. The son was wheel chair bound and needed constant assistant and frequent medical attention. The plan was that they were doing the tourist-y things, Statue of Liberty, Time Square etc and on 9/11 they were planning on going to the Twin Towers, as they were quite a spectacle.
On the 10th of September the son took sick and needed immediate attention from his GP at home, so they flew home as quickly as possible. Mum spent the next few days glued to the TV watching the constant updates of what could've been the end of her life!

asteroids over berlin · 11-09-2014 12:43PM

i was in the office with a hangover, this was at the height or crescendo as I like to refer to it of my partying days, I never heard of bin laden, I remember my American colleague shouting, who do they think they are, they can't do this to the US. Watched it on the net the whole day nursing my hangover, wht a good employee I was!

Spudzzmurphy · 11-09-2014 12:43PM

typicalstudent wrote: »

Interesting story regarding 9/11..
My mother was in America at the time, Donegal woman in the big shmoke! She was over on a 2 week holiday with some guy she met in Ireland from America and her friend, as well as her friends severely disabled son. The son was wheel chair bound and needed constant assistant and frequent medical attention. The plan was that they were doing the tourist-y things, Statue of Liberty, Time Square etc and on 9/11 they were planning on going to the Twin Towers, as they were quite a spectacle.
On the 10th of September the son took sick and needed immediate attention from his GP at home, so they flew home as quickly as possible. Mum spent the next few days glued to the TV watching the constant updates of what could've been the end of her life!

Strange is life.

Right Turn Clyde · 11-09-2014 12:45PM

I was painting the outside of a house. I was a 16 year-old wannabe revolutionary at the time. I was watching the news with my family later that day and I said some very unsympathetic things about what I was seeing. Thankfully I've grown up and copped on to myself.

Going Strong · 11-09-2014 12:47PM

Was in work. I got an email from a friend in London saying that a plane had flown into one of the towers. Thinking it was a light aircraft, I went in search of info on the internet. Just as I did, someone opposite me found a CNN webcast of the first plane striking the building. As we watched the footage, it was terribly slow so it was weird to watch the second plane do a jerky 'stop frame' animation effect collision into the second tower.

It was a weird atmosphere where everyone sort of shrugged and got on with their day's work as if planes crashing into buildings was an everyday occurrence. No real shouts or dismay, just "Oh well, better get on with my tasks so." sort of thing. The CNN footage was almost completely frozen and someone put it up on full screen so every so often it would update by a couple of seconds so that the explosion looked like pictures of a far off expanding galaxy or something it was so slow. There was far more outrage on the following Friday over the national day of mourning as the company tried to put it down as one of our annual leave days instead of an impromptu bank holiday.

o1s1n · 11-09-2014 12:48PM

One of our family members (in law, married to my great aunt) worked in one of the towers and we spent the whole time glued to the tv trying to get through on the phone to see if he was okay.

He was in the tower that was hit first, below the impact area. They were all told to stay at their desks but he thought 'feck this!' and ran out all the way down the stairs. Loads of his work colleagues died unfortunately.

He was also drafted off to the Vietnam war and was around Dealy Plaza when JFK was assassinated so I'm starting to think he's the common denominator :pac:

Dave H · 11-09-2014 12:52PM

I was working for an American multinational at the time, we were heading back to work after lunch and the tv in the breakroom had Sky News covering the first plane. Like someone mentioned earlier, it was deemed an accident until the second plane hit , then the whole world knew what was happening. I had been over in New York 2 months previous and to have witnessed the pure height of those buildings was heartbreaking when they fell. A lot of people will always say "Oh it happened years ago and there's so much worse happening in the world" and yes that's true but I always have a feeling if sadness thinking about it. I've been to New York loads, before and after, and there's something about that place that I love, so I think that's why it always gets me whenever this date rolls around.

Corkgirl210 · 11-09-2014 12:58PM

Tail Docker wrote: »

Phew, that was a close one. I'd say you were sweating.

Yes when you are being interrogated over your nationality.. it is a danger.. especially WHEN a year later your fears where proven to be justified! Also,
If trip was other way around I may not be here to tell the tale..

Duggy747 · 11-09-2014 01:08PM

o1s1n wrote: »

He was in the tower that was hit first, below the impact area. They were all told to stay at their desks but he thought 'feck this!' and ran out all the way down the stairs. Loads of his work colleagues died unfortunately.

Loads of stories of people who did the same thing when they were told to stay where they were and bolted out of the building as fast as they could, losing their friends and colleagues who stayed behind.

Too bloody right, I'd be shítting my pants trying to get out of the building.

GavRedKing · 11-09-2014 01:15PM

I was in Ibiza on a family holiday and we were out for a bit of food, remember sitting there watching as smoke was pouring out of the 1st building, was waiting to be served when gasps went up arpund us, the 2nd plane had hit.

Most have spent the whole day in front of the TV in reception once we got back.

razorblunt · 11-09-2014 01:39PM

Had a half day from secondary school, which was unusual for a Tuesday, it was only our school that had the halfer so I was on a half empty bus heading home. The radio was on in the bus, which isn't unusual in itself, dependant on the driver, but as I was with a friend we were talking so I was only hearing snippets. The only pieces I caught were "New York....Financial Center ... Wall Street" so I assumed some stock had dived and the market was in trouble.

Got home to see my mam watching it on tv and then I saw the Towers, I walked in about 2 minutes before the 2nd plane hit. Watched it for about an hour or two, then headed off upstairs to do my homework with RTE News on in the background.

Was in New York a year after then and went to Ground Zero, very eerie and sombre as you'd expect. Spent 4th of July on a beach in Connecticut, Chinook helicopters amongst other planes patrolling the sky was very surreal. Never had as much hassle boarding a plane on both sides of the Atlantic since that journey.

Nerdlingr · 11-09-2014 04:22PM

Was in work with the radio on in the background. Someone posted up on the work e-message board that a jumbo jet had flown into the one of the towers. Didnt know how bad it was until the second plane crashed.. We tried to get some news over the airwaves, reception was sh*te so went to the only lad in the office who had unrestricted internet access to have a look on sky news/bbc.
It was surreal watching it on TV that day after work. Crazy crazy times, you just knew you had witnnessed the biggest terrorist attack the world had ever seen. It was a strange feeling knowing the world as I knew it had ended and a new one was about to be born.

The_Valeyard · 11-09-2014 04:33PM

In school,

Teacher ran in and said world war 3 just started

Spent that whole evening watching Sky News

Pompous · 11-09-2014 05:13PM

Happy anniversary everyone

Tell me how · 11-09-2014 05:19PM

Woke up from night shift after both towers had fallen. Had radio on and lay there for 15 minutes listening to live reports thinking that it was some sort of drama such as "War of the Worlds" way back in 1938.

rob316 · 11-09-2014 05:26PM

I remember the fear too, the fear that this wasn't over, was there more planes? Was it just America they were going to hit?

I mean ignoring the fact they collapsed this was pretty unimaginable, 2 commercial airliners slammed into giant sky scrapers in New York City.

The really worry was this the start of a World War much like what followed Pear Harbour.

FloatingVoter · 11-09-2014 06:11PM

rob316 wrote: »

I remember the fear too, the fear that this wasn't over, was there more planes? Was it just America they were going to hit?

I mean ignoring the fact they collapsed this was pretty unimaginable, 2 commercial airliners slammed into giant sky scrapers in New York City.

The really worry was this the start of a World War much like what followed Pear Harbour.

That was there too. Its easy to laugh at now. I had been reading articles before 9/11 about weapons grade uranium going walkabout from old Soviet nuclear sub reactors. The prospect of someone letting off a dirty bomb in NYC or anywhere else (?) was a real fear. After all, it wasn't as far fetched as crashing jumbos into skyscrapers.

IvaBigWun · 11-09-2014 06:27PM

TwoShedsJackson wrote: »

How did it 'make billions' when the US spent over a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq?

There was 2.3 trillion dollars that couldnt be accounted for the day before 9/11. It doesnt take a genius to figure out that they knew this was coming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpSBUgbxBU

wotswattage · 11-09-2014 06:28PM

I remember this being headline news for the week leading up to 9/11. Little children being spat at on their way to & from school. Suddenly all forgotten about...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_dispute

Reindeer · 11-09-2014 06:30PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

To get away from the 3 buildings free-falling for a sec:

how can anyone on the non conspiracy side defend only a few blurry seconds of video of the Pentagon being hit (by a missile?) when it has dozens of cameras (80 something iirc) pointing out of it and is one of the most defended buildings in the world

Let's not forget that Doctor Niel DeGrasse Tyson himself witnessed the second collision from just a few blocks away - as did thousands of others for all of the impacts.

Conspiracy theories are for stoners.

There's a reason they aren't called scientific theories. It takes ignorance to propogate the conspiracy theories.

A 110 story, 130 meter tall building is not going to fall like a tree. It has no hinge nor the strength to do so. The moment it starts to suffer from any structural issues, it will collapse straight down, or maybe slightly off center(as the first building did). Gravity is pulling it down to the Earth, not towards the Potomac. Those buildings weigh millions and millions of kilograms. The amount of noise they made was incredible, and would certainly sound very explosive. I have been to the site before they fell. How no more buildings were destroyed that day is more amazing than one being so damaged it came down later.

Both jets that hit the buildings had several hours worth of fuel on board, more than 20,000 gallons/75,000 litres between them. Jet fuel, and most other petrol fuels, have 8X the energy high explosives have by weight. Both jets were Boeing 767 heavy jets, not the tiny Airbus 320's you see coursing about from the continent, with a loaded weight of roughly 180,000 Kilograms each. American Airlines Flight 11 was traveling at 750kph when it struck the North Tower. United Airlines Flight 175 was in excess of 950kph.

- So that's 180,000kg of plane, with 38,000 litres or so of fuel(equivalent to about 216 metric tonnes or so of TNT in stored energy), hitting the building at nearly the speed of sound, followed instantly by that fuel igniting, exploding, and burning, and people are amazed the building came down.

I am amazed it withstood the impact at all.

Conspiracy theory? Whatever.

Let me give you a conspiracy theory that the CIA and someone with half a brain would come up with:

You hire a bunch of terrorist, or the CIA does posing as terrorists. There is a huge pool to choose from - get the cream of the crop, the best fit for the job. Train them in martial arts. The CIA should know how to sneak small, effective weapons on to a plane. Point them towards flight schools that won't ask questions. Make sure they board planes - BIG planes, preferably with loads of fuel and high top speeds at low altitude. Then watch as all your evidence aside from never-to-be-released internal CIA docs that have been coded and ciphered simply disappear the day of the event. Nothing left and no one left knowing but a few CIA operatives that planned it - oh, and Dick Cheney. That's how you do it, folks.

miss tickle · 11-09-2014 07:42PM

Reindeer wrote: »

Let's not forget that Doctor Niel DeGrasse Tyson himself witnessed the second collision from just a few blocks away - as did thousands of others for all of the impacts.

Conspiracy theories are for stoners.

There's a reason they aren't called scientific theories. It takes ignorance to propogate the conspiracy theories.

A 110 story, 130 meter tall building is not going to fall like a tree. It has no hinge nor the strength to do so. The moment it starts to suffer from any structural issues, it will collapse straight down, or maybe slightly off center(as the first building did). Gravity is pulling it down to the Earth, not towards the Potomac. Those buildings weigh millions and millions of kilograms. The amount of noise they made was incredible, and would certainly sound very explosive. I have been to the site before they fell. How no more buildings were destroyed that day is more amazing than one being so damaged it came down later.

Both jets that hit the buildings had several hours worth of fuel on board, more than 20,000 gallons/75,000 litres between them. Jet fuel, and most other petrol fuels, have 8X the energy high explosives have by weight. Both jets were Boeing 767 heavy jets, not the tiny Airbus 320's you see coursing about from the continent, with a loaded weight of roughly 180,000 Kilograms each. American Airlines Flight 11 was traveling at 750kph when it struck the North Tower. United Airlines Flight 175 was in excess of 950kph.

- So that's 180,000kg of plane, with 38,000 litres or so of fuel(equivalent to about 216 metric tonnes or so of TNT in stored energy), hitting the building at nearly the speed of sound, followed instantly by that fuel igniting, exploding, and burning, and people are amazed the building came down.

I am amazed it withstood the impact at all.

Conspiracy theory? Whatever.

Let me give you a conspiracy theory that the CIA and someone with half a brain would come up with:

You hire a bunch of terrorist, or the CIA does posing as terrorists. There is a huge pool to choose from - get the cream of the crop, the best fit for the job. Train them in martial arts. The CIA should know how to sneak small, effective weapons on to a plane. Point them towards flight schools that won't ask questions. Make sure they board planes - BIG planes, preferably with loads of fuel and high top speeds at low altitude. Then watch as all your evidence aside from never-to-be-released internal CIA docs that have been coded and ciphered simply disappear the day of the event. Nothing left and no one left knowing but a few CIA operatives that planned it - oh, and Dick Cheney. That's how you do it, folks.

Except of course the fact that a passenger jet would crash into the steel structure, break up and fall to the ground. It is physically impossible for a plane to have crashed through the steel structure and skin of the WTC, as was apparently depicted on TV.

IvaBigWun · 11-09-2014 07:45PM

Dpes anyone remember how low the price of flights from Dublin to New York dropped to in the days and weeks after?

I remember them going ridiculously low.

bnt · 11-09-2014 08:05PM

bnt wrote: »

At lunch break on a training course I was on, trying to get my email on one of the PCs there, wondering why it was impossible to get to the BBC News website all of a sudden ...

Something weird just occurred to me: on 7/7/2005, when several bombs went off in London, I was again on a training course: this time I was in Germany, giving a course, lecturing away while the students were watching their laptop screens in growing consternation. I eventually had to ask them what the heck was going on. When's my next training course, then ..? :eek:

IvaBigWun · 11-09-2014 08:08PM

o1s1n wrote: »

One of our family members (in law, married to my great aunt) worked in one of the towers and we spent the whole time glued to the tv trying to get through on the phone to see if he was okay.

He was in the tower that was hit first, below the impact area. They were all told to stay at their desks but he thought 'feck this!' and ran out all the way down the stairs. Loads of his work colleagues died unfortunately.

He was also drafted off to the Vietnam war and was around Dealy Plaza when JFK was assassinated so I'm starting to think he's the common denominator :pac:

If he's ever in Dublin can you let us all know please. Id like to avoid him

TwoShedsJackson · 11-09-2014 08:51PM

miss tickle wrote: »

Except of course the fact that a passenger jet would crash into the steel structure, break up and fall to the ground. It is physically impossible for a plane to have crashed through the steel structure and skin of the WTC, as was apparently depicted on TV.

Steel is indestructible then. Got it.

9/11 anniversary, where were you when it happened and was it a conspiracy?

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