9/11, but delayed? | TheaterFire

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picklepuss13@reddit

I was in college and watched it live.

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Missed both towers getting hit, however, I saw them fall live. I remember thinking we won’t overreact, we’ll just beef up aircraft security. Not my best prediction. That event is the reason I retired from the military a couple of years ago. If there was going to be a war, I wanted to help, even in a small way.

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CustomerOutside8588@reddit

I had just left the Army in July 2000, but was in the inactive reserve on 9/11 with a scheduled release from that in July 2002. I figured we would probably overreact simply because I had read The Prospect for a New American Century which was a road map to democratization the middle east by invading Iraq, turning it into a functioning democracy and then doing the same elsewhere in the region. It was kinda like the domino theory for why we pursued the Vietnam War. The paper was written in the late 90s by a bunch of people who were running the Bush DOD.

I warned people about this before I got out. I said that if Bush gets elected, we're going to war in Iraq, we're not going for 100 hours, and it's going to be fucked up. When I saw the towers collapse (in replay) as I walked through my college's library, I figured my prediction was going to be spot on. I wanted nothing to do with the clusterfuck I knew was coming.

The Army ended up sending me papers extending my inactive reserve (actually renamed Individual Ready Reserve) time to 2032. That's not a typo. I ended up getting released with a second honorable discharge in 2004 after being uncooperative with instructions to get a new physical at the nearest MEPS.

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cmajka8@reddit

I was in college and everyone there was watching it live, as it unfolded

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Physical-Bet1840@reddit

Yup. My roommate woke me up and said, “uh, a plane? Crashed into…do you know those twin towers in New York? A plane crashed into one?” And I shambled out into the living room just in time to watch a plane hit the second, and then watch them fall.

It was a very dark day.

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SpaceLemur34@reddit

I was the one waking up my roommate, because he was from New York. Couldn't get ahold of his parents for hours.

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nque-ray@reddit

At college people from California calmed the New Yorkers about the phone lines being down were normal and not something that in itself meant anything bad happened to their loved ones.

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Weak_Radish966@reddit

Almost identical experience, but before my roommate woke me up, my radio alarm clock finished Kashmir by Led Zep and the DJ said something like "apparently a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center", he sounded very nervous and scared. Roommate came into my room, same deal, shambled out and watched the second tower fall in realtime with the roommates.

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gummi-demilo@reddit

It was happening while I was on my way to campus that morning (Mountain time zone), and I had a 7:40 studio class that lasted three hours. We had a radio on in class but no TV. I went to the Memorial Union afterward and we all stood around the billiard tables just staring at the TVs.

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ryguymcsly@reddit

I was trying to sleep in and some jerk kept calling my house. I stumbled out of bed and then finally when the machine picked up someone left a message. It was a girl I knew who just yelled "WAKE UP AND TURN ON THE TV." So I turned on the TV about 2 seconds before the second plane hit. That was not a great way to wake up.

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kiipii@reddit

Same, I lived between most off campus housing and school, so people who caught the initial crash stopped by to check the news and we ended up with a full living room around the tv. And since this was in DC, we could see the smoke from the Pentagon, and there were rumors about a crash on the mall... By the afternoon there was national guard at street corners.

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Still-Barber-3034@reddit

Yep. Literally two weeks into my college career, actually. Roommate and I had class, but after plane two, we just assumed it was cancelled.

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Writeforwhiskey@reddit

Same for me. No classes due to it being matriculation day so it was just watching the footage. Now this will sound disrespectful but we all watched it drinking copious amounts of beer, ramen and popcorn. They still went ahead with matriculation so we went, it was weird then the school went ahead with the BBQ so I'm watching people run for their lives ashed and bloody while gnawing on brats and ribs. It was a weird day, how tragic it was mixed with this feeling of life still going on and not knowing what to do but drink and eat.

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mongotongo@reddit

I almost had the exact opposite experience then you. At the time, I was at University. At the time, there was this thing called Internet 2 (don't know if its still around). It was a network between Universities and government labs that was intended for video conferencing. On the morning of 9/11, I was a volunteer to run a video conferencing test between our university and government labs. Before I left, I saw a news story about the first New York plane. It was still earlier, so I thought it was an accident.

When I got to the test, my fellow volunteer asked if I knew about the plane crash, and I told him that I did. Then I started to notice that everyone of the government lab employees were completely freaking out. That's when I finally asked my fellow volunteer what the hell is going on. After he told me, the rest of the day was just a daze. I ended up spending the rest of the day in the Machine Learning Lab (another student job that I had at the time) watching the latest updates with my fellow lab members.

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Joliet-Jake@reddit

I was at Pendleton and was the only guy in my section that lived in the barracks, so I found out about it when I went to try to find out why I was the only one that came to work. The towers were already hit but we watched the collapse in real time. The BN SgtMaj was standing behind me and just said “That’s what happens when you get complacent” and walked off.

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thedarkpreacher65@reddit (OP)

Yeah, that tracks for what a SgtMjr would say. Rah.

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PsychologicalLog4179@reddit

Hey there two foot onion. I was at mcrd sd in ‘98. There was a day in that auditorium class when they pulled some prank about saddam dropping a wmd and we were all getting expedited training and going to war. I guess you guys got the real deal, pretty interesting. I was 0331 1st bn 7th mar div at the stumps. Man, I will never forget when a few of us boots decided to check out the comm school barracks. Fuckin party up there, best chow hall by far. It’s been a long time, I just remember a lot of drunk girls and stuff that goes along with that. Anyhow, thanks for the memories.

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FrequencyHigher@reddit

Ironically, I left the military on August 11, 2001, and started college shortly after that. I was feeling ill on September 11, 2001, so I skipped my first class of that day and slept in. I then woke up late, didn’t turn the tv on and went straight to my 1pm CT class. I heard crazy shit on the car radio on my way to class, and learned what had happened in that short drive.

I did not see the live footage of that day’s events but until a few years later. I always felt like I missed out on some shared collective experience that day and sought out a DVD from CBS that had the live footage from that morning.

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FrequencyHigher@reddit

https://a.co/d/ey0wugE

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MaineHippo83@reddit

I saw it before it happened in my dream....

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bikeonychus@reddit

I was in my final year of school, and as I was in the UK, it was all happening just as I got in from school. I remember my mum had Sky News on (so yes, rolling coverage, first time I had seen rolling coverage since Princess Diana), and she was doing the Ironing (I still to this day don't understand how), and the first plane has hit. She had just finished explaining what had happened, and as we were looking at the TV screen, the second plane hit.

Everyone in my hometown was freaking out, as the town was only a few miles away from RAF Fylingdales (early warning detection system for ballistic missiles, and there was a lot of talk about the US trying to station interception missiles there) and our 16-17 YO selves were freaking out that we were going to get nuked as we were a target. Some of my brother's friends had recently joined the army thinking they could do a couple of years without getting deployed, and then this all kicked off.

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snippitysnap23@reddit

Horrible day. Seen 2nd plane crash into the tower. Couldn't deal with the jumpers, so I left for a while. It was all over when I returned home. I couldn't sleep well for 2 weeks.

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Vivid_Sprinkles_9322@reddit

I was building a building on a special forces base in Florida when it happened. Rangers came hauling ass up with guns drawn saying we had 5 minutes to get our shit and get off base. Hands down the scariest thing in my life!

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Frosty_Cloud_2888@reddit

Seems odd that you had to get clearance to get on base to get guns drawn on you.

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Bleh3325@reddit

Nah. Pre- 9/11 anybody could drive onto a military base. I drove onto Ft. Hood all the time as a teen. They didn’t put up the gates to check ID’s until after 9/11.

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Frosty_Cloud_2888@reddit

I had a much different experience getting on base as non military pre 9/11

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Bleh3325@reddit

Then I suppose that it varied from base to base. Things are much more strict now, of course. Now we have to get pre-approval by submitting our info online or at the visitor’s center to get day passes.

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Vivid_Sprinkles_9322@reddit

Don't know, never served.

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Capital-Visual6337@reddit

I lived in NYC back then. I worked on a stock trading desk so I was at work when the first plane hit, watching CNBC. They were speculating that it was a small commuter plane that went off course and hit the first tower. I watched live coverage as the second plane hit and by then it was obvious that it wasn't a coincidence. We all got sent home. I went to grand central to check on my dad who was working in the subway at the time and he was ok. It was all so surreal. Waking down park avenue, people cowered when they saw airplanes flying overhead because we didn't know if another was going to crash into a building. I had to walk from midtown Manhattan to kew gardens queens and my feet were killing me because the j crew shoes I was wearing weren't made for comfort. The markets were closed for the rest of the week but I went into work on September 12. It was so eerie because when i got to the trading desk, all of the turret phones were ringing. Back then, trading desks would have direct dial connection between firms so you can reach them quickly to try to execute a trade over the phone. When you hit the button to call the other firm, it would ring until someone picked up, which was usually a matter of seconds. I went to answer the phones but there was nobody on the other line. They had all been ringing since the day before. I'll never forget that Cantor Fitzgerald's line was one of the lines that I answered and their trade desk was in the WTC. I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. Looking back years later, things look odd concerning the events of that day but what it all boils down to is that thousands of people died and nobody deserved that. I hope the families and friends of the victims can have peace in their hearts.

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Throw-away17465@reddit

My issue was distance, not time. I was traveling internationally on my own for the first time. 20 years old, I was in the Netherlands and do not speak Dutch.

I wandered into the cool leather shop and the clerk was sitting there just watching TV. Nothing unusual about that. But as I browsed the store, it was clear he was watching the news because everything was in English. And I didn’t understand what they were saying. So I came over to the TV And saw that the first tower had already been hit. And I gasped and watched and a few minutes longer the second one hit. And I just started crying.

I was so scared. I didn’t know if this was an attack on America or Americans, so after that I had to make my way back to a relative’s safe Harbour without using any English in public.

My flight home was pushed back by two weeks. Everyone at the airport and in the airplane was very quiet and somber. There were plastic forks and knives replacing the metal ones. It was all very raw and sudden .

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Alternative-Light514@reddit

Why could you not use English?

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Throw-away17465@reddit

I wasn’t sure if America the country was under attack, or Americans, the citizens were under attack. I was too afraid to use my American English in public in case it was the latter one.

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Alternative-Light514@reddit

That would’ve been scary

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realauthormattjanak@reddit

I watched the second tower collapse in thr gym doing PT while in the Army but yeah, didn't have the luxury of watching tv like everyone else.

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TheNewGuyFromBahsten@reddit

I didnt know what happened until the next day. Didn't have cable, so listening to radio and nobody was playing music. Shut it off and lost myself in college football on the ps2 the rest of the day

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allthecoffeesDP@reddit

I was telemarketing. Someone I called had the news on and I learned about it from him.

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0le_Hickory@reddit

But did you close the sell?

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allthecoffeesDP@reddit

Yes they adopted call waiting! Ga'bless'murica!

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0le_Hickory@reddit

Most American thing that ever Americaned.

"So, anyway.... Would you care for some Popcorn, Mrs. Lincoln?"

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bachfanwpb@reddit

I didn’t see it until late in the day. I was already in class in college, and our professor insisted that disrupting the class would be what the attackers wanted, then I had to go to my job at the campus coffee shop which is the only thing on campus that stayed open that day—we were in a major city too. So it was probably 4PM before I saw a TV. Before that all I knew was what coffee shop patrons told us.

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smashers1112@reddit

I wish I never saw it unfold live.

I graduated from HS in June of that year and I was really enjoying the whole sleeping in thing. It was a sunny morning in Los Angeles and I had a class later that night. I could hearing The Today Show on in the living room. I rolled over and before I knew it, my grandma (loudly) came in and said, "Wake up! The World Trade Center is on fire!" 17 years old and staring at the TV, my grandma is mumbling something about there's no way the tower is going to fall. Before I have a chance to register what she said, the second tower was hit and a "holy shit" escaped my lips. Minutes passed, watching both towers burn and it was just the worst feeling, knowing people were in there and trapped. I don't even remember how long we stood there watching it, but we were glued to the TV. Just a few minutes before it happened, I said, "Those towers are coming down, Nana. They have to..." And they did.

I can't still won't watch any footage because its just too much for me. The "Falling Man" photo lives forever in my brain and I just hope that he felt some peace at the end.

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Willing_Actuary_4198@reddit

Didn't watch it live because I was at work. Physical labor outdoor job. Every radio was tuned to coverage tho and as soon as I got home it was August every TV channel

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MizzMeggs@reddit

I was student teaching at the middle school and they didn't flip on the TV in the room until about 10 minutes before I had to go back to the high school. The first tower had already fallen and in the chaos, I wasn't even sure of what I was looking at. I don't think anyone did. They let me leave, and me not knowing any better, went back to the high school. By then the second tower had fallen, and I was still totally in the dark. All of my classmates had obviously been watching way longer than I had, everything was very solemn until they sent us home. I just remember being worried about the few friends I had that I knew had already signed up with the military recruiters in the weeks before this. I don't remember when I saw the videos of what my classmates saw live on TV, but I'm glad I missed it.

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SwimmerClassic5083@reddit

Saw it happen live, unfortunately.

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SwimmerClassic5083@reddit

Saw it happen live, unfortunately.

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0le_Hickory@reddit

Watched happen live in High School. teacher said a plane had accidentally hit the twin towers and it was a mild curiosity until the second impact.

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Sufficient_Stop8381@reddit

I was working security at a defense plant then. I worked evenings and was in a training class that morning. Watched it live. Left, grabbed my gear, and headed to work. Sent the workers home, except us security people. We were watching the sky a lot more that evening. Not many days off after that for a long time.

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Verbull710@reddit

We were somewhere under the arctic ice aboard USS Augusta, SSN-710

We got back home the following February and that's when they had us all watch the footage, it was crazy

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taleofbenji@reddit

Why didn't you just watch it on your iPhone??

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thedarkpreacher65@reddit (OP)

Because I'm not a time traveller. I bought my first cell phone in Comm School, paid full price for it with one paycheck, got a plan with US Cellular, and then bought a fancy shell for my Nokia 3310.

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taleofbenji@reddit

Yea, it was sarcasm.

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Illustrious-Lead-960@reddit

I saw it pretty quickly, I guess, but I can’t place a first viewing the specific footage itself for sure. I was just going to say that I’m glad you weren’t penalized for talking back to the corporal.

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thedarkpreacher65@reddit (OP)

Oh, he was pretty laid back, he didn't give a crap, because he picked up Corporal when the cutting score dropped low enough to finally catch him.

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velocipedal@reddit

That’s wild. I don’t remember there being a single channel that wasn’t constantly rolling the footage. I was a freshman in college and I remember the college had rolled out TVs everywhere…walkways …hallways. And they all had the news footage rolling 24/7.

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Brilliant-Jaguar-784@reddit

I had just got back to my dorm room, and found my roommate, who was normally asleep if not in class, was sitting up watching our tiny TV. I sat down on my bed just in time to see the 2nd plane hit live. Over the next few weeks, nearly all of my high school friends who didn't go to college ended up joining the military.

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RestlessTortoise@reddit

OP, thanks for sharing your story.

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Expensive-Day-3551@reddit

I saw it live, I was supposed to fly for my move that day from JFK but obviously that didn’t happen. We stayed in a hotel since I couldn’t fly and we were the last ones to get a room, the manager told the receptionist to stop taking reservations. You could see the smoke from the hotel. We went back home the next day since they wouldn’t let me fly for a while. I can’t remember how long it was before I finally got a flight but they did not allow cargo for a while so I couldn’t bring my cat with me.

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Spartan04@reddit

I was in college and was at my on campus job when it happened. One of the other student employees told me what had happened and I initially didn’t believe them (information travelled slower back then and I thought it had to be a mistake). They eventually cancelled all classes for the rest of the day and I spent most of it in my dorm with the TV on so I saw the replays of the footage a bunch.

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mikeeperez@reddit

I usually worked late, so I was still asleep when my phone rang. On the line, my mom told me, "It's awful, someone flew a plan into one of the twin towers in New York!" I rushed to the TV and turned it on just in time to see the second plane hit.

I was like, "OK. I need to call work."

I didn't typically work on Tuesdays, but my boss was on vacation that week, so I had already planned to go in. But it was supposed to be an easy week! Tuesdays were especially slow. I was a page designer at the mid-size local daily newspaper in my South Texas hometown where nothing too crazy happens. But sure enough, my editor told me to get to the newsroom ASAP because we were putting together a special EXTRA edition... published by noon and hawked out on the street.

It was complete chaos, and it continued to be for the rest of the week (and beyond). What really sucked was that my boss was traveling in Mexico, so he was stuck there, and I had no backup. Then on Saturday, a local bridge that connected the nearby island to the mainland was struck by a ship, collapsing a part of it and killing several people. And, of course, we were all scared it had something to do with "terrorism."

It was a really strange, dark, and scary time. It's weird how our generation just keeps waking up to these tragedies and saying, "Well, I guess it's going to be one of those days." Those are the real bootstraps we keep having to pull up.

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jessek@reddit

I was sleeping in because I had the day off from both college and work and my mom called me, what she was saying sounded so ridiculous I almost went back to sleep but I turned on the tv instead.

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DocBEsq@reddit

I didn’t see anything for about a week.

At the time, I was living in a small town in Africa (Peace Corps) that barely had electricity and definitely didn’t have TV. I heard about 9/11 on the radio and saw maybe one news article (papers had to be brought in by bus), but that was it for a week.

It would have been longer, honestly, but communications were so bad in my town that I got special permission to visit friends in “the city” after a few days. Otherwise, I would’ve been on security lockdown for a few weeks.

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Beneficial-Ad-2973@reddit

I was in college and had slept over at my girlfriend's apartment (now wife). She woke me up and told me a plane hit the world trade center and I went to the tv just in time to see the second plane hit. I was really confused because I thought it was a replay. I was in the army reserves so I called my unit to ask if I was supposed to do anything. I was a senior and was looking forward to being done at the end of the year and suddenly just wondered if I would get the chance to finish.

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elruab@reddit

Was in Army Infantry basic training and we were out at the M249/M240B machine gunnery range. Road marched out the day before, didn’t believe the drill sergeants when they told us. It was when they loaded us up in cattle carts to bring us back to the barracks and have us all 20 minutes of phone time to call home, more time if anyone had direct family impacts. Didn’t see the footage until Christmas leave.

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taskforceslacker@reddit

I had just graduated my pipeline in the Air Force and got qualified about six months prior to 9/11. I was working a proficiency shift at Cheyenne Mountain and watched it on the Ops Center screens. I guess I didn’t fully understand the implications at the time, but looking back, that was a dramatic shift in the world and life as we would live it. What a wild ride. Semper Gumby, my rock throwing brother.

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Bobo_Baggins_jatj@reddit

You Chair Farce guys are the best! 😂

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Necessary_Range_3261@reddit

I woke from a bad dream of my brother in war in the middle east. Last memory of the dream was a tag on his toe. Walked into the living room and my dad said "Prop plane hit the World Trade Center". Seconds later we watched the second plane hit. It didn't feel real. I left to go to class; there was a Naval Armory near my school. I had never seen anyone outside of it, but that day there were men with what seemed like very serious guns guarding the building. I just turned around and went home. It was a crazy day.

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No-Hospital559@reddit

I watched it happen real time live from my roof and I wish I could go back and erase it from my memory.

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Bobo_Baggins_jatj@reddit

I couldn’t imagine.

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Sweet-Sale-7303@reddit

I live on Long Island. I was in college. We were sent home but by that time all the bridges were closed and traffic was a mess. The highway were all backed up due to the closed bridges. When I walked out to my car you could see the smoke.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

I was walking to/in a 90 minute class when the towers were hit but the footage was inescapable for the next month.

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NextBestHyperFocus@reddit

I was smoking bongs wondering why two different channels were playing the same late night movie before it clicked. I watched the second plane hit, and the towers fall live on Australian tv

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Automatic-Raspberry3@reddit

My brother was in Air Force basic. Spent 20 years at war as eod. It fucked him up. My wife was in a foreign exchange trip she didn’t find out for about 6 weeks after. And wasn’t home till a year later. She missed the part when everyone came together.

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uncle_monty@reddit

I was sick and off work. I was lying on the sofa watching a random documentary about feral cats when my brother walked in and told me what happened. I switched channels soon after the second tower came down. It's hard to imagine how it's possible to go so long without seeing the footage. It was on hour after hour for what felt like weeks even here in the UK.

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don51181@reddit

I was on a ship with the Navy out to sea. At first I was sleeping and thought it was an exercise they were announcing. Then when I got up to go on shift I saw it on tv.

It did not initially impact me as much because we were in a safe place. (Aircraft carrier) So it was odd to be on the outside of the country and see that.

Next year we deployed for the war

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meeeee01@reddit

I am in Australia and I was watching a comedian (Rove for those that are interested) who had a weekly show. The ticketape thing started scrolling with the news, now this show had used that for jokes in the past so I was waiting for the punch line, and there wasn't one. I switched over to a station that had news on and I was gobsmacked.

Holy shit was pretty much the response.

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callsignmario@reddit

Was already overseas in the Army. Family called from the US and told me to turn on the news, said a plane hot one of the two towers. I figured it was an accident - knowing about a bomber that hit the Empire State Building during WWII. Turned on the news and saw the second tower hit as it happened. Told the fam I loved them and would call when I could, then got my ass back to base ASAP.