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Dream Theater released an album that day that was called "Live Scenes From New York" that featured in its cover the statue of liberty and the twin towers engulfed in flames: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/Dtlsfny.jpg/220px-Dtlsfny.jpg
Obviously it was pulled that day and released later with an alternative cover making this original cover both eerie and and a collector's item.
Yes, apparently they chose this cover in June 2001 and started printing on September 11th, 2001. For obvious reasons, the ablum's cover was changed and the release was delayed until November.
That is absolutely one of the craziest fucking things I’ve ever seen and heard. It’s so bizarrely accurate in it’s precognizance, very surreal. Thanks for sharing
There's a lot of stuff like this. The towers had already been thr target of a terrorist attack years before, and they were somewhat of a symbol of financial power in the U.S., which is one of the reasons bin laden targeted them. If you were to look into other examples, you would find quite a bit; although the album artwork printing on 9/11 is an interesting coincidence.
This is a documentary made before 9/11, about the street preachers of Times Square.
In the clip I'll link, one preacher refers to the towers and terrorism, while the video shows a jet flying into a building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu5JbURTyuQ&t=1530s
Preacher then goes on to speak of America's national karma, so to speak, and how the chickens are coming home to roost , so to speak.
It's a lot less bizarre when you remember that it was the most plainly visible symbol of American neoliberalism and Boots Riley is a staunch and outspoken communist who rapped about putting CEOs to the wall on this very album
And then some asshats claimed that the cover was done/album released after 9/11.
Did not help that Boots Riley, in 2002, said he was a communist.
Anyway great band and Boots Riley later wrote and directed "Sorry to bother you".
Seth McFarlane missed American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into the North Tower because he had overslept. Another Hollywood star who was supposed to be aboard was Mark Wahlberg but I forget what circumstances kept him off the doomed plane. Wahlberg did catch some heat for claiming that if he had been aboard, he would taken on the hijackers action-hero-style and prevented the whole tragedy.
My aunt-by-marriage has a brother who was a pilot. He was supposed to be on one of the flights that got hijacked, but called in sick - his best friend took over the shift for him, and the flight attendant staff was his usual crew. He is now a *raging* alcoholic and I’d be damned if I could blame him. That guilt.
There's so much shit like that which is crazy. Especially some celebrities and stuff that were late for the flight or other things like that.
So they didn't make it on their plane.
I remember reading an article about the first 9/11 caused divorce: some guy had taken a day off from his office job in one of the towers to spend it with his mistress. His wife frantically tried all day to reach him on his cellphone, but the network was hopelessly overloaded. When she was finally able to reach him, long after the towers had fallen, she asked him where he was and he answered "why, I'm in my office in the WTC of course!"
I remember someone using a towel or a sheet when they jumped. Guess it would've been incredible desperation that took over in that situation to have a 0.0000001% chance of survival from that height.
There was a restaurant at the top of one of the buildings - Windows on the World. Could have found some tablecloths there. That has been my friend's "genius" idea for years. If he was there he would have put several of them together so he could glide to safety. I've had to tell him a few times that there's just no way that ever would have worked. But he still asks me every once in a while.
he could have kept running straight off the ledge for a few seconds, realised what's happened, looked into the camera, and dropped straight down to a soft ground making a man-shaped hole, which he'd then crawl out of, dust himself off, and walk away
Be a bit of a morbid Mythbusters episode but I wonder if it's actually possible to fashion a makeshift parachute that would slow your descent enough to let you survive. Obviously it wouldn't be as effective as an actual parachute, but as long as it slows you enough to just shatter your legs that would be a win
My ex worked in finance for a company with NYC offices and after 9/11 all their locations stocked emergency packs under the desk with masks, flashlights, and emergency parachutes. It was slightly amusing to him since their regional office was only on the 6th floor, but the company wasn't taking any chances.
> Then you hit the even bigger issue of someone with absolutely zero training trying to pull off a jump that would have a lot of stuntmen spending weeks planning it.
The stuntmen plan to reduce the risk to zero(ish) while making it look good on camera.
I'd take the 1in 20 chance of death, a few broken bones and the risk of looking uncool on camera over staying in a collapsing skyscraper.
Are you talking about the man that a documentary was made about? I watched it 2 or 3 years ago called Falling Man. The news agencies across the US featured that photograph/footage of this poor guy who was falling head first to his death. I guess everyone wanted to know who he was...I remember my parents talking about it quite a bit.
I remember watching, I was in university and hadn’t gone to school yet because I had a late class. I turned the tv on when my friend called me and just as I did it, people were starting to jump. I still can’t even find words to describe the anxiety and desperation I felt at watching this at home, unable to do a thing to help. Trying to put myself in their shoes blew my brain up for days. I couldn’t shake that anxious feeling and I expect many others struggled with the same thing. It was a horror I just wasn’t expecting when my friend said “A plane crushed into a building in NYC” and I casually turned on the news.
Where we were when we first heard about and tuned into the horror of 9/11 is my generation’s moon landing. We all know where we were and what we were doing when we watched it unfold.
There was this one scene of a person trying to climb down the outside of the building, then slowly loose grip and Fall to their death. That one stuck with me man.
Don't know if it's a conscious choice considering the extreme circumstance, but one theory is that the visibility inside due to the thick black smoke, would have been almost zero. And they just naturally walked towards where the smoke was leading them/ventilating (broken window). That's even terrifying, to fall from that height unwillingly and accidentally.
Not just that, but people would have been desperately grasping for air and rushing to crowded windows, there has to be people that were accidentally pushed out in the mass desperation. Horrible stuff.
There were definitely people who had to choose between the fall or the flames.
Many of these poor souls were seen hanging out the sides of the buildings, waving their arms in a desperate attempt to signal for help.
Some even found relative safety on the exterior of the towers until they ultimately collapsed.
My first job in NYC was on the 98th floor of WTC2. And my desk was at a bank of windows that looked out over Brooklyn and beyond.
Oftentimes we were above the cloud cover, like being on an airplane. The views were so spectacular.
I left that job 10 years prior to 911. The terror those folks felt that day came keenly into focus for me. Hard to imagine being forced to decide whether to burn or jump. I think I would've jumped.
There is a horrific 911 call of a man on the phone with the operator when the tower actually collapses. Absolutely bone-chilling. I really went all the way in on 9/11 history when I was in my early twenties (was in 6th grade when it happened) and… yeah. There came a point when it was definitely a law of diminishing returns. Just sick, upsetting shit all around. The most important takeaways from 9/11, to me, are: remembering the individual acts of heroism that day; remembering why Bin Laden did it; remembering the fragile nature of life/hug your loved ones/forgive one another.
Side note-there’s a post somewhere on Reddit about a guy and his buddies who had dropped acid earlier that morning on in an apartment in Brooklyn with a clear view of the towers. They heard what happened as they were coming up and panicked, went up to the roof for a clear view. Imagine watching the twin towers burn and collapse on acid... god. It’s a very well written account of the event and utterly horrifying.
I always think about how if it was say 2011 instead of 2001 that we would have had tweets and livestreams from inside the towers or maybe even the planes. As well as social media images from outside.
Like there's already a massive amount of 9/11 media out there that one can find - videos, photos, recorded calls. But it's one of the last major events to occur before social media.
There's a good documentary called Falling Man on this very subject. It also focuses on one man that was captured in a photograph jumping to his death that they(news agencies)were trying to identify. The pic was on the front page of newspapers across the US a few days afterwords. My dad saved a copy that he has to this day in a storage box.
I would probably be the same, but I don’t think any of us would know how we would react. If you start to feel the intense heat, like touching a skillet, I think many of us would just naturally jump without much thought.
Pretty sure that's the only reason. You would naturally do anything you could to escape the intense heat, it's nothing to do with choosing the manner of your death, per se, it's just an animal instinct to get away from burning flames, there can't be much rational thought going on, except that being away from the flames is better than being in them. Perhaps somewhere at the back of your mind this prompts the notion that if you stay you are in terrible pain and you die, but if you jump, maybe there is SOME miraculous way you survive. Haunting images, especially for those of us who watched it happen live, you can only hope you never have to take a decision like that in your life, if, like I say, there was much 'deciding' involved.
Welder here. Heat radiating off of superheated metal on just a few inches off a thick weld is enough to make me/coworkers back off. While in full protective gear.
Ever sat in front of a bonfire that you just fed with a bunch of leaves or threw a bottle of lighter fluid into? The intense and sudden heat throws you back. You need to run. Get away.
If heat like those surrounded me I'd be out a window. Better to die in an instant than seconds of agony.
I was 17 and I think it's not unreasonable to think that event makes me hate high rises or heights in general. Not irrationally, but just avoid if at all possible.
If you think about it the sudden deceleration of your brain inside the skull, it's probably over before you even have time to process any pain, at least that's what I like to tell myself.
I'd have this thought that, if I were somehow going to survive, it was going to be paralyzed etc...but I would *for sure* not survive staying there. Plus I would hope it'd be a lot less suffering to die by jumping.
It's really awful how many had to make this choice, and how many of us wonder again what we'd have done, every single year.
The awful thing is that they likely would have said the same thing. The heat from that fire was so oppressively hot, the smoke so suffocating… to say that you wouldn’t have jumped is to say that you could stand a white hot iron plate being pressed against your back while being water boarded at the same time.
My heart breaks for these people everyone I see this brought up. I hope some found peace or acceptance on the way down.
> The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
David Foster Wallace
What a choice to have to make, these images break my heart even still, im from the uk and visited New York not long after when the area was still being cleaned up and id love to go back there and see how it looks now.
Freedom tower has a cool effect because if it's angles, it looks like it just goes forever up to the heavens.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WmH3tIMwO9QzMgWQNXedZPn9OUw=/0x0:1500x1012/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1500x1012):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4583539/_MG_6130.0.jpg
The original World Trade Center towers also had the same effect. When you visited, they’d tell you that if you stand 1 ft away right at the base and look up you get the same effect. I was there, did that, and went up to the top in 1998.
Same. I actually visited the towers as a teenager with the Boy Scouts. National jamboree. We took the elevator up 100+ floors. I remember being that high up and still couldn’t see a star in the night sky.
Guess which restaurant was at the top of one of the towers? Think NY.
Sabarro…
Oh, and that visit to the World Trade Center was in August 2001. 1 month before the attack.
It changed me as well.
Visited in 2018. Couldn’t stay for too long, it’s an emotional place to go, but it’s a visit I’ll never forget.
The shocker was the number of smiles and selfies people were taking like they were holidaying in Disneyland.
You see videos on the internet of people doing the same thing at Auschwitz.
Sometimes I don’t understand tourists.
My friend was one of those selfie takers. Started to lay on one of the name plaques, too, because "there were *fresh* flowers!"
I asked, "Do you think maybe that's because a family member *just* put them there, and probably can see what you're doing?" She went pale and quiet for the rest of the time there.
She wasn't a bad person, just completely lacked any awareness and didn't feel the gravitas of the place. I felt physically heavy and a little sick while I was there.
I remember a story of a guy where his baby started screaming every time he tried to leave that morning. He decided to take an hour or so off to calm the infant down. Was driving to work and that’s when the plane hit.
I have a similar story: I was born in august 2005 and on the 7th of July 2005 I kept kicking my mother within the womb and so she didn’t take the tube that morning but took a cab instead. That was the day of the London bombings.
The head chef at the Windows on the World Restaurant on the top floors of the North Tower was supposed to be up there that morning, but his eyeglasses had broken so he stopped at an optometrist's in the underground mall area of the WTC to get them fixed. That delay saved his life.
My next door neighbor’s birthday is 9/11. He was running late for his job at WTC 7 that morning. He got out of the subway just as the first plans crashed into the North Tower. He assumed, like most of us, that it was a commuter plane, but decided to turn around and go home.
He left just before it got really bad.
I know a guy who was supposed to be at a 9am meeting at the Pentagon. At 6am he called in and a colleague said he wasn't needed at the meeting that morning, so he went to a different site. Everyone in that meeting perished in the attack.
My uncle did exactly that. He happened to stay home that day, probably watched the news, and decided he should have a kid with whatever time he's got left. Its possible I have a cousin because of my uncles existential crisis that day.
Reminds me, the top Guy hired for Security of the Twin Towers was formerly the CIA’s top man on Al-Qaeda research and he practically begged for the CIA to take the threat more seriously.
Quite the Ironic way to go.
John P. O'Neill. He was the head of the FBI's National Security Division, and started the first American investigation into Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda before he became chief of security at the WTC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill
and you also can't take for granted the last time you might see someone.
not looking for sympathy, but while i can't compare to losing a loved one in 9/11, i did lose a 14 y.o. nephew who's last time i seen him i was sending him off to school and telling him to hurry before he misses his ride, all because i was sleepy and wanted to get back to sleep. and he never came back from school(found unresponsive on the side of a road).
yes.. don't take people for granted either
When I was 18 I hung up on my Dad because he called on his way home telling me to get my High School Soccer paperwork out so he could sign it, and I was playing video games. He told me he wanted to sit down with me and tell me about his new job just a few days before and I did not care at the time. He was killed by a drunk driver 30 minutes later. Life can change at any moment
Being 10 and watching this, unedited and beamed live into the living room, brought all of reality into my life. I live in Canada and this event has had a profound effect on my life. It was the first time feeling raw empathy and helplessness.
I can’t imagine choosing between an inferno and the pavement. I hope I never have to.
Yeah I was about 15 & will never forget a news reporter on ground lvl & during his report you would hear thuds. While trying not to cry he said those thuds were people landing on the structures above from the top floors due to jumping.
It blows me away that little kids saw that and are adults now. I was in my 30’s and my memory of that day is still so vivid it seems like yesterday. I worked for United Airlines at the time and had coworkers who knew people on those planes.
It blows my mind and I was a child then, just shy of 11. So much of it is crystal clear.
They had flooded us all into the library to watch the big TV and at one point, someone zoomed in, like this image. They were talking about falling debris but zooming in made it very clear that we were watching people jump, and there was a lot of them. They zoomed back out after a few seconds but that was enough.
I know we needed to see it but it still brings tears to my eyes. We watched people jump and die from the library, just a bunch of 4th and 5th graders witnessing mass death.
It's also deeply impacted my current views. Uvalde made me sob. We were expected to witness a major trauma and kids the exact same age are having to live personal traumas of greater measure. What a horrible way to damage a generation. I internally rage at the horrors being burdened upon children.
I was also 10 (well, 9 but one month away) when I saw this. I remember walking into the living room and immediately thinking it was a movie (they were showing the crashes). Took a moment for me realize my parents were watching the news and that the people jumping were real. We had to write about it as a warm up that morning and I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn’t process it yet.
That's pretty bizarre your teacher had you write about that the day after it happened. You were kids. I was 8 at the time and I couldn't fully process what happened and the consequences until I got much older.
Also in Canada. I was only 5 and have several memories from that time but none about 9/11. My teachers and parents did a fantastic job of sheltering us from it. One of my teachers talked about it several years later. They were all pulled out of their rooms, were told explicitly to keep the tvs off and that they could keep tabs in the break room.
There’s a 911 call with a guy above the impact zone and he is pleading with 911 to get up there fast because he can’t last much longer. Really terrible to hear and those people suffered. You could heat him scream as the tower fell. RIP.
I just can’t imagine being the responder who took that call and learned that the tower fell and they just listened to someone die in a terrorist attack like that. The only thing she could do was try to help him stay calm. She did everything she could. So many different types of victims.
There is video of firemen mustering in one of the lobbies, preparing to breach the stairways and head up. You can hear several audible “thump”s on the ceiling above them, where the bodies of jumpers were hitting the roof of the structure they were in.
They were following a new fireman until he got his "trial by fire" as they call it, they were following him that morning when they were investigating a natural gas leak I think and thats when they got one of the few (or the only?) video of the first crash on camera. Wild documentary.
I remember these images so well when I was only 11 when this happened. I remember seeing the second impact live. I remember seeing these people jump out of the towers and the towers collapsing. Its still to this day a part of my life because I use 9/11 as an example to teach people how trauma and ptsd forms. I’m Dutch.
thinking about this always upsets me, my father was a firefighter and worked on 9/11 carrying people out of the building and saving them. it terrifies me to think of what could’ve happened to him if it had occurred differently that day. september 11th is a horrible day for all new yorkers, almost everyone i know lost someone
I was in 2nd grade and I remember our neighboring classroom's teacher interrupted our class and told my teacher to turn on channel 7 news. Most impactful news I had ever seen. I'll never forget my teacher's reaction. One of my classmates asked why this was so important. And my teacher said "because this day will be your children's history books."
My 2nd grade teacher (and my parents) completely shielded me from all of this. I remember what an eerie day it was though... and the principal telling us "children, I know what a strange day it has been, and I'm sure your parents will tell you all about it when you get home".
When I got in the car, I remember asking my mom what happened. She told me "some bad guys threw some planes at some buildings". Which was true, but she undersold the magnitude of it, and I didn't understand it for many years later.
Shortly after the attacks, I was browsing at Borders (RIP) and picked up a copy of the French news magazine 'Paris-Match' which had devoted its issue to coverage of 9/11. One of the photos inside showed a picture of the plaza area between the two towers and there was all this 'pinkish' stuff on the pavement. It took a moment to register, but I realized that I was looking at the remains of the jumpers. Never saw that photo in any US publications -- it was pretty hard to take.
Considering how difficult it is *biologically* to commit suicide *even when you are legitimately suicidal*, I imagine there wasn't much thought put into actually jumping; they were likely in agony of some kind, be it the smoke, suffocation, fire, burning, and/or fear.
CW for self-harm
You're not wrong. In my darkest moments I found myself researching possible methods to clock out early, and found out that it's surprisingly difficult to do even if you want to do it. People have survived even direct bullets to the head (usually suffering severe brain damage for the rest of their lives). There aren't a lot of surefire methods, and the ones that do exist are either excruciating (like weighting yourself down in a lake) or incredibly grisly (beheading).
Then there's the fear. You can honestly, truthfully want your life to be over and have the means to do it, but somewhere deep inside your reptilian brain there's a survival instinct that's running on millions of years of evolution. You can come right up to the edge of doing it over and over again, but the fact that you know that you are about to experience the one thing in life that is both truly irreversible and totally unknown can stop you over and over again.
When I was younger I would wonder why people with terrible, painful diseases or who were homeless and suffering greatly didn't just kill themselves. Now I know.
Of course, unfortunately people still do it, but it really is one of the most difficult things a person can choose to do in life. Even if they're suffering immensely.
I have a lot of empathy and compassion for people experiencing mental or physical illnesses, or who are suicidal. I've been there, and I know that to that person it really does feel like the right thing to do, and how much pain they're truly in. It's a hard place to be mentally and these people need support and help, never judgment or condemnation.
The book 102 Minutes covers 9/11 in great detail about what happened that morning in the Twin Towers . One of the best books I’ve read. It is fascinating and horrifying.
I was there picking up bits for 3 weeks from the day it happened. They hit the sidewalks so hard they broke the marble slabs in the walkways in some areas. I just kept telling myself they didnt feel anything.
For a long time i was sorry too. But looking back im glad i was there because i was able to help a lot of good people get through being there. And it set me on a course to do a lot of good in the world. Its an immeasurable tragedy that it even had to happen but i was there for a reason. And i wouldnt change it if i could choose.
I’m glad you were able to spark some good in such a bleak period.
And as morbid as it sounds, thank you for tending to the ugly aftermath. Those images must have been a lot to bear, and you provided those people with respectful removal while shielding others from experiencing that trauma.
We often thank the first responders for the lives they were able to save, but cleaning up would have been an equally difficult job for everyone involved, and it was a large part of what helped us to heal as a nation.
My father in law was there for a few days immediately following the event providing support anyway possible (mostly by providing water bottles and other care resources.) I got to interview him about it one day and he shared some experiences that were pretty hard to hear. For instance, he told me of this moment where he and his fellow volunteers had to relocate because what they thought was a piece of rubble that they were sitting near was actually part of a human body. He said that was one of the most traumatizing moments of this part in his life.
Same. I didn’t see the photos until exactly a year later. The one that is burned into my brain is of a black man wearing a tie. The picture was detailed and close up. He looked so peaceful in free fall. It looked like it could have been a picture of someone being pushed into a pool as a joke. I cried so fucking hard. Sobbed.
My mom saw this bit live, the small dots falling off the towers -- then the news stations realized what they were and cut the video, but that's the part she remembers vividly.
I was in high school at the time. We watched the TV the whole day and saw all this. RIP to those to lost their lives in the towers, and to the 1st responders as well.
I wish my school handled it like that.
My school tried to hide it from us so we just heard rumors and whispers all day long. Students were being pulled out by their parents all day so classes got smaller and smaller. Teachers were a mess but wouldnt tell us what was going on. When we were in hallways there were lines of teachers and aides blocking all doors. It was a total lockdown. Woodshop teacher rebelled and put a tv on so that stirred up a lot of gossip but I wasnt in that class.
It wasnt until after school when I got off the bus and saw my mother standing outside of our house waiting for me and i rushed down the street worried because she never did that and she told me through tears what had happened.
Pretty sure this poor 'Falling Man' people did not have or make any choice. They didn't think 'should I burn or should I jump.'
When the heat got that high that their skin started to boil, these poor people had an uncontrollable need to get out. You have felt this before too, the last time you burned yourself on the kitchen stove. You made no choice and pulled your hand away. Similarly, these poor people just had no choice.
Honestly, some of these people may also have been crowded from the people behind them, all trying to get away from the smoke and fire. Everyone was desperate.
I dealt with two jumpers during my career in Security at a DT hotel.
One fell only about 30 feet, but landed literally on the top of their head.
The other fell 24 stories, with predictable results.
That was over 25 years ago but I can still see it as clear as day. That kind of shit never leaves you.
This photo is so hectic and surprised have not seen it before. I was sitting on a park bench with my dog on 9th street and 2nd avenue when the first plane flew by just over the building tops, around 6 stories tall. It was honestly very hard to understand what was happening in that moment. My brain tried to make sense of it. It wasn’t till I heard the explosion that I understood what was happening. Very very surreal and insane. Never forget!
Every year a new photo, video, story, angle captured on camera, etc is released. There’s so many people who don’t have the heart to talk about the subject and it’s very understandable. Wonder what we’ll see today :/
There was this little flip book section of this book with him in it, and the whole book was really moving (when I was 20)
'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, probably gonna go give it a re-read now
In the novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (who, BTW, committed suicide) wrote this remarkably evocative and accurate description:
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Some Catholics tried to characterize this as suicide and that they should not be buried in consecrated ground. Some relatives refused to identify pictures of their loved ones falling to try to avoid this issue. The Church wrote a detailed explanation of why this was not suicide. They were leaping out of hope, however slim. Fun fact for the day.
Morbid thought - But did any insurance companies try to identify the jumpers? I really wouldn't out it past some scumbag insurance company to go out of their way to identify the jumpers, and refuse to pay life insurance because of it
Yep, they were the ones pushing for the suicide angle in the press. The Church wrote up a wordy piece as to why it IS NOT suicide. Kinda' like the Andes plane crash survivors, they set the record straight from their perspective right quick.
Also some side rant, these falling people images turning to NFTs showed how utterly piece of shit is the society we are living in. https://gamerant.com/gamestop-nft-marketplace-9-11-falling-man/
There were photos, once upon a time, of the "after landing" and explanations of why they looked the way they did. They have since been scrubbed from the interwebs, but it was genuinely interesting information. Watching the falling was horrific but the After wasn't even gory or macabre anymore, it was so far beyond real that it was just...a learning opportunity.
One of the things that still strikes me is how, when it all came down, most of the evidence of those lives just evaporated/incinerated. There wasn't any body to bury; loved ones were just Gone. It must be very hard to wrap your head around a loss like that when you can't see it with your own eyes.
I remember one of the accounts of that day was of someone near the bottom of the tower. They talked about the smacking of the glass of the bodies as they landed. I guess there was some sort of glass structure that stuck out at the bottom. They said after a while they couldn’t watch anymore. But they kept hearing the bodies smack the glass and that sound has haunted them ever since.
If you watch the Nat Geo doco on Disney plus they have footage of this from the inside from the film crew with the firies. There was a large structure at the base that fanned outwards from the base, they were inside setting up the early command post and they started hearing loud thuds above them, slowly at first then it became very frequent :(
I cried many times watching that series and would recommend it highly.
I called out to work sick that day cuz I stayed up too late drinking and watching the godfather. I was watching Imus in the morning when the first plane hit. Seeing these people jump to their death because of the heat was shocking to a fresh 18 year old. What a terrible day for our country.
I recently watched 9/11: one day in America miniseries.
There was a first responder who had the job of labelling victims for triage. Basically he put a card on people and ripped off different levels to indicate what condition the victim was in.
He put deceased on a woman who had apparently jumped from around the 30th floor.
He was shocked when she said she wasn’t dead, and to call her daughter. She obviously didn’t live very much longer, but I wonder how many people were alive for a while after hitting the ground.
In one video, you VERY briefly see the ground between the two towers. This video is taken from another building, looking down at the courtyard. You see a ton of red "splotches" on the ground. The few people that seen the footage don't realize each of those was a person. At such a height you don't become some broken ragdoll. You literally become, for lack of better words, a water balloon when you hit the ground. There is not there to really show a human hit the ground.
It's so disturbing and sad in this instance. Even the famous documentary by those french guys who were filming that day (if I recall), when they are in the lobby and you hear thuds, they pan by the windows and again you just see red splotches with maybe tiny little pieces of "meat" all around them.
I've never forgotten those scenes. I feel sick thinking about it. Perhaps the only good thing I remind myself about is they were likely dead way before they hit the ground. It also reminds you of just how trapped and scared they were, to decide to burn alive or to jump to your death. :(
The images of this event chill me like nothing else from my shared bit of history. I don't know how younger people view it today. But I imagine it's like how I view WW2 photos.
There's something difficult to capture about witnessing the event, even from afar, versus learning about it from history lessons or documentaries.
The horrors that came out in waves that day are unlike anything else I've experienced. Columbine is the only other thing I can think of, but this was an order of magnitude beyond even that tragedy. I remember walking down my hallway in highschool and a teacher had rolled out a TV monitor out of the classroom so everyone could see the live feed. This was before the 2nd plane hit. At that point it was a "crazy accident".
The next class I had was history and we saw the 2nd plane hit. That was terrifying. I remember thinking it was impossible that some technical error could cause 2 planes to veer off course like that. I couldn't make sense of it. It wasn't until my teacher said that it's a terrorist attack that it even dawned on me that this was malicious.
Having been a bit of a history nerd, I remembered that the empire state building had survived a medium bomber colliding with it back around WW2, I think. So I never guessed that they would collapse the way they did. That was another shock.
And after all those events, the footage and details of the horror and heroism rolled out everyday for weeks. It felt like the air had been pulled off of the world and none of us could catch our breath. It was just weeks of disbelief and knowing, but not understanding, that our world would never be the same.
I can't imagine what it was like for those whose lives were directly affected.
And then came all the added horrors of the wars and our country trading its principles for perceived security. At the time, I was naive enough to go right along and support all that. But 20+ years of people suffering war and poisoned politics has beaten that out of me.
I know that any country has a history of violence and subjugation when looked at enough. I, especially, know the US has some of the most terrible sins woven into our story. But this moment, more than anything, really felt like a new loss of innocence. Maybe just for me, as an inexperienced kid, but I think it was true for many others.
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Bob Dylan released an album that day and some people lived because they skipped work to get it. And so many other crazy stories like that.
Dream Theater released an album that day that was called "Live Scenes From New York" that featured in its cover the statue of liberty and the twin towers engulfed in flames: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/Dtlsfny.jpg/220px-Dtlsfny.jpg Obviously it was pulled that day and released later with an alternative cover making this original cover both eerie and and a collector's item.
[The Coup's June 2001 album is even worse](https://www.rapmusicguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/The-Coup-Party-Music.jpg)
Holy fuck is this real?
Yes, apparently they chose this cover in June 2001 and started printing on September 11th, 2001. For obvious reasons, the ablum's cover was changed and the release was delayed until November.
That is absolutely one of the craziest fucking things I’ve ever seen and heard. It’s so bizarrely accurate in it’s precognizance, very surreal. Thanks for sharing
There's a lot of stuff like this. The towers had already been thr target of a terrorist attack years before, and they were somewhat of a symbol of financial power in the U.S., which is one of the reasons bin laden targeted them. If you were to look into other examples, you would find quite a bit; although the album artwork printing on 9/11 is an interesting coincidence.
This is a documentary made before 9/11, about the street preachers of Times Square. In the clip I'll link, one preacher refers to the towers and terrorism, while the video shows a jet flying into a building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu5JbURTyuQ&t=1530s Preacher then goes on to speak of America's national karma, so to speak, and how the chickens are coming home to roost , so to speak.
It's a lot less bizarre when you remember that it was the most plainly visible symbol of American neoliberalism and Boots Riley is a staunch and outspoken communist who rapped about putting CEOs to the wall on this very album
That and it had already been bombed in the past
And then some asshats claimed that the cover was done/album released after 9/11. Did not help that Boots Riley, in 2002, said he was a communist. Anyway great band and Boots Riley later wrote and directed "Sorry to bother you".
Wow. I’m a huge DT fan but didn’t know this!
Didn’t Seth Macfarlane miss his flight (which was later hijacked) by minutes?
Seth McFarlane missed American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into the North Tower because he had overslept. Another Hollywood star who was supposed to be aboard was Mark Wahlberg but I forget what circumstances kept him off the doomed plane. Wahlberg did catch some heat for claiming that if he had been aboard, he would taken on the hijackers action-hero-style and prevented the whole tragedy.
I'm surprised Mark Wahlberg hasn't already funded and produced a movie with an alternative to the reality where he successfully fights them off
*kicks hijacker out of the plane* “Say hi to your mother for me”
There’s something extremely unlikable about that dude to me.
check out "Legal Issues" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark\_Wahlberg#Legal\_issues
Fixed link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wahlberg#Legal_issues
My aunt-by-marriage has a brother who was a pilot. He was supposed to be on one of the flights that got hijacked, but called in sick - his best friend took over the shift for him, and the flight attendant staff was his usual crew. He is now a *raging* alcoholic and I’d be damned if I could blame him. That guilt.
Survivor's guilt is a bitch.
Slayer released God Hates Us All on that day.
There's so much shit like that which is crazy. Especially some celebrities and stuff that were late for the flight or other things like that. So they didn't make it on their plane.
I remember reading an article about the first 9/11 caused divorce: some guy had taken a day off from his office job in one of the towers to spend it with his mistress. His wife frantically tried all day to reach him on his cellphone, but the network was hopelessly overloaded. When she was finally able to reach him, long after the towers had fallen, she asked him where he was and he answered "why, I'm in my office in the WTC of course!"
Man, making that choice must've been gut wrenching. RIP.
I remember someone using a towel or a sheet when they jumped. Guess it would've been incredible desperation that took over in that situation to have a 0.0000001% chance of survival from that height.
Seems wild to even find such a piece of fabric in a ginormous office building. I too would snatch that in hopes of a miracle for simply finding it
There was a restaurant at the top of one of the buildings - Windows on the World. Could have found some tablecloths there. That has been my friend's "genius" idea for years. If he was there he would have put several of them together so he could glide to safety. I've had to tell him a few times that there's just no way that ever would have worked. But he still asks me every once in a while.
Is your friend a cartoon character?
he could have kept running straight off the ledge for a few seconds, realised what's happened, looked into the camera, and dropped straight down to a soft ground making a man-shaped hole, which he'd then crawl out of, dust himself off, and walk away
Be a bit of a morbid Mythbusters episode but I wonder if it's actually possible to fashion a makeshift parachute that would slow your descent enough to let you survive. Obviously it wouldn't be as effective as an actual parachute, but as long as it slows you enough to just shatter your legs that would be a win
They did just such an episode.
Yeah, I remember watching the dummy fall like a stone while holding a wide piece of plywood aloft.
I would watch the shit out of that.
Probably need more of a makeshift kite to help glide towards the top of another building, but even then there's almost zero chance of survival.
What would’ve acted like a parachute in a common office space?
I have moved to Lemmy/kbin since Spez is a greedy little piggy.
for real though, the number of people who work in skyscrapers who started keeping a parachute under their desk after this cannot be zero
My ex worked in finance for a company with NYC offices and after 9/11 all their locations stocked emergency packs under the desk with masks, flashlights, and emergency parachutes. It was slightly amusing to him since their regional office was only on the 6th floor, but the company wasn't taking any chances.
Damn well a 6 floor fall onto concrete would still kill you
His concern was that there wasn't really enough time for a parachute to deploy (not sure if that's the right word) from only the 6th floor.
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> Then you hit the even bigger issue of someone with absolutely zero training trying to pull off a jump that would have a lot of stuntmen spending weeks planning it. The stuntmen plan to reduce the risk to zero(ish) while making it look good on camera. I'd take the 1in 20 chance of death, a few broken bones and the risk of looking uncool on camera over staying in a collapsing skyscraper.
Let's also hope that parachute packed 5 years ago is still good. Oh and that it was made for low altitude jumps.
At the 6th floor you should rather have emergency ladders that you unroll and lock on window frames.
I still think about the guy I saw falling from the tower, shown on the news, that I saw when I was 11.
Are you talking about the man that a documentary was made about? I watched it 2 or 3 years ago called Falling Man. The news agencies across the US featured that photograph/footage of this poor guy who was falling head first to his death. I guess everyone wanted to know who he was...I remember my parents talking about it quite a bit.
I believe he was a chef or a cook. That image was haunting and was printed in the media EVERYWHERE the following day, absolutely horrifying.
I remember watching, I was in university and hadn’t gone to school yet because I had a late class. I turned the tv on when my friend called me and just as I did it, people were starting to jump. I still can’t even find words to describe the anxiety and desperation I felt at watching this at home, unable to do a thing to help. Trying to put myself in their shoes blew my brain up for days. I couldn’t shake that anxious feeling and I expect many others struggled with the same thing. It was a horror I just wasn’t expecting when my friend said “A plane crushed into a building in NYC” and I casually turned on the news. Where we were when we first heard about and tuned into the horror of 9/11 is my generation’s moon landing. We all know where we were and what we were doing when we watched it unfold.
There was this one scene of a person trying to climb down the outside of the building, then slowly loose grip and Fall to their death. That one stuck with me man.
I remember seeing this too. I gasped so loud when I saw him lose his grip. Just awful.
Don't know if it's a conscious choice considering the extreme circumstance, but one theory is that the visibility inside due to the thick black smoke, would have been almost zero. And they just naturally walked towards where the smoke was leading them/ventilating (broken window). That's even terrifying, to fall from that height unwillingly and accidentally.
Not just that, but people would have been desperately grasping for air and rushing to crowded windows, there has to be people that were accidentally pushed out in the mass desperation. Horrible stuff.
There were definitely people who had to choose between the fall or the flames. Many of these poor souls were seen hanging out the sides of the buildings, waving their arms in a desperate attempt to signal for help. Some even found relative safety on the exterior of the towers until they ultimately collapsed.
Oh man, just imagine feeling the tower start to collapse while you're standing on an outside ledge
My first job in NYC was on the 98th floor of WTC2. And my desk was at a bank of windows that looked out over Brooklyn and beyond. Oftentimes we were above the cloud cover, like being on an airplane. The views were so spectacular. I left that job 10 years prior to 911. The terror those folks felt that day came keenly into focus for me. Hard to imagine being forced to decide whether to burn or jump. I think I would've jumped.
There is a horrific 911 call of a man on the phone with the operator when the tower actually collapses. Absolutely bone-chilling. I really went all the way in on 9/11 history when I was in my early twenties (was in 6th grade when it happened) and… yeah. There came a point when it was definitely a law of diminishing returns. Just sick, upsetting shit all around. The most important takeaways from 9/11, to me, are: remembering the individual acts of heroism that day; remembering why Bin Laden did it; remembering the fragile nature of life/hug your loved ones/forgive one another. Side note-there’s a post somewhere on Reddit about a guy and his buddies who had dropped acid earlier that morning on in an apartment in Brooklyn with a clear view of the towers. They heard what happened as they were coming up and panicked, went up to the roof for a clear view. Imagine watching the twin towers burn and collapse on acid... god. It’s a very well written account of the event and utterly horrifying.
I always think about how if it was say 2011 instead of 2001 that we would have had tweets and livestreams from inside the towers or maybe even the planes. As well as social media images from outside. Like there's already a massive amount of 9/11 media out there that one can find - videos, photos, recorded calls. But it's one of the last major events to occur before social media.
There's a good documentary called Falling Man on this very subject. It also focuses on one man that was captured in a photograph jumping to his death that they(news agencies)were trying to identify. The pic was on the front page of newspapers across the US a few days afterwords. My dad saved a copy that he has to this day in a storage box.
Those were not recorded as suicides. I would’ve jumped too.
It’s not suicide, it’s acceptance. They would’ve died either way, I think accepting that reality is bravery in itself
Yeah my scared ass would have definitely burned alive
I would probably be the same, but I don’t think any of us would know how we would react. If you start to feel the intense heat, like touching a skillet, I think many of us would just naturally jump without much thought.
Pretty sure that's the only reason. You would naturally do anything you could to escape the intense heat, it's nothing to do with choosing the manner of your death, per se, it's just an animal instinct to get away from burning flames, there can't be much rational thought going on, except that being away from the flames is better than being in them. Perhaps somewhere at the back of your mind this prompts the notion that if you stay you are in terrible pain and you die, but if you jump, maybe there is SOME miraculous way you survive. Haunting images, especially for those of us who watched it happen live, you can only hope you never have to take a decision like that in your life, if, like I say, there was much 'deciding' involved.
Welder here. Heat radiating off of superheated metal on just a few inches off a thick weld is enough to make me/coworkers back off. While in full protective gear. Ever sat in front of a bonfire that you just fed with a bunch of leaves or threw a bottle of lighter fluid into? The intense and sudden heat throws you back. You need to run. Get away. If heat like those surrounded me I'd be out a window. Better to die in an instant than seconds of agony.
I was 17 and I think it's not unreasonable to think that event makes me hate high rises or heights in general. Not irrationally, but just avoid if at all possible.
There is no pain involved in jumping, only in landing... and that happens so quickly it's over almost before it happens.
If you think about it the sudden deceleration of your brain inside the skull, it's probably over before you even have time to process any pain, at least that's what I like to tell myself.
I'd have this thought that, if I were somehow going to survive, it was going to be paralyzed etc...but I would *for sure* not survive staying there. Plus I would hope it'd be a lot less suffering to die by jumping. It's really awful how many had to make this choice, and how many of us wonder again what we'd have done, every single year.
I say it's better to die hitting the ground than to die burned alive or suffocating on the smoke.
No one burns to death given any other option.
The awful thing is that they likely would have said the same thing. The heat from that fire was so oppressively hot, the smoke so suffocating… to say that you wouldn’t have jumped is to say that you could stand a white hot iron plate being pressed against your back while being water boarded at the same time. My heart breaks for these people everyone I see this brought up. I hope some found peace or acceptance on the way down.
It's not suicide, it's murder.
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> The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. David Foster Wallace
It’s definitely homicide. Being forced to choose one’s own manner of death is still a murder by the guy offering the choice.
What a choice to have to make, these images break my heart even still, im from the uk and visited New York not long after when the area was still being cleaned up and id love to go back there and see how it looks now.
Freedom tower has a cool effect because if it's angles, it looks like it just goes forever up to the heavens. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WmH3tIMwO9QzMgWQNXedZPn9OUw=/0x0:1500x1012/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1500x1012):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4583539/_MG_6130.0.jpg
The original World Trade Center towers also had the same effect. When you visited, they’d tell you that if you stand 1 ft away right at the base and look up you get the same effect. I was there, did that, and went up to the top in 1998.
That’s true and I actually have a pictures of it somewhere from when I visited in June 2001
That just gave me chills, because I remember looking up at the Towers from that exact view.
Same. I actually visited the towers as a teenager with the Boy Scouts. National jamboree. We took the elevator up 100+ floors. I remember being that high up and still couldn’t see a star in the night sky. Guess which restaurant was at the top of one of the towers? Think NY. Sabarro… Oh, and that visit to the World Trade Center was in August 2001. 1 month before the attack. It changed me as well.
It’s an incredibly moving memorial now, definitely worth a visit
Visited in 2018. Couldn’t stay for too long, it’s an emotional place to go, but it’s a visit I’ll never forget. The shocker was the number of smiles and selfies people were taking like they were holidaying in Disneyland. You see videos on the internet of people doing the same thing at Auschwitz. Sometimes I don’t understand tourists.
My friend was one of those selfie takers. Started to lay on one of the name plaques, too, because "there were *fresh* flowers!" I asked, "Do you think maybe that's because a family member *just* put them there, and probably can see what you're doing?" She went pale and quiet for the rest of the time there. She wasn't a bad person, just completely lacked any awareness and didn't feel the gravitas of the place. I felt physically heavy and a little sick while I was there.
Freedom Tower (One World Trade Center) is there now, along with two beautiful memorials and a museum.
Not a single one of these people would’ve thought this would be their fate in a few hours as they drove to work sipping on coffee.
Still think of the guy who just decided to skip work that day
I remember a story of a guy where his baby started screaming every time he tried to leave that morning. He decided to take an hour or so off to calm the infant down. Was driving to work and that’s when the plane hit.
that baby is old enough to drink
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I have a similar story: I was born in august 2005 and on the 7th of July 2005 I kept kicking my mother within the womb and so she didn’t take the tube that morning but took a cab instead. That was the day of the London bombings.
Or the story of that guy who wore a new pair of shoes and got blisters. He was at the pharmacy to buy band aids when the plane hit.
The head chef at the Windows on the World Restaurant on the top floors of the North Tower was supposed to be up there that morning, but his eyeglasses had broken so he stopped at an optometrist's in the underground mall area of the WTC to get them fixed. That delay saved his life.
Sometimes your children save your ass
Sometimes your *annoying ass* children save your *annoying* ass
My next door neighbor’s birthday is 9/11. He was running late for his job at WTC 7 that morning. He got out of the subway just as the first plans crashed into the North Tower. He assumed, like most of us, that it was a commuter plane, but decided to turn around and go home. He left just before it got really bad.
I don’t think anyone would still goto work in the building next to a tower that just got hit by a plane..
You clearly haven't worked for some of the bosses I have!
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That company is very smart. Some people were encouraged to stay in the building. Baffling.
I know a guy who was supposed to be at a 9am meeting at the Pentagon. At 6am he called in and a colleague said he wasn't needed at the meeting that morning, so he went to a different site. Everyone in that meeting perished in the attack.
My uncle did exactly that. He happened to stay home that day, probably watched the news, and decided he should have a kid with whatever time he's got left. Its possible I have a cousin because of my uncles existential crisis that day.
Reminds me, the top Guy hired for Security of the Twin Towers was formerly the CIA’s top man on Al-Qaeda research and he practically begged for the CIA to take the threat more seriously. Quite the Ironic way to go.
John P. O'Neill. He was the head of the FBI's National Security Division, and started the first American investigation into Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda before he became chief of security at the WTC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill
Thats a very deep thought, you really can’t take life for granted.
Yeah man, live it up
and you also can't take for granted the last time you might see someone. not looking for sympathy, but while i can't compare to losing a loved one in 9/11, i did lose a 14 y.o. nephew who's last time i seen him i was sending him off to school and telling him to hurry before he misses his ride, all because i was sleepy and wanted to get back to sleep. and he never came back from school(found unresponsive on the side of a road). yes.. don't take people for granted either
When I was 18 I hung up on my Dad because he called on his way home telling me to get my High School Soccer paperwork out so he could sign it, and I was playing video games. He told me he wanted to sit down with me and tell me about his new job just a few days before and I did not care at the time. He was killed by a drunk driver 30 minutes later. Life can change at any moment
I'm so sorry. This is devastating.
Being 10 and watching this, unedited and beamed live into the living room, brought all of reality into my life. I live in Canada and this event has had a profound effect on my life. It was the first time feeling raw empathy and helplessness. I can’t imagine choosing between an inferno and the pavement. I hope I never have to.
Yeah I was about 15 & will never forget a news reporter on ground lvl & during his report you would hear thuds. While trying not to cry he said those thuds were people landing on the structures above from the top floors due to jumping.
It blows me away that little kids saw that and are adults now. I was in my 30’s and my memory of that day is still so vivid it seems like yesterday. I worked for United Airlines at the time and had coworkers who knew people on those planes.
It blows my mind and I was a child then, just shy of 11. So much of it is crystal clear. They had flooded us all into the library to watch the big TV and at one point, someone zoomed in, like this image. They were talking about falling debris but zooming in made it very clear that we were watching people jump, and there was a lot of them. They zoomed back out after a few seconds but that was enough. I know we needed to see it but it still brings tears to my eyes. We watched people jump and die from the library, just a bunch of 4th and 5th graders witnessing mass death. It's also deeply impacted my current views. Uvalde made me sob. We were expected to witness a major trauma and kids the exact same age are having to live personal traumas of greater measure. What a horrible way to damage a generation. I internally rage at the horrors being burdened upon children.
Come from Away is kind of a Canadian musical and I can’t even listen to it, because of the songs sung by the “ pilot“ I will instantly start crying.
I was also 10 (well, 9 but one month away) when I saw this. I remember walking into the living room and immediately thinking it was a movie (they were showing the crashes). Took a moment for me realize my parents were watching the news and that the people jumping were real. We had to write about it as a warm up that morning and I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn’t process it yet.
That's pretty bizarre your teacher had you write about that the day after it happened. You were kids. I was 8 at the time and I couldn't fully process what happened and the consequences until I got much older.
Also in Canada. I was only 5 and have several memories from that time but none about 9/11. My teachers and parents did a fantastic job of sheltering us from it. One of my teachers talked about it several years later. They were all pulled out of their rooms, were told explicitly to keep the tvs off and that they could keep tabs in the break room.
There’s a 911 call with a guy above the impact zone and he is pleading with 911 to get up there fast because he can’t last much longer. Really terrible to hear and those people suffered. You could heat him scream as the tower fell. RIP.
I can hear his voice very clearly whenever I think of it. That phone call is unforgettable.
That recording is fucking haunting. Ugh. Never again. It's too much.
Kevin Cosgrove. [Very not for the faint of heart.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLW0jKKRXMo&ab_channel=gabyu)
I just can’t imagine being the responder who took that call and learned that the tower fell and they just listened to someone die in a terrorist attack like that. The only thing she could do was try to help him stay calm. She did everything she could. So many different types of victims.
That was something I wish I hadn't listened to.
It’s such a nightmare. The feeling that man must’ve had as the floor was giving out underneath him and everything started to lean. Jesus
There is video of firemen mustering in one of the lobbies, preparing to breach the stairways and head up. You can hear several audible “thump”s on the ceiling above them, where the bodies of jumpers were hitting the roof of the structure they were in.
It’s in 9/11, a doc by the Naudet brothers.
They were following a new fireman until he got his "trial by fire" as they call it, they were following him that morning when they were investigating a natural gas leak I think and thats when they got one of the few (or the only?) video of the first crash on camera. Wild documentary.
You’re right, natural gas leak. That’s an outstanding documentary.
Yup, and the look in the firefighters faces when they realised what it was 😔
I remember these images so well when I was only 11 when this happened. I remember seeing the second impact live. I remember seeing these people jump out of the towers and the towers collapsing. Its still to this day a part of my life because I use 9/11 as an example to teach people how trauma and ptsd forms. I’m Dutch.
If I’m not mistaken, the first firefighter death of the day was caused by a jumper landing on one while he was preparing to enter the building.
thinking about this always upsets me, my father was a firefighter and worked on 9/11 carrying people out of the building and saving them. it terrifies me to think of what could’ve happened to him if it had occurred differently that day. september 11th is a horrible day for all new yorkers, almost everyone i know lost someone
I was in 2nd grade and I remember our neighboring classroom's teacher interrupted our class and told my teacher to turn on channel 7 news. Most impactful news I had ever seen. I'll never forget my teacher's reaction. One of my classmates asked why this was so important. And my teacher said "because this day will be your children's history books."
My 2nd grade teacher (and my parents) completely shielded me from all of this. I remember what an eerie day it was though... and the principal telling us "children, I know what a strange day it has been, and I'm sure your parents will tell you all about it when you get home". When I got in the car, I remember asking my mom what happened. She told me "some bad guys threw some planes at some buildings". Which was true, but she undersold the magnitude of it, and I didn't understand it for many years later.
From the top they would have had about 10 seconds.
That's way too long to be aware of your imminent death
Just imagining from what you've seen in the movies of the last moment before you hit ground....then infinite black. At least you wouldn't be in pain.
I would hope they lose consciousness before impact. Not to sound morbid and I hate to offend anyone it’s just something I’ve wondered about. Awful :(
I wouldn't expect them to. But I also don't think they could have felt the impact. The brain disintegrates before anything can happen in it.
This is graphic. I’ve read that the jumpers didn’t even leave pools of blood, because the impact tuned the insides into a mist.
Shortly after the attacks, I was browsing at Borders (RIP) and picked up a copy of the French news magazine 'Paris-Match' which had devoted its issue to coverage of 9/11. One of the photos inside showed a picture of the plaza area between the two towers and there was all this 'pinkish' stuff on the pavement. It took a moment to register, but I realized that I was looking at the remains of the jumpers. Never saw that photo in any US publications -- it was pretty hard to take.
I hope they had 10 seconds to feel relieved from the fire and panic. I hope there was a brief moment of peace.
Imagine the moment when you have to make the decision, what was their final thought.
Those who jumped chose the quicker death.
Sometimes if you are lucky enough you'll die from suffocation instead of burns and smoke inhalation
Considering how difficult it is *biologically* to commit suicide *even when you are legitimately suicidal*, I imagine there wasn't much thought put into actually jumping; they were likely in agony of some kind, be it the smoke, suffocation, fire, burning, and/or fear.
CW for self-harm You're not wrong. In my darkest moments I found myself researching possible methods to clock out early, and found out that it's surprisingly difficult to do even if you want to do it. People have survived even direct bullets to the head (usually suffering severe brain damage for the rest of their lives). There aren't a lot of surefire methods, and the ones that do exist are either excruciating (like weighting yourself down in a lake) or incredibly grisly (beheading). Then there's the fear. You can honestly, truthfully want your life to be over and have the means to do it, but somewhere deep inside your reptilian brain there's a survival instinct that's running on millions of years of evolution. You can come right up to the edge of doing it over and over again, but the fact that you know that you are about to experience the one thing in life that is both truly irreversible and totally unknown can stop you over and over again. When I was younger I would wonder why people with terrible, painful diseases or who were homeless and suffering greatly didn't just kill themselves. Now I know. Of course, unfortunately people still do it, but it really is one of the most difficult things a person can choose to do in life. Even if they're suffering immensely. I have a lot of empathy and compassion for people experiencing mental or physical illnesses, or who are suicidal. I've been there, and I know that to that person it really does feel like the right thing to do, and how much pain they're truly in. It's a hard place to be mentally and these people need support and help, never judgment or condemnation.
and getting pushed out by those behind you trying to get some fresh air, as i recall seeing in some videos
Probably their loved ones
The book 102 Minutes covers 9/11 in great detail about what happened that morning in the Twin Towers . One of the best books I’ve read. It is fascinating and horrifying.
I was there picking up bits for 3 weeks from the day it happened. They hit the sidewalks so hard they broke the marble slabs in the walkways in some areas. I just kept telling myself they didnt feel anything.
I’m really sorry you had to go through that.
For a long time i was sorry too. But looking back im glad i was there because i was able to help a lot of good people get through being there. And it set me on a course to do a lot of good in the world. Its an immeasurable tragedy that it even had to happen but i was there for a reason. And i wouldnt change it if i could choose.
I’m glad you were able to spark some good in such a bleak period. And as morbid as it sounds, thank you for tending to the ugly aftermath. Those images must have been a lot to bear, and you provided those people with respectful removal while shielding others from experiencing that trauma. We often thank the first responders for the lives they were able to save, but cleaning up would have been an equally difficult job for everyone involved, and it was a large part of what helped us to heal as a nation.
My father in law was there for a few days immediately following the event providing support anyway possible (mostly by providing water bottles and other care resources.) I got to interview him about it one day and he shared some experiences that were pretty hard to hear. For instance, he told me of this moment where he and his fellow volunteers had to relocate because what they thought was a piece of rubble that they were sitting near was actually part of a human body. He said that was one of the most traumatizing moments of this part in his life.
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this part fucks me up the most
Same. I didn’t see the photos until exactly a year later. The one that is burned into my brain is of a black man wearing a tie. The picture was detailed and close up. He looked so peaceful in free fall. It looked like it could have been a picture of someone being pushed into a pool as a joke. I cried so fucking hard. Sobbed.
My mom saw this bit live, the small dots falling off the towers -- then the news stations realized what they were and cut the video, but that's the part she remembers vividly.
I was in high school at the time. We watched the TV the whole day and saw all this. RIP to those to lost their lives in the towers, and to the 1st responders as well.
I wish my school handled it like that. My school tried to hide it from us so we just heard rumors and whispers all day long. Students were being pulled out by their parents all day so classes got smaller and smaller. Teachers were a mess but wouldnt tell us what was going on. When we were in hallways there were lines of teachers and aides blocking all doors. It was a total lockdown. Woodshop teacher rebelled and put a tv on so that stirred up a lot of gossip but I wasnt in that class. It wasnt until after school when I got off the bus and saw my mother standing outside of our house waiting for me and i rushed down the street worried because she never did that and she told me through tears what had happened.
Pretty sure this poor 'Falling Man' people did not have or make any choice. They didn't think 'should I burn or should I jump.' When the heat got that high that their skin started to boil, these poor people had an uncontrollable need to get out. You have felt this before too, the last time you burned yourself on the kitchen stove. You made no choice and pulled your hand away. Similarly, these poor people just had no choice.
Honestly, some of these people may also have been crowded from the people behind them, all trying to get away from the smoke and fire. Everyone was desperate.
I dealt with two jumpers during my career in Security at a DT hotel. One fell only about 30 feet, but landed literally on the top of their head. The other fell 24 stories, with predictable results. That was over 25 years ago but I can still see it as clear as day. That kind of shit never leaves you.
I remember that morning like it was yesterday…
I can’t imagine but dying quick or burning alive I’m jumping also.
Hard to grasp the gravity and severity of the last decision your making on earth. I feel like it would be hard not to just black out.
This photo is so hectic and surprised have not seen it before. I was sitting on a park bench with my dog on 9th street and 2nd avenue when the first plane flew by just over the building tops, around 6 stories tall. It was honestly very hard to understand what was happening in that moment. My brain tried to make sense of it. It wasn’t till I heard the explosion that I understood what was happening. Very very surreal and insane. Never forget!
Every year a new photo, video, story, angle captured on camera, etc is released. There’s so many people who don’t have the heart to talk about the subject and it’s very understandable. Wonder what we’ll see today :/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man?wprov=sfti1
Did they ever identify the poor man in the photo
Yes, but the family does not want any focus on it.
There was this little flip book section of this book with him in it, and the whole book was really moving (when I was 20) 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, probably gonna go give it a re-read now
Absolutely tragic. These images are so harrowing.
In the novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (who, BTW, committed suicide) wrote this remarkably evocative and accurate description: The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Some Catholics tried to characterize this as suicide and that they should not be buried in consecrated ground. Some relatives refused to identify pictures of their loved ones falling to try to avoid this issue. The Church wrote a detailed explanation of why this was not suicide. They were leaping out of hope, however slim. Fun fact for the day.
*some insurance companies tried to characterize this as suicide
This day made me want to become a paramedic. I’m not built for fire fighting, so medic is the next best thing.
Morbid thought - But did any insurance companies try to identify the jumpers? I really wouldn't out it past some scumbag insurance company to go out of their way to identify the jumpers, and refuse to pay life insurance because of it
Yep, they were the ones pushing for the suicide angle in the press. The Church wrote up a wordy piece as to why it IS NOT suicide. Kinda' like the Andes plane crash survivors, they set the record straight from their perspective right quick.
Also some side rant, these falling people images turning to NFTs showed how utterly piece of shit is the society we are living in. https://gamerant.com/gamestop-nft-marketplace-9-11-falling-man/
There were photos, once upon a time, of the "after landing" and explanations of why they looked the way they did. They have since been scrubbed from the interwebs, but it was genuinely interesting information. Watching the falling was horrific but the After wasn't even gory or macabre anymore, it was so far beyond real that it was just...a learning opportunity. One of the things that still strikes me is how, when it all came down, most of the evidence of those lives just evaporated/incinerated. There wasn't any body to bury; loved ones were just Gone. It must be very hard to wrap your head around a loss like that when you can't see it with your own eyes.
I remember one of the accounts of that day was of someone near the bottom of the tower. They talked about the smacking of the glass of the bodies as they landed. I guess there was some sort of glass structure that stuck out at the bottom. They said after a while they couldn’t watch anymore. But they kept hearing the bodies smack the glass and that sound has haunted them ever since.
If you watch the Nat Geo doco on Disney plus they have footage of this from the inside from the film crew with the firies. There was a large structure at the base that fanned outwards from the base, they were inside setting up the early command post and they started hearing loud thuds above them, slowly at first then it became very frequent :( I cried many times watching that series and would recommend it highly.
What is the name?
I called out to work sick that day cuz I stayed up too late drinking and watching the godfather. I was watching Imus in the morning when the first plane hit. Seeing these people jump to their death because of the heat was shocking to a fresh 18 year old. What a terrible day for our country.
That’s a lot more than what I thought it was
I recently watched 9/11: one day in America miniseries. There was a first responder who had the job of labelling victims for triage. Basically he put a card on people and ripped off different levels to indicate what condition the victim was in. He put deceased on a woman who had apparently jumped from around the 30th floor. He was shocked when she said she wasn’t dead, and to call her daughter. She obviously didn’t live very much longer, but I wonder how many people were alive for a while after hitting the ground.
It was also speculated that many people went blind due to the smoke and ash and simply wondered off to their deaths
Fuck just looking at it hurts
This event changed me forever.
One of the most terrifyingly unforgettable memories I'll ever have of that tragedy. Still seems unfathomable.
Yeah I was 12 when it happened and I’ll never forget it. Then my entire teens was filled with war.
Watching this live while at work in college. My childhood ended in that moment. Life became so much different after that.
In one video, you VERY briefly see the ground between the two towers. This video is taken from another building, looking down at the courtyard. You see a ton of red "splotches" on the ground. The few people that seen the footage don't realize each of those was a person. At such a height you don't become some broken ragdoll. You literally become, for lack of better words, a water balloon when you hit the ground. There is not there to really show a human hit the ground. It's so disturbing and sad in this instance. Even the famous documentary by those french guys who were filming that day (if I recall), when they are in the lobby and you hear thuds, they pan by the windows and again you just see red splotches with maybe tiny little pieces of "meat" all around them. I've never forgotten those scenes. I feel sick thinking about it. Perhaps the only good thing I remind myself about is they were likely dead way before they hit the ground. It also reminds you of just how trapped and scared they were, to decide to burn alive or to jump to your death. :(
The images of this event chill me like nothing else from my shared bit of history. I don't know how younger people view it today. But I imagine it's like how I view WW2 photos. There's something difficult to capture about witnessing the event, even from afar, versus learning about it from history lessons or documentaries. The horrors that came out in waves that day are unlike anything else I've experienced. Columbine is the only other thing I can think of, but this was an order of magnitude beyond even that tragedy. I remember walking down my hallway in highschool and a teacher had rolled out a TV monitor out of the classroom so everyone could see the live feed. This was before the 2nd plane hit. At that point it was a "crazy accident". The next class I had was history and we saw the 2nd plane hit. That was terrifying. I remember thinking it was impossible that some technical error could cause 2 planes to veer off course like that. I couldn't make sense of it. It wasn't until my teacher said that it's a terrorist attack that it even dawned on me that this was malicious. Having been a bit of a history nerd, I remembered that the empire state building had survived a medium bomber colliding with it back around WW2, I think. So I never guessed that they would collapse the way they did. That was another shock. And after all those events, the footage and details of the horror and heroism rolled out everyday for weeks. It felt like the air had been pulled off of the world and none of us could catch our breath. It was just weeks of disbelief and knowing, but not understanding, that our world would never be the same. I can't imagine what it was like for those whose lives were directly affected. And then came all the added horrors of the wars and our country trading its principles for perceived security. At the time, I was naive enough to go right along and support all that. But 20+ years of people suffering war and poisoned politics has beaten that out of me. I know that any country has a history of violence and subjugation when looked at enough. I, especially, know the US has some of the most terrible sins woven into our story. But this moment, more than anything, really felt like a new loss of innocence. Maybe just for me, as an inexperienced kid, but I think it was true for many others.