A Strange and Terrible Day

As the whole world is aware, today three airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon building. A fourth airplane crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it's not yet known whether it's connected to the terrorist acts.

This is the fourth moment of "instant tragedy" I recall experiencing in my life.

The first was the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, when I was a Junior in high school. I remember that my English class at the time had headed into the A/V lab to watch a film (I think one of the Romeo and Juliet adaptations), and we saw the famous plume of smoke in the shuttle's wake on the screen briefly before the teacher turned on the tape. I doubt more than three or four of us even imagined that we had just missed watching a disaster; I dimly recall thinking that something screwy had just happened, but I didn't speak up to suggest we watch it.

Although there had been other nation-shaking events in my life before that, that's the first one I really remember. The first time I had the sense that we'd just seen something which had never really happened before.

The second time was during Senior year of high school, when a freshman hung himself in the school's auditorium. This event taught me something about myself: That I tend to view tragedies like this differently from other people. I didn't really understand why other students - who I knew didn't know the student in question (as I didn't) - were so broken up about it. I felt largely detached from the event, and even felt that the discussion groups that were organized about the event were a waste of my time. (I now realize that those groups did have real purpose, but also that I wasn't the one they were aimed at, in that I wasn't one of the group of students who needed counseling.) Today my memory of those couple of days is a largely surreal one, because of the essential disconnection between myself and some of the people who I perceived as being in my same position, but who reacted so differently. And it's far too late today to adjust my emotional attitude towards the event.

The third time was when the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, on April 19, 1995. I was working at Epic at the time, and we actually had a client in Oklahoma City, and some of our team were on their way there at the time. We received e-mail that a "major explosion" had occurred in Oklahoma City, and to please not contact the medical center which was our client down there, since they would be busy for the foreseeable future dealing with the aftermath of the incident. I seem to recall that we all assumed at the time that it was an act of a foreign, not domestic, terrorist, which of course later proved to be false.

(Intriguingly, it appears there are still groups which believe there was a larger, possibly government-driven, conspiracy which resulted in the bombing, and that Timothy McVeigh was a fall guy for their machinations.)

And now we have this. Once again, we're seeing something which has never really happened before. It seems to be assumed (albeit implicitly) that this is an act of a foreign terrorist. At this point, no one knows the truth.

I don't know anyone who might have been on any of those four planes, although apparently all four were California-bound. Mo apparently knows someone who conceivably might have been, and is worried sick because of it.

But even though it seems I and mine have been spared, I doubt anyone in the US will be unaffected. Airline travel has been completely shut down today (and who knows for how long?), and the FAA will surely implement new and severe procedures to make sure that whatever happened today will never happen again. Carry-on bags, for instance, might be prohibited. Armed guards might be stationed in all flights from now on (whether in plain sight or undercover). Commuter life will change.

Everyone will wonder for the next few months whether this will happen again, and whether they'll be on the flight on which it will happen. Rental car companies should do brisk business. People might think twice about going to visit landmarks which might be targets.

Major League Baseball has postponed all games today. A friend of mine suggests that MLB might cancel the rest of the season and simply launch the playoffs with the current prevailing teams in three weeks. (I suspect that the NFL, with their 5-to-7 day layoffs between games, could convert to bus transportation if necessary.)

New York is missing one of its most recognizable landmarks, and who knows what will happen to the Pentagon, which has had a big chunk taken out of it.

Our world has changed.

I think what amazes me the most about all of this is the sense of scale of what's happened.

Three airplanes (maybe four) were successfully hijacked, and were driven into three different landmarks within an hour or so of each other. I've always suspected that security procedures at airports were a sham, in that if someone really wanted to smuggle on equipment to hijack a plane, they could. I think that's now been demonstrated. That's also a lot of metal, fuel and thrust power directed at large buildings and thousands of people.

Thousands of people. Fifty thousand people work in the World Trade Center, and thirty thousand people at the Pentagon. Although the Pentagon was struck in a recently renovated and not fully occupied space, and the Trade Center had some time between the impact and its final collapse to evacuate some people, it's likely we'll see fatalities number in the thousands, and perhaps in the tens of thousands. (It was, after all, just before 9 am on the east coast when the planes struck.) Not to mention the five hundred or so people on the planes who lost their lives.

Around 2,500 people died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. It's possible, therefore, that this might be the most lethal act of aggression on US soil since the Civil War.

The World Trade Towers are massive. They're 110 stories tall. Buildings that big and heavy getting struck 3/4ths of the way up their height by commercial airliners filled with enough jet fuel to fly to California simply aren't going to remain standing, and the footage of each tower crumbling to the ground is one of the most awe-inspiring sights I've ever seen (awe, after all, need not be a good feeling). NPR this morning interviewed several New Yorkers who could barely imagine that the towers are simply gone, even though they clearly are.

Manhattan was shrouded in dust and smoke clouds and large as the city itself for hours after the event. Imagine what a whole city levelled like that might look like, and you'll have some understanding of why some of us in California fear major earthquakes.

Mankind rarely sees concrete examples of what feats it's capable of, of the forces we have at our disposal. We've seen one today, combining a huge engineering feat (creating the towers) and a massive destructive force to lay it low.

I try not to think about nukes.

Apparently, a few pocket ("tactical", or maybe "briefcase") nukes have gone missing from the Soviet Union. No one really knows where they are (at least, no one's said anything publicly). Many nations are of course working towards nuclear technology.

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has Apple and Silicon Valley on their terrorist radar. Maybe we're only #27 on their list, but we're surely on their list. Taking out Apple or Silicon Valley would get the nation's attention, which I think is what these terrorists want.

There's nothing I can do about it, other than leave the area. So I try not to think about it.

Questions which I hope will be answered in the coming weeks:

1. Did any of the black boxes from the four airplanes survive? What's on them?
2. How did the terrorists hijack the planes? I can only assume that they smuggled weapons on board, killed the pilots, held the passengers at bay, and carried out their mission.
3. Who was responsible?
4. What nations, if any, aided the terrorists in their mission, or prior to it?
5. What reprisals will the US take against those responsible and their allies?
6. How will this change the US's outlook towards terrorism in the future? Will we become more proactive in acting against terrorist organizations before they act against us, though the use of overt and covert force?
7. Will Dubya use this as leverage to get his Missile Defense System implemented? (What, are we going to use it as a Civilian Airliner Defense System now?)
8. What sort of privacy restrictions will be put in place, further stripping American citizens of their right to privacy, in the coming months?

I have a hard time coming up with good arguments against any actions taken against terrorist or avowed terrorist organizations, by anyone. Mainly, I think, because the very nature of terrorism is covert warfare, and I don't think that the normal rules of civilization apply towards people who are fighting a war - whether declared or unclared - against you.

I think this is what it feels like when a President is assassinated (something which hasn't happened in my lifetime). A sense of fear, and a sense that everything's different now.

How many terrorist-harboring nations are scared out of their wits that the US will decide that they're behind those responsible, and that we'll bomb them back to the stone age?

Early reports indicated that a pro-Palestinian group had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but a spokesman for the group later denied that. Whether the attacks were motivated by a hatred of the US's support for Israel or by some other hatred, how can there be any chance that the US will react even remotely in the way they hoped? If anything, it seems likely that we'll get more involved in the world's affairs, not less.

What do Russia and China think of the day's events?

What impact will this have on the economy?

What will happen when commercial airlines start flying again?

What will happen tomorrow?

A strange and terrible day.

Everything's different now.