How old were you when 9/11 happened?
I was 14 (later on 1st October that year turned 15), you?
shareLess than a month away from my 19th birthday.
shareIt was also less than a month away, but for my 15th birthday.
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > How old were you when 9/11 happened?
29. My spouse woke me up (it was night time here) and told me world war III had just started. I got up and watched live as the towers collapsed. A moment I'll never forget. It was almost like watching a film it was so surreal.
shareI wondered myself if 9/11 was influenced a lot by the movies, including "Independence Day" (1996) for one and other Hollywood blockbusters, a lot of which had elements that pre-shadowed 9/11.
And also - did the date symbolize 911 - an emergency American phone number?
David Fincher's movie "Fight Club" (1999), particularly with that ending that features two crumbling exploding tower buildings, kinda pre-shadowed 9/11. As did movies like "Air Force One" (1997) where the American president's plane has been hi-jacked (the terrorists that day also attacked the Pentagon, and it was rumoured that Flight 93 that crashed in Pittsburgh was heading for the White House), some movies like "Unlawful Entry" (1992) had elements that pre-dated the tragedy as well (including jokes about people jumping from the World Trade Center at one point (and people did that on 9/11 too when the planes hit the Twin Towers), drawings of planes flying over New York etc.
By the way, did any amazon or IMDb users die on 9/11, is it possible, and you know all those people that we saw or didn't see but were inside the Twin Towers before, could they have been the dead victims of the tragic event?
Remember how weird it was not to have air traffic after that?
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shareAnd then in October 2002, after my birthday about 3 weeks or so, another major terrorist act happened, it being, the 23rd-26th October Moscow theatre siege of the musical "Nord Ost", as a result of which, around 130-170 people were killed and over 400 or so injured, not to speak of course of the horrendous Beslan school siege almost 2 years later in 2004, which killed around 400 people and the majority of which were children.
Of course, the wars aside, even before that, and before America's 9/11 for that matter, we've also had, on 14th June 1995, the "Budennovsk" (also spelled as "Budyonnovsk" in English, pronounced - "boo-dyO-nov-sk") hospital siege crisis, which involved the attack on the town and a massive hospital hostage situation containing close to 2000 people hostages, as a result of which around 130 people died and more than 500 injured (I was 8 years old back then), then a similar hostage crisis, also involving an attack on the town and the hospital as a focal point, half a year later on 9th January 1996 at a town called Kizlyar, village of Pervomayskoye, which killed around 70 people as well as several explosions including the 1999 Russian appartment bombings in Autum that year in Buynaksk, Volgodonsk and Moscow, in which around 300 residents died.
Sadly there were even terrorist attacks in America that pre-dated and almost predicted 9/11, including a small bombing of the World Trade Center itself in 1993, as well as the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing in April 1995, killing over 160 people.
Interestingly enough, there has been many foundings and investigations on law suits on how the Moscow theatre siege was handled, but besides conspiracy theories and war in Iraq, did anyone seriously from the US government and American police come under fire from any Human Rights organizations either for poor handling of 9/11 and poor rescue attempts, being complacent in the act, not being able to save more hostages etc etc etc?
shareThere was no question of saving hostages on 9/11; the poor souls on those planes were beyond help. The successful evacuation of some 50,000 people from the World Trace Center was a bright spot on that day, so the rescue efforts can’t be faulted. It was just an overwhelming event and impossible circumstances. A commission was appointed to investigate the intelligence and counterterrorism lapses that led to the failure to prevent it. Plenty of blame to go around on that front.
shareSo in effect, one could maybe, perhaps, say, that the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 Moscow theatre siege in Russia were different because of their nature and style, and also the fact that, perhaps, there wasn't much that could've been done to save more victims on 9/11 whereas after the theatre siege, more could've been done but wasn't?
Interestingly enough, although to a lesser extent perhaps, but the Moscow theatre siege also has its own conspiracy theorists, as does 9/11 ,although they come in slightly different ways.
Like, some debate who really organized 9/11 and also if there were bombs in World Trade Centre Twin Towers and the collapse of the buildings was caused by a controlled demolition and about the Moscow theatre siege, there's heavy debates if it was legal to use the gas and authorized and why they didn't inform the doctors all the details of the gas used to storm the theatre so that more hostages could receive the right treatment, whether or not the terrorists had help from Russian authorities including FSB and government etc, why they placed the bottle of alcohol in the hands of the lead dead terrorist - and in Moscow's case, the relatives of those that died really did try and pursue their own investigations into those matters.
Yes, both the Moscow theater and Beslan were completely different from 9/11 because the Russian events involved hostages. Russian authorities had a choice among several options and all of them were just different flavors of bad. Desperate, deadly situations rarely offer good options. I’m not familiar with the specifics, but what you mentioned sounds like a reasonable debate about how it was handled.
With respect to 9/11, I reject the conspiracy theories.
Interestingly enough, however, when the hostage terrorist taking attacks began in light of the first Chechen war in the 90s, with the aforementioned "Budennovsk" (or "Budyonnovsk" how it is also spelled and easier to also see how pronounced, as a Russian I know) in June 1995, many officials and the government saw it a digrace and shame with how it was handled, not just with the storming of the besieged hospital that also caused many deaths, but the fact that the terrorists led by Shamil Basayev got away, in colonies of buses that was given to them, although the Moscow theatre storming, despite the massive loss of lives was considered to be a triumphant success, as all the terrorists were destroyed or apprehended, the same however wasn't able to be said about Beslan, with so many massive deaths including children, even though apparently all terrorists or most were also liquidated.
It also seems that those who orchestrated the Beslan school siege have learned all lessons and mistakes not only from the Moscow theatre siege, but also the Budennovsk and its later 1996 counterpart Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye combined, which is why they refused negotiations and food and water for hostages and even knew full well that the authorities would opt for storm and decide to end it this way, hence why hostages there especially were doomed. The hostage takers in Beslan even took out most of the school's windows in case the Special Forces decided to repeat the doom of Nord Ost in Moscow and use gases of any kind.
Beslan in particular was unimaginably horrible.
shareYeah, I'd say it even surpassed 9/11 itself in that department.
shareAgreed.
shareI would also like to say that although true, those Russian events did "involve hostages", knowing what the outcomes of them were, particularly the horrifying "Beslan school siege" and how the terrorists organized them and everything, I wouldn't really go as far as to say that they were "completely different than 9/11 because of it".
For one, given how they placed explosives inside the buildings and surrounded for days over a thousand people at gunpoint, with no guarantees that such explosives for instance would not go off and kill everyone like that, its not that much different than 9/11 even when knowing that on that American terrorist attack, it was the ultimate suicide attack like that and nobody as such among those taken "hostage" there could be rescued.
Bearing in mind also how in the aforementioned similar previous scenarios, like in the Budennovsk hospital siege crisis in 1995 and Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye in 1996, such hostage taking terrorists even have killed a lot of people already as such before taking others hostage. Not to speak of some of the most brutal actions of those in Beslan although yes they also killed people there even before the final storm and rescue operation began, which although to this day is steeped in controversy (about who or what caused those two first explosions in the gym, some suggest our Special Forces shot from the outside, others debate if "deliberately" or by "mistake" the Beslan terrorists activated their explosive devices in the gym of the school hall), no doubt casts a major shadow on terrorist INTENT and almost an IMPOSSIBILITY to RESCUE such hostages and future victims, as it was DIRECTLY the case with 9/11.
And although government officials mostly are divided among opinions as such, although they still consider Moscow theatre storming to be a triumph, there are and were Human Rights organizations who disagreed with and harshly criticized and whatnot our Special Forces stormings and rescue operations, and I was wondering
why perhaps such criticisms from them ALONG THOSE LINES for 9/11 are not to be seen.
shareMaybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how criticism of the hostage rescue operations that you mention could ever apply to 9/11.
shareWell, perhaps it COULD be the case along those lines, yes, although there does occasionally seem to be more to it all than eventually meets the eye.
On a side note, I have just discovered, after being unaware of it for literally around 16 years, that the main North Ossetian chief of Federal Security Valery Andreev, who was indeed in charge of the Beslan rescue operation and getting the whole situation under control with rescuing the hostages and possibly destroying the terrorists, well...
I have just discovered that, having mentioned a lot the "1995 Budennovsk hospital siege crisis" here, in itself and as a comparison point, that Valery Andreev was BORN IN BUDENNOVSK in 1951. I haven't read at all about whether or not he actually DID take any part in either armed battles or hostage rescue operation when that event happened or maybe he wasn't a Chief officer at the time or anything along those lines but for now at least...
Very interesting slice of trivia and interesting coincidence.
Its also not JUST the "rescue operations" from such Special Forces that were being criticized by those Human Rights Organizations and respectable people that are tied to them.
For instance, the late Anna Politkovskaya, who by the way was killed under somewhat mysterious yet undeniably tragic circumstances in 2006, where she was assassinated in the basement of the building where her flat was located, very much saw the 2002 Moscow theatre siege and the war in Chechnya as two sides of the same coin. And she harshly spoke of President Putin and our soldiers in Chechnya and her criticism of the "heroic rescue efforts" of our forces of this Moscow siege also went under this, dare I say, EMOTIONAL criticism, as did those other factors.
I know certain people and organizations also spoke about say wars that American government and forces waged in the wake of 9/11 although, I couldn't say which were better or worse, but they came perhaps in slightly similar but in mostly different ways.
And there is a lot of controversy going on not just from government officials but general public is also polarized about whether or not such people are actually CORRECT in such thoughts.
And in the West and also in Europe, not only did such people as Anna Politkovskaya found a lot of support and people who respected her but also such points of view that she expressed. Without much if any disagreements or even "questioning" if I may boldly add.
It's one of those events that I don't believe my mind will ever fully comprehend.
It was bizarre and horrifying and one thing that has never left me was a brief news item amongst all the chaos that there was a speculation that planes were missing and may have to be shot down.
I'll always wonder about that.
But as to the conspiracy theories regarding inside jobs,then I agree with you.
Yes, it was chaos and confusion for several hours. I remember those reports. There were also early reports on that day of bombs detonating at the Capitol and the State Department.
shareIt must have been terrifying and bewildering for you to have been so near to everything that happened.Were you at a safe distance or did you feel as if you were in danger? The smoke and the ash for example.(Don't answer if it makes you uncomfortable please)
It must have had a knock on effect to thousands of people such as yourself.
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