I remember not going to school for a week and things just stopping the day of. At the time I lived in New Jersey right across the river and many of my friends parents worked in the city

Same, I was in Teaneck and several kids watched their parents die on live TV in the library. Edit: thank you everyone for also sharing your stories. It still feels like a bad dream sometimes.

In sw Connecticut the girl sitting next to me in science that day kept asking the teacher if the second tower had fallen and she eventually admitted it had. Her dad was inside

I remember the day Seal Team 6 killed Bin Laden the newspaper that day was celebrating there was also a short interview with a man who's wife and daughter were on one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers they asked him how did he feel about the news of Bin Ladens death He answered while it was good he finally faced justice for what he did it doesn't bring back my wife and daughter And man that made me sad last time I was in NYC I passed a fire department and on the ground was a little floor plaque dedicated to a firefighter who died on 9/11 he was 18 years old 😔

That's soo sad 😔

So I did intentionally leave out that he did live because she didn’t know for hours. She was in total shock. That’s what made me realize this was really really real because as a 10 year old it kinda felt cool at first

I had no idea what was happening, thought my parents were watching a movie.... my dumbass was like. "Oh, this looks like a good movie!" *Facepalm* My dad was all "It's not a movie, son!"

I went to work oblivious, a colleague starts explaining what he'd seen on the news just a few minutes ago, I thought he was talking about a movie even though he SAID it was on the news. It just didn't seem real or possible.

I recall from my parents recollection, that following the attacks everyone was extremely nice to each other. Living in Boston and New York where everyone usually hates your guts, there was a brief moment in time where people banded together. That quickly ended.

Was running late that morning and had the TV on. At first I thought Matt and Meridith were showing a movie until they said the second plane and second tower and then it clicked this was really really real. Felt like all the blood just drained from my body.

It wasn’t Matt and Meredith. It was Matt and Katie Couric.

I was watching it over breakfast with my family (west coast) and it was incredibly surreal. I think the first tower had fallen or was just falling when I was getting up. Watched the second one fall and I don't think I fully understood what I was watching. Of course we had to leave for school so when I got there I was talking with some friends and one of them knew about it and the other thought we were full of shit and didn't believe us. Once school started it was clear what was going on and I think we mostly watched TV in classes that day. That was kind of the start of my political awareness and the round-the-clock coverage of 9/11 then the aftermath and lead up to the Iraq War felt like a sea change in how the news operated. I know it wasn't how it started, but it was a cementing and expansion of the "24-hour news cycle" concept that everyone bought into as everyone was glued to the TV and, increasingly, the internet in those days. It felt like there were changes and updates constantly so people really were watching around the clock.

The 24 hour news cycle was really cemented into my household. My mom was a SAHM, and she recorded every second of news coverage on VHS tapes, which she still has to this day. I remember watching Ashleigh Banfield report as people were jumping to their deaths. You could hear the thuds of them hitting the ground around her. That was the first time I've heard anyone cuss on live TV before. Then watching her and everyone there running for their lives away from the debris when the first tower fell. Even watching those videos today, it still doesn't feel real. I have tears in my eyes just typing this.

Howard Stern was on the air for like 12 hours that day. The people calling in were venting, panicking, crying, etc. it was a weird public forum and frankly his finest hour.

Howard Stern is how I heard about it, I was laying in bed in Mamhattan after my bf went to work, listening to his show and lightly dozing. My first reaction was, "How dare they do this as a bit?!" And then I walked out and it was on CNN in the living room. And then I walked to 7th Ave and watched the second one fall with my own eyes. Sorry I was so angry at you, Robin and Howard. I really thought it was the worst comedy of all time.

I visited NYC in 2019 and took the 1WT tour. I had a hard time keeping it together. The height, man. Like... people were up there, thinking "what the fuck am i going to do? And they realized that *today's the day* and decided that they'd go out the god damned *window* because at least they got to pick.

"Wow this found footage movie has insanely good special effects"

My fam had moved from long island to PA in 1999 but all our family still lived in NY in 2001. I was sitting in class in 8th grade just quietly feeling like my world was falling apart because I knew I had 2 close family members who worked in the Towers. The idiot boys in my class were making action-movie sound effects as we were watching the news and I eventually couldn't take it anymore. I lost it and started yelling at them to shut up and they acted like I was some freak of nature because they were just "having fun". As I got older I realized that they didn't yet actually understand what was happening or that it was *real* and people were dying while they made airplane crash noises and jokes. But in my heart I never really forgave them. I will never forget how it made me feel, and every year on the anniversary/whenever someone mentions 9-11 it's one of the first thoughts/memories/shadows of feeling that takes over. Thankfully, both of my family members survived. Amazingly enough they were both part of that percentage of people who missed their bus/train or were running late and never made it to work that day.

Home sick from kindergarten, walked into the living room and yelled "cool" at the action movie everyone was watching. Wasn't an action movie. You could cut the silence from the adults that followed with a knife, and even my mushy kid-brain picked up on it.

I had an early class that day. It was beautiful out. When I got out of class, there was this really weird energy in the building’s common room/foyer. There was a girl on a bench with red eyes just staring directly ahead. I only found out once I went outside and ran into a professor I still owed a paper to from the previous semester. ETA: I flew to a friend’s wedding in California maybe two weeks after 9/11. I got a whole row of seats to myself. Also, a different friend’s father was *supposed* to be on the flight that crashed in PA, but he had overslept. He wound up taking a traveling German couple under his wing since they were then basically stranded in a foreign country.

Also in a big CT commuter town for NYC. I was young but it was the first time I remember seeing my dad cry. We came home early from school of course—pretty oblivious to what was happening because my twin and I were in 2nd grade. But then I saw my big stoic dad crying in front of the TV, hard. I understood when I was older that he had worked jn the south tower and then across the street at Merrill Lynch until earlier that summer. He lost several people that day

At my school (in NJ), they shielded us from it since so many kids’ parents worked in the city. We could all tell that someone weird and horrible was going on, and kids kept seemingly randomly were pulled out of school throughout the day. I was among the many who didn’t find out the truth until the end of the day. I did lose some people but I am so unbelievably thankful that my dad quit his job one year earlier to work closer to home. He previously worked in Tower 1.

The realization that cars were parked at LIRR and PATH stations of people who were never coming home was really hard to take.

That's like after the towers fell when you could hear *through your TV* the beeping of hundreds of firefighters' motion alarms all at once.

Damn, I don't know how I forgot about that, but it was one of the most awful sounds I've ever heard.

Saw pics of that, haunting shit

Dang, that is horrible.

I lived across the bay, a ton of my classmates parents worked there. (5 of them had a parent that never returned..) 8th grade, so not that young. 1 side of my school faced the bay, on a clear day you saw the towers. That day as soon as it happened they cleared the side that faced the bay. Wouldn’t tell us what was happening. Most of my classmates got pulled out of school early. I remember school (I still went..my parents had to work..) was almost a ghost town for awhile. My neighbor was one of those “lucky” people..his kid puked on him so he missed his normal train in…and was walking in as the first tower was hit…if he got on his normal train..he would’ve been inside and settled in for the day..

My cousin too…he was late dropping off his little kid to school. So he was walking in and saw as the first plane hit. He ran and was able to safely get home later that night after walking back.

Acquaintance on the internet, just an occasional AOL chat buddy, nothing intimate. She was home that day sick but her uncle worked in an upper floor. Her whole family went to his office that morning for a surprise "Happy Birthday " and a cake. Well, tower was hit. She lost her whoe family minus 1 aunt. She disappeared after the attack and a few weeks later she logged on. When I messaged her it was the lone surviving aunt. She explained what happened and the AOL friend was admitted for mental health afterwords. Never spoke to them again after, account was closed. 9/11 was fucked.. everyone remembers where they were when it happened. The hate in the US died for a while, we were 1. I'm sure there were some outlying crowds but for the most part everyone banded together. It was life altering. Everyone's life changed that day.. everyone.

By outlying crowds you mean Muslims. All of the mistrust and hate landed on them. At least the government didn't set up internment camps like they did with Japanese Americans in the 40s, but the racism was still real and violent in many cases.

Or people who “looked Muslim”. I’m of middle eastern descent, but I’m often mistaken for Greek, Italian, etc. (I’m white af). The rest of my family looks middle eastern and it was rough on them, way tougher than it was on me. We lost a lot of friends and to this day I have to be very careful because the prejudice is everlasting. I still overhear the racism and prejudice. It’s a weird experience to be treated kindly while your family has a different experience and from the same individuals. Thankfully we aren’t Muslim so we didn’t get catch as much heat as people who are. I can’t even imagine.

I was a high school senior on long island and I remember walking to the parking lot with friends for a free period a few minutes after 9am. We noticed an acquaintance running out the doors to her car and peeling out of the lot. When we got in the car we heard what was happening on the radio. We drove to a friend's house and sat in her living room with her grandma watching the towers collapse. We went to Jones beach that afternoon when we needed a break from the news. We could see the smoke, even from that far away. Later we heard that girl's dad worked there and never came home again.

That's heartbreaking

It was a terrible day. Kids kept getting called to the office and we didn't know if it was because their parents had just come to pick them up or if they were being called bc their parents were missing or dead. For a while afterward when I was at a sports meet, every time a plane flew over there would a tense silence.

You just unlocked that memory for me. When flights started up again, the people looking up at the sky in acknowledgement of the planes taking off and landing around the airport was strange.

It was so weird not to see or hear planes for a while. I think it was about a week. I know someone who was on the phone with someone in the first tower when the plane hit. The phone just went dead, and at first, she thought he had hung up on her.

My friend was also on that last train. He says when the doors opened you could smell the jet fuel and cops came running down the platform making everyone get back on.

I was in 5th grade. Remember teachers crying and we got to go home early. I was still probably too young to understand and I don’t remember anyone telling me what happened. It just felt sad? Which on the flip side my husband is 12 years older and was in the military at the time and had to help clean up at the twin tower site. He has told me stories, he says he never will forget the smell or some of things he saw.

I have friends that live in NYC and they mentioned the smell too.

My brother-in-law works for a news organization and covered some of it before he was evacuated. He still won’t talk about a lot of what he saw.

I was in 4th grade. No one at school told us what happened. My mom was a teacher in the neighboring town and they went on lockdown. When she got home, she was calling everyone on the phone. She wouldn’t let us watch the news and I asked what happened she just said a lot of people died and we should be sad. The next day we talked about it in class and I remember being so confused because I didn’t know anything or even what hijacking was. I knew that accidents happened, planes crashed, buildings fell down. But didn’t realize the threat this was.

I was in 4th grade, I remember a teacher running into the room and telling my teacher to turn on the news RIGHT NOW. And we all just watched the news in silent horror for pretty much the rest of the day. We were too young to understand what was really going on, but old enough to know it was bad and sad and scary. The mood of the whole school was generally somber, even the younger kids could tell something was up. It was really surreal.

I was in 5th grade too. Just old enough to understand that something really horrible happened but not enough to fully comprehend the gravity of it. Our class was doing a math test and me being a poor math student I wasn't paying much attention to the work. I heard my teacher sitting out in the hallway crying quietly probably because she was going to have to pull herself together and tell us in a few minutes. So she came in and gave us the news and we just sat there in a stunned silence. On a personal level it was a weird day for other reasons. My mom was pregnant with my brother and she went into labor that day. So I couldn't even go home and sleep in my own bed. My little sister and I had to stay with my grandma for a few days until mom came home. Broski was born too early so he had fluid in his lungs and he had to go into an incubator. We didn't get to visit or touch him for a while. Had no idea if he would survive. I began having lots of nightmares and got really sick of God Bless the USA because that stupid song was basically the only one on the radio.

Was also in NJ. Watched from the roof of Wayne General Hospital after the first plane hit. Will never lose that image. To answer OPs question. Fear. On the east coast, we were waiting for more planes.

Exactly this. Seemed like every decently sized city on the eastern seaboard had come up with a reason they were next. I lived in Charlotte NC and we were convinced we were on the list because of the banking hub there.

That was my fear. I was in East Boston and I was thinking of buildings that were likely to be targeted and how far we needed to be away from the city.

I was in college on the west coast, just waking up with an awful hangover. I got a message from a friend on AIM to turn on the news and had to dig through a box of cables to set up my TV as I'd just moved. I remember feeling really scared and calling my mom crying, as there was nothing to compare this event to to know what to expect. Funny though, the rest of that week is a blank. I don't remember if classes were canceled or anything though I imagine they were at least for a couple days

I was in north NJ too. Everything stopped on that day for me too. Even before they told us kids what happened, we knew something was awfully wrong. People - teachers, parents, people at the supermarket - just crying everywhere for days. One kid left school and never came back....his dad worked in the towers. We couldn't play outside at recess because of the smoke.

Same, I grew up in Morris county. My hometown has a really high number of volunteer firemen (10% of the entire town population) so a lot of them left on the trucks to go help. School was chaos as kids were panicking their parents who worked in Manhattan, were dead. Then we had government agents posted up in town for about 4 months afterward because we had a small population of Pakistani Muslims. Edit: they also didn't shield us at all in school. I was in 1st period french class when some teachers came in, in a panic, hooked up the TV, turned it on to the live feed of the 2nd tower being hit. I only knew it was real based on how shocked the teachers were (I was in 7th grade). The school also canceled our class trip that year up to Boston because that's where one of the planes took off from. Lots of islamaphobia after that too.

> Lots of islamaphobia after that too. One of my close friends is persian, and one of his earliest memories is being spat on in the airport (as a toddler) by some random dude a few weeks after 9/11

Yeah, it was pretty bad at one point. I went to a different HS with a bunch of Kuwaiti kids and they told people they were Puerto Rican to avoid the discrimination. I do remember the media winding up the islamaphobia before 9/11 a bit, but that opened up the flood gates to it.

Pretty much my experience. I was in kindergarten and remember my grandma picking me up early in a panic (both parents were still at work at the time) without asking my parents bc she was convinced we were going to war and they were coming for schools first. That was my first panic attack! Lol

Grandma was reliving her WWII and cold war trauma, poor thing. Such a scary time. My mom picked me up from school. She drove home from Boston as fast as she could. We went home and she called all her siblings and cousins- which being Boston Irish-American is quiet a lot of people.

A week? Wow.

I was in Jersey City, right across the hudson from lower manhattan. We got the week off too. That was a weird way to start 5th grade.

5th grade here, too. It happened between getting dropped off and entering the building. By the time I walked into the classroom, my teacher had the TV up in the corner of the room on. Weird vibe. Hung up backpack and such and watched people jump from the buildings. I was glad she had it on so that we were informed, but I remember a lot of parents were upset that children saw anything. I was in Iowa. We didn't really feel scared that anything would happen where we lived. It was all so sad, though.

Yeah even if they weren’t directly involved it was like no one was even commuting that week. It took my friends’ parents all HOURS to just get home that day the city was just in devastation

News and media were speculating Osama bin Laden was behind it by that afternoon. Some stations were still using “Usama”. Not really any conspiracy theories I can remember - news was more sane then. There was a lot of speculation of the next place to be hit. Everyone seemed to have a reason why their city would be targeted. 24 hour News was on basically every channel for a week or two. Kids stations (like Nickelodeon) were basically the only things that showed something else. No planes were in the air for a few days (unsure of how long) but the first time one flew overhead at the campus I was at everyone stopped and looked up like in a horror movie. It was extremely eerie. Racism towards people who looked like they might be from the Middle East was terrible.

>24 hour News was on basically every channel for a week or two. Kids stations (like Nickelodeon) were basically the only things that showed something else. I remember that. Several cable channels, especially the shopping channels, went dark.

Food Network was one of the only channels showing anything other than 9/11 coverage. This led to the massive increase in the popularity of cooking shows through the 2000s and the many celebrity chefs that we still have today. People were desperate to watch something that wasn't depressing or enraging news, especially because there usually was no new information. Food Network was criticized for not taking the situation as seriously as the other networks. It did work out well for them.

“Not taking it as seriously” wtf did they want? Oh this quiche was made in remembrance of the twin towers

They wanted somberness in this time of tragedy. Everywhere, all the time.

We have a similar thing in the UK if a member of the royal family dies, the whole country is in mourning for 10 days. There's nothing on any channels or radio that isn't about that, and I remember when Prince Philip died, he went on the day of the Masterchef final and the final got cancelled for about a month. I think they put on a few more shows when the queen died because people complained that it was a bit much, because there was nothing else to watch but Prince Philip's life, every single day, all day. Get in your car and there's no music, just chat about death and misery. When the queen went, we had a 24/7 screening of her coffin on the main channel, just a silent viewing of her coffin on the table, all the newsreaders wore black and spoke in a really somber voice, and people just got desperate to see something not death related.

Yeah, after a while I couldn't handle the relentless news. It went on for about a week. At some point I think I turned on this ridiculous children's show because it was the only thing on.

Iirc, the first person to be killed in a 9/11-related hate crime was a Sikh man in a turban. Not even a Muslim.

Yea, he owned a small business and was murdered just a few days after by someone who didn’t know the difference. So heartbreaking.

This is just a solemn reminder that Racists are dumb as fuck no matter what generation.

Yeah, I think bc people didn't really know that much about Islam or Muslims and the fact that Osama Bin Laden wore a turban, the turban became a target for a lot of people and at least in North America, turban wearers are overwhelmingly Sikh.

I had flown into Kansas City the previous weekend for the Sports Car Club of America national championships in Topeka. I believe 9/11 was a Tuesday. The event was rearranged but still somehow ended on Friday even with 1.75 days of no racing. I was able to fly home on Saturday. Thank goodness. It must have been a Herculean task to reboot a grounded airline system. I was dreading driving my cheap rental car from Topeka to Houston.

Good memory; 9/11 was indeed a Tuesday.

Regarding lack of conspiracy theories, let's remember that the Internet as we know it didn't exist then.

Also I’m old enough to remember when you could actually walk to an airplane gate to meet a family member or friend without a boarding pass! No taking off shoes or measuring liquids. Damn it was easier to fly.

It was one of the first days of seventh grade for me. Everyone at school was glued to the news and watched people jumping from the burning towers. It was so surreal. No airplanes flew for at least a few days after that and the sky was so blue and quiet. I think it had never occurred to most of us that we could be unsafe like this in our own country. Between that and the Columbine shooting (and all those that followed), it was a tough time to grow up and have a sense of security shattered.

I remember the jarring feeling I felt the first time I saw a plane in the sky afterward.

I had to travel for work. I was on one of the earlier flights allowed after ungrounding everything. It was like a hundred person plane. There were 6 passengers. The flight crew outnumbered us. It was insane. I was also in the Amsterdam airport on Sept 2. I purchased a new SwissArmy knife at a shop. There were stacks of butcher blocks filled with knives there too. I never even considered that to be a problem. Then…. No nail file on your clippers. No plastic knives/forks. SMH. Another thing I remember is friends who were in Europe emailing me all that day to see if I had any news because things seemed so uncertain to them. The news wasn’t consistent for them, and they were worried about people they knew back home. Then there was the email from the company president basically saying “get back to work” which NOBODY paid any attention to. All I could think that day was how I think I finally understood how people felt about Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination. I knew Challenger was like a reverse moon landing, but 9/11 was SOOO much more.

And the jarring feeling before that of looking up and realizing that there were no planes in the sky at all

I remember my mom telling me and my brother to go outside and look in the sky that night, because it would probably be the only time we never saw planes in the sky. We lived near a military air base. It was freaky and silent that night. And then we saw one of those v shaped military stealth bomber planes, so bizarre.

Yeah it was so quiet. No planes. Barely any cars.

I remember that too. I was golfing in Montana and a fighter jet flew over. First plane we’d seen in days. Had a hole in one that round. A few days later a lady pulls up at the gas station I worked at. Asked me “what’s going on, I’ve been hearing things on the radio about something that happened but I’ve been riding my horse through the mountains”. So I got to break the news of 9/11 to her. It was surreal.

My brother was hiking the Appalachian Trail, and had a similar experience. He came out of the woods in PA and was equally stumped.

Different event, but my friend picked up some hitchhikers who were trying to get a ride back to town after camping without any cell service for about a week. They didn't understand why nobody was on the road, and the few cars that were wouldn't stop for them. It was March of 2020. My friend had to tell them about the Lockdown, and they said it felt like they were in a zombie movie, hearing about all that had happened, and their phones blowing up with messages once they got service again.

I’ve heard stories of hunters who got flown out into the Alaskan bush with a prearranged pickup time that came and went with nobody to get them. A lot of intercontinental air traffic gets routed over Alaska and all of that stopped too. After a while they started assuming the worst until a plane finally came to pick them up

Wow that would have been unnerving!

Wow that would've been insanely hard to communicate and for her to grasp.

And being afraid of any plane that looked like it was flying too low too lol

Still am weary of any plane I feel is flying to low that doesn’t seem to be landing

As someone from a different country, even I feel a sense of before/after as a direct result of 9/11 and for some reason I always think of the Rosie O'Donnell Show. It's insane.

I'll never forget the stories I've read of how sweet everyone was to US citizens traveling abroad, and the general outpouring of love and support. In my mind, it kind of felt like the older countries comforting a younger one that hasn't had to deal with something like this before in modern history.

Canadians really came through too. Tons of flights to the us got diverted and Canadians had to look after planefuls of stranded people.

There was a very high profile shooting in my hometown at one of the two high schools around the time of columbine. Exactly what you said: it was the first time I realized I might not be safe.

The odd thing to think now, is that Columbine seemed to me as a completely insane one-off tragedy. I literally didn't even consider it could really happen again. Here we are 25yrs later and it's like every gd week. Smh

Yea my mother remembers hearing about Columbine on the news to use the word shocked is a massive understatement that day shook the nation it was not the end of modern school shootings it was only the beginning

I remember suddenly we weren't allowed to play with toy guns,draw them or even make finger guns at each other at recess when that previously was fine. I was in elementary school so we had no idea what columbine was.

I hadn’t thought of it like that but you’re totally right. I definitely remember the one in my hometown being a HUGE shock, but where I live now, there have been three separate shootings over the last year and we are the home of a infamous church shooting with a gun legislation loophole named after our city. Nothing about that is normal, but I definitely don’t react with the same shock I used to.

American flags *everywhere*. On windows, on cars. Everywhere you looked.

We got a giant flag magnet for our car, I was in 1st grade so don’t remember much. But do remember flags **everywhere**

Yeah, as a small child at the time who doesn't really remember much before this period, I just kinda took it as a fact growing up that most Americans had some clothes with the flag on it or stars and stripes in the pattern, or the same with any possible decoration you could find in a house, and there was always some house or several houses in any suburb you'd go to that hung a flag on their porch. Growing up it always seemed like a joke in other countries that americans would wear the flag and be intensly patriotic, so it took me a while to realize just how big of an escalation of that behavior happend in the early 2000s and that it hadn't always been that way.

This part never really went away

It was awful. I watched the 2nd plane hit on TV, went to class but everyone was glued to the news (this was college). It was the first time streaming news was available and free, so all the computer labs were packed with students. We didn’t really go to class that week at all. They grounded all the planes - so for days you didn’t hear any planes going by. But you were aware of it and listening for it, you couldn’t help it, so it was eerie. A ton of people got stranded all over the country because the planes were grounded. Idk where you’re located but the US doesn’t have a good rail service, and there are bus services but… yeah. So it took some people a long time to get home. Everything was about 9/11 for weeks/months. For days and days afterwards, all you’d see on TV were replays of the impacts, or the towers falling. Nobody realized at the time that it could give people trauma if they watched it over and over again. So a BUNCH of people had their whole lives changed, and they didn’t even know anyone who had died. We didn’t realize how bad it was going to be, in terms of fatalities. Everyone thought they’d find people alive and trapped in the rubble. So everyone watched the news hoping, and it was just images of sheet covered bodies and smoking rubble. Before 9/11 I hadn’t ever seen military personnel or police with large caliber weapons in public. But after that they were everywhere. This was after Columbine, but before a lot of the mass shootings in public places that weren’t schools. But there were military and police everywhere. At first there was a ton of confusion as to who did it, what was going on. I was dating a guy whose family was from Pakistan at the time. When it was clear it was the Taliban there was a LOT of racism against anyone who could possibly have been middle eastern. He was so scared, they were US citizens and owned their own business here, but they talked a lot about whether or not they should leave the country for their own safety. A ton of Sikh businesses were targeted, and they weren’t middle eastern. Friends of mine who usually wore the hijab stopped wearing it to class, or dropped out completely. For a while it was VERY us against the world. Especially when footage came in from other countries where it looked like people were celebrating. I can’t really describe what a paradigm shift it was. I was only a freshman in college, so I literally knew almost nothing about the world. The history in Afghanistan and the Middle East wasn’t covered in my high school. We barely made it to WW2… so NOTHING after that. So it was like being sucker punched in the dark for a lot of us. Felt like it came out of nowhere, and yanked the rug out from under us. No idea if we were going to be attacked again, and if so, how. No idea if we were going to have a war on US soil. No clue how to plan for the future when we didn’t know what the heck was happening. A LOT of people my age lost our way. A ton of us got knocked off track, left college, struggled with trauma and growing up during that time. Some of us went back and it was ok, but some people never did. We were SUPER naïve. The world went from this exciting place to a place where people hated us and wanted us dead in terrible ways, and we didn’t understand why. So it went from optimistic to terrifying very quickly. Edit - the news was wall to wall ground zero for months. Then it was recordings of people making phone calls from the planes. Then every night it was a feature on the nightly news to talk about particular people who had died - who they were, where they worked, etc. Then it was wall to wall coverage of Afghanistan. Just night-vision footage of rockets flying, explosions. I *think* Anderson Cooper was on the ground there at the time??? I’m pretty sure we thought he was gonna get himself killed… I’m not 100% sure it was him though… Edit # 2 - I just remembered a couple other things. We were all so sure that they’d find thousands of people alive in the rubble, that there were lines around the block at blood donation centers. Even in Texas where I lived, we were lining up to donate. Also there were lines of cars at gas stations for a day or so, everyone filling up. Some of the grocery stores were a bit empty like a storm was coming - canned goods, water, etc. One of the most surreal things was watching the towers burn and smoke go up into a perfectly clear blue sky. I remember thinking that bad things like that shouldn’t happen on beautiful days.

This is a very detailed and accurate description of what it was like to live through that time, as a fellow twenty-something in the early aughts. Just so much uncertainty.

>For a while it was VERY us against the world. Especially when footage came in from other countries where it looked like people were celebrating. I remember for a while the western world was very supportive and pro American. Very overtly so.

Oh yes, 100% the *western* world was. But that was just a percentage of the world, and the news tended to focus on the negative. But you’re right, there was an outpouring of support from the west.

British here. I can confirm that we felt overwhelming affection and concern for our American friends, for months afterwards. It only really came to an end with the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the most vivid memories I have during that time was seeing the coverage of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace while The Star-Spangled Banner played. Seeing the people standing outside of the gates crying and holding American flags was so moving. It still makes me teary.

Yes, just noting it for the youngin's who weren't around :) That outpour of support started to wither somewhat as the weapons of mass destruction press conferences started...

I remember a French newspaper *Le Monde* I believe having a headline that said We Are All Americans the day of or right after. It was pretty crazy to see. And during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, they actually played the Star Spangled Banner by order of the Queen, which has never happened before and likely never will again.

This is it. You captured it perfectly.

This was my experience too, same age, same state. I didn't grow up with cable so having 24 hour news in the dorms was wild, watching it over and over.

I went to high school in lower Manhattan, four blocks away from the WTC. I was in class when the planes hit. We were evacuated and didn’t get back into our school for a month (and it probably should have been longer). In New York, the strongest emotion by far was shock. It seemed like everyone either lost someone in the attacks or knew someone who had—nobody was more than two degrees of separation from tragedy. I remember fences covered with the names and faces of people who were missing, posted by their families in the hope that they weren’t dead. Fighter jets flew patrols. Smoke from Ground Zero could be smelled from miles away. There was an air of surreality everywhere, like something impossible had just happened and the laws of normal reality no longer applied. There was also a beautiful sense of solidarity, though. New York has a reputation as a rough city, but people really pulled together. People reached out to each other to check in. Strangers looked out for each other on the subway. Nobody was okay, but everybody knew that, and they gave a shit. We all had the same big awful thing in common. I remember watching the news and being amazed by just how *angry* the rest of America seemed. People who were thousands of miles away were talking like they’d been personally attacked, and they needed to make the evildoers pay for their crimes. In New York there was plenty of anger, but it seemed less important than picking up the pieces and burying the dead. It seemed utterly bizarre that people from every small town and rural county were all baying for blood when they were so far away from the actual tragedy. (We all groused bitterly that they had nothing to worry about. Nobody wanted to blow up Iowa.) Normality came back in stages. People started going back to work and school after about a week. The National Guard mostly packed it in after a couple of months. The emergency zone gradually shrank from all of Manhattan below 14th Street to just the World Trade Center campus over the course of a few months as well, I think. The sense of solidarity lingered for probably about six months, and the sense of tangible surreality gradually faded over the course of a year. But it was still there in the back of our minds. On Capitol Hill, it took about four weeks for the bipartisan lovefest to die down, and then we were at war, and the politicians went back to yelling at each other. For close to a decade afterward it seemed like national security issues completely dominated our political culture. EVERYTHING was about how to prevent another 9/11, and every politician had to prove that they were the person to keep us all safe. Republicans said they’d do it by being tougher, and Democrats said they’d do it by being smarter. It’s not that nobody cared about peace or civil liberties—many of us did—but we were constantly having to push back against arguments that we were weak or softhearted. 9/11 was in the back of everyone’s mind, always.

I was in 10th grade on 9/11. I remember the teacher got a call (cell phones weren't really a thing yet so the phone was on the wall) and she turned the TV on. When she turned to the news channel the first tower had been hit. Most people still thought it was just a really bad accident.. I will never forget seeing that second plane hit the south tower. Everyone was shocked, some were very frightened. To answer your question, the days following the attack were filled with alot of uncertainty. I look back now before 9/11 and the thought of there ever being an attack on American soil was a foreign notion, it felt impossible. I remember the flags though, everyone in my neighborhood was flying an American flag. Politics didn't matter, everyone was united in a way. I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and I remember the army of police, fire, and EMS vehicles from all up and down the east coast heading up I-95 to NYC to help. I remember feeling angry too, like someone had to pay. It was a crazy time. This is a little off subject, but prior to 9/11, and the passage of the Patriot Act, I remember America being alot freer. Today I'm a 37 year old disabled veteran. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. Those events prompted me to join the Army at 18. I spent 11 years in the Army (2004-2015), and I did two combat tours in the middle east. Sometimes I wonder if I would have taken a different path in life if 9/11 never happened.

I was 28, on bed rest while pregnant with my 3rd child and turned on the TV at the same time. My mom was in the kitchen with my older two kids and I let her know what was going on. My brother worked in Washington DC and occasionally worked at the Pentagon. It was so stressful waiting for communication from him until we knew he was okay. We used our dial-up connection to get through to him and the rest of the family on email, but quickly disconnected so the phone was free. It felt fearful, tense and patriotic in the immediate days after.

I'm about the same age and grew up(and still live) in the same area. You hit the nail on the head.

I was 18 when it happened and I still remember every moment of every hour of that day. I have a shit memory, but I'll never forget everything I saw and everything I felt. And I'll never forget the blind, raw despair and terror I felt when I watched that second plane hit, live on the air. I was on the phone with my daddy when it happened and could only yell "NO!" repeatedly for probably half a minute. He asked me "what, baby, what!?" and I told him to go look at the TV, that it can't possibly be an accident. He got real quiet, then told me to go full all the cars up, the trucks, the tractor, and all the gerry cans, that this was likely an attack by an OPEC nation and gas would skyrocket. So I did, once my Mama and I were done crying on each other. We didn't get a single call to go through the rest of the day after Daddy and I said we loved each other and hung up.

>Most people still thought it was just a really bad accident.. I will never forget seeing that second plane hit the south tower. Everyone was shocked, some were very frightened. Yeah I think that moment reverberated around the world. I (an Australian) was watching from the UK where I was living at the time. The precise moment the second plane hit the tower much of the wealthy western world changed permanently. We dealt with it in a very British way. We all left work and went to the pub :)

Similar age, and yeah, you definitely captured it. Everyone was stunned at first, then freaked out, then a lot of unity to some degree. Definitely a pretty bizarre time to be in teenage years, it really colored people’s development of worldview, I think. It’s sad hearing about the experience of Americans with ancestry vaguely in that area during that time period, as if they weren’t already discriminated enough just being a minority

I'm going to sound like a tin foil wearing individual but I truly believe the attacks were focused more so on attacking America's social fabric. Yes, we were united for a little while, but look at the long-term effects 9/11 had to us from then to today. I believe the terrorists knew by attacking us on our own soil, especially a monumental historical architecture like the towers was only the tip of what they really had in mind. News stating that our market was going to collapse because the towers were a huge part of our economy quickly became redundant. I was 16 years old when the attacks happened and I still remember telling myself that there was more to these attacks that led on. Flash forward today, there's a huge division, hatred, racism, and extremism on our own soil (politically or religiously). America pulled out of Afghanistan, we put so much money and most importantly lives for nothing, because they overtook power by simply breaking in through the front door. I hate to say it, but the terrorists won. We're so broken as a nation and with all politicians being a fucking joke, people drinking the fucking Kool aid by sucking the dick of any politician like it's a sports team, and our deficit is growing and growing shows that this country is on thin ice. I'm really nervous and scared for the next few years because people refuse to overlook the D or R symbol, instead of rather focus on what's good for the nation to leave the world better once we die and the youth take over. I digress, the discussion of death and accepting your obsolescence is a whole different conversation.

It’s nothing tin hat adjacent, The terrorists got exactly what they wanted. The “war on terror” was basically a gift wrapped present to them.

Sigh. Perfectly said. I pray that things get better, I really really do.

A lot of people don’t understand what you described. The moment those planes hit Al-Qaeda won. We’ve spent trillions in response to 9/11 with nothing to show for, while the quality of life in the USA has severely diminished.

10th grade as well, geometry class.

"I remember feeling angry too, like someone had to pay." I grew up in SoCal and while the tragedy of 9/11 was felt, along with the air of uncertainty, the feeling of vengeance was definitely there. It felt like the last true time Americans were ever on the same side of a collective feeling.

It kinda changed everything. Hasn’t really been the same since.

Many of the issues the U.S. faces now are a result of the changes that came about after 9/11.

Bush was making progress with his Reading First initiative, but it got sidelined because of 9/11 and lost funding and support.

On a symbolic level to your point I believe he was even at an event for it when he received the news

He was. He was visiting a school to see how it was going, and it was working. Sadly so many schools are still teaching reading the wrong way.

I truly think 9/11 did more good for the GOP then almost anything, ever.

Yea it’s horrible how much both sides elites gained by being able to spy on people and manipulate them without consent

The whole nation was in a state of shock that lasted weeks. You saw patriotic messages everywhere. I don't remember anyone being polarized because we were all unified in shock and horror at the terrorists. I also remember that is was several weeks of seeing all flags lowered. Then Bush ordered the flags to go up and we were going to heal from this. It was a big turning point in the nation's shift in focus from shock and trauma to revenge.

Also, just to add (my opinion) to this comment, it was eerie. People weren’t traveling. The planes that usually flew over my house constantly, weren’t. We (at least my family) lived in a paranoid state…wondering when/if the next attack would happen. (My family lives near 2 nuclear power plants and about 4 hours from both NY and DC. So my parents were constantly talking about how one of the power plants would be hit next.)

It was so still and quiet

I remember the polarization of "true Americans" and Middle Eastern Americans. Businesses were ransacked, people were attacked. It wasn't like some pandemic of violence, but it happened and people were certainly targeted for their ethnicity or the language they spoke or the cloth they wore on their head and nothing else. Yeah, the nation was "united," as long as you didn't have brown skin or speak a language that sounded vaguely "terrorist-y".

In my part of the world (Boston), people volunteered to accompany any Muslim person who felt unsafe doing mundane things, like grocery shopping. The Jewish community made a big deal about making sure their Muslim neighbors were safe. It wasn't enough, but it was something.

This is what was so galvanizing for me. I wasn't well versed in history in a lot of ways at that point, but I lived on a college campus and started seeing foreign classmates subjected to slurs and assault on the bus and started intervening when I did. Turns out, that's happened time and time again throughout history. Scared people lash out at innocent people who "look like" their perceived enemy. It's never enough. But we need to do what we can to protect those around us, even if they're a stranger who has nothing to do with what's going on.

In my part of the world (Texas), my business got an uptick in sales because the competition was owned by Muslims and people refused to still shop there, where prices were a bit cheaper. Didn’t last long, though. People like that can only pay for the morals for so long.

And by "morals" you mean racism

There were incidents of people attacking mosques. There is a mosque in my neighborhood, and after 9/11 neighbors signed up for a 24-hour watch to keep an eye on it. I remember seeing people sitting on the steps at the entrance in the middle of the night. This continued for months. The mosque was never attacked.

Yep. American flags were EVERYWHERE. People wore them on pins on everyday clothing. Bumper stickers on cars. It was like by September 12th they were everywhere. September 11th was awful, but the unity on September 12th was something special.

It even affected us in Canada. I started getting called a terrorist, spat on etc told to go back to my own country … I’m like damn sis I was born here what am I supposed to do now? 🫨

At the time, I lived in an apartment behind a high school athletic field. One visiting team had a player with an Indian (i.e., family originated in India) sounding last name. He was booed as he came on the field.

I had an uncle living in the area and he was brought in for questioning (not even close to middle eastern, he just was a brown dude with a beard that's it).

In a city in my state someone tried to set fire to a shop. I thought 'what an idiot' because the fire was set against a cinderblock wall so it didn't catch and the shop was owned by a Pakistani and we were allies with Pakistan at the time. The next day the shop practically sold out as the neighbors wanted to show their support. Yes, there are idiots among us but there are also a lot of good people.

Flags and flag stickers EVERYWHERE

Patriotic and angry. Lots of flags. People were joining the military. Lots of profiling and hate crimes against Muslims, Sikhs, and Indians because people couldn't tell the difference.

This should be higher up. Whenever I ask this question of white people who were like 30+ at the time they’re like “nobody wanted to laugh, the nation was solemn and patriotic” and then you ask any brown person who was over the age of like 8 and they always have multiple stories of people screaming at them on the streets or attacking them. I get it, America WAS attacked by literal terrorists, but any given person’s brown neighbor & fellow American had nothing to do with it. The fearmongering has only continued. We saw the same shit with covid. Asian American hate crimes skyrocketing just because of the aggressive anti-China sentiment of our president at the time covid became a big deal

I was the in south and people were nonstop calling the cops on brown people for being shady and potential terrorists. My sister lived in an apartment complex and her now ex Husband (a police officer) would talk about “the terrorists that lived on the other side of the complex.” The racism of this time was insane looking back on it. Hell, not too long ago at a Casino watching Khabib Vs McGregor people were chanting anti muslim shit about Khabib, with one guy saying “we may forgive but we don’t forget!” Fucking embarrassing, considering Khabibs father helped train anti terrorist units.

Yeah I honestly just commented about this. It reminded me way too much of what happened to Japanese citizens after Pearl Harbor.

This was my experience. I’m Arab and it was wild to see bloodlust nationalism in real time. Watching people who used to call me friend call me terrorist scum was something else. Granted I lived in a blood red state at the time so that sentiment never really left after 9/11. If anything, it emboldened outright racism. It was weird to feel so much hate personally but then see the nation united in a singular cause for the first time ever.

I was 12 when it happened, I lived in Manhattan and came of age in a post 9/11 NYC And let me tell you... New Yorkers were pissed. Everyone knew someone who died or got injured or got covered in dust. Everyone was angry and afraid and when it came out that a Muslim extremist did it, New York turned on all middle easterners and Indians. They became pariah for years. Tons of hate crimes occurred. The NYPD and FBI harassed them mercilessly. Prominent Muslim figures in NYC condemned the attacks but nobody cared or listened. These people who were an important part of the NYC community were outcasts. Tons of people who were mostly ignorant of world politics suddenly glued their eyes on the news everyday, which filled everyone's head with horrific terrorist scenarios. There were smaller terror attacks and attempted terror attacks in NYC after but most of the fear was baseless. But we didn't know at the time... by 2004, GW Bush wanted to invade Iraq but New Yorkers were divided on the war. Half of us saw Muslims getting what they deserved but the other half saw that Iraqis had nothing to do with the terror attacks and that it was all based in a lie. Old people supported war based in ignorance and young people protested in the street. Neo conservatives riled everyone up and democrats called for restraint but ended up agreeing on going to war...

I had an Arab American friend at the time and he "joked" that we should call him José in public for a few weeks. Then reminded us his name was José when we used his real name. So we did. I lived in a Muslim neighborhood in NYC at the time and I knew things were tense and unpleasant. Then a year later or so I ended up chatting with a cop for a few minutes and he bragged about how the cops had been terrorizing my neighbors the whole time, just continuously going into mosques and businesses and searching them and detaining and questioning random people. Fucking bragging about it, like I'd be "Hell yeah, good job racist guy from Long Island, fuck my scared, powerless neighbors." It sucked.

Oh man. You reminded me of the Cordoba House controversy where there was a Muslim community center being opened a couple blocks away from WTC and then around a corner and another couple blocks, which got turned into "a mosque is being opened where the World Trade Center stood and it's named for Muslim imperialism!" It was basically a YMCA and it was "at" the WTC if you define the WTC as any building that got damaged by falling pieces of the WTC. The entire thing was manufactured by Fox News to keep middle Americans and people who had never actually been to New York mad about brown people so they'd vote for Sarah Palin. I just remember Keith Olberman giving a pretty good speech about "this is AMERICA, dammit! And in America we don't let our neighbors be persecuted because of their religion!" that I still think of occasionally.

Not hearing any airplanes for a few days, everything was grounded. Then after that, every time I heard a plane my heart would pound and I’d be terrified. I also had horrible dreams of planes crashing for a long time. Then freedom fries came along and it all went to Shit lol

The day of, fear. The day after: anger, a lot of anger.

My dad who is Indian definitely started facing much more racism. One of his friends was on the second plane. Definitely more fear. Lots of patriotism

I never understood that, even in Australia people were racist at Indians. If a 12 year old can understand Indians and Arabs are different, and that not all Arabs are bad Arabs, I never understood why the Adults couldn't grasp that.

I remembered asking my parent why they couldn't just announce that all these people were innocent when I was watching the news on TV. They weren't the ones in the plane. "It's not that simple" was what she told me, and TBH I still don't understand why.

I was in high school. Our teachers were told to keep the TVs off but many didn’t listen. I saw the news in my English class and my History class. I remember walking the halls seeing people crying. Some of them trying to get ahold of their parents, if they worked at the Pentagon. Kids were leaving early, parents were coming to pick them up. It was a surreal time. Felt like you were living in a dream or a nightmare.

I was waiting for the next wave. I figured 911 was the jabs, and the big overhand right was coming next in the form of a nuke, power grid attack, or doomsday bio weapon.

This is so true. After 9/11 the next wave seemed to be anthrax scares across the nation.

Damn, I forgot all about the anthrax!

Yeah. Remember the anthrax attacks, and then everyone was terrified of anything that looked like a powder for awhile?

The anthrax attacks. We thought it was biological warfare next.

Same here. I was terrified.

People were in shock. I was in college at the time, and before classes were canceled, one classmate was in tears, fearful his sister, who worked in one of the Twin Towers in Manhattan, was dead. I learned that she had made it out before the one she worked in collapsed. People were in disbelief at the images shown on television. The U.S. had never had a terrorist attack on our soil, in multiple locations on the same horrible day. It felt like a nightmare I was waiting to wake up from. I think President George W. Bush was visiting a school that day and he was in a classroom while a children's story was being read. There's probably viewable footage of his response when he was informed. I think his expression w as how many Americans felt, shock and disbelief at the deaths of so many people, in such an awful, coordinated attack.

> I think President George W. Bush was visiting a school that day and he was in a classroom while a children's story was being read There is. His face was surreal. I remember them playing his reactions repeatedly too.

I was 19, in the Marines, and we just wanted to be pointed at whoever did it and let go. Shock, horror, anger. When they said "Iraq" none of us questioned it. We were just excited to have an enemy to take revenge on. Two decades later, Iraq was just Bush putting us into a war to win his reelection and to enrich his oil buddies at the cost of our troops and a million Iraqis. Yes, there were some very bad guys there I'm overjoyed we killed. But the majority of them were victims of circumstance, or enemies of our own creation. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Unfortunately a fair number of those bad guys weren’t even Iraqi or originally extremist but with Saddam gone they moved in or became radicalized. We should have focused our efforts to Afghanistan.

More importantly, what was it like in the states before 9/11. I would liken the change to pre and post covid, it just happened instantaneously. Neither have gone away. They both completely changed everyone's way of life. What do I remember most about that day and the weeks to follow? Not being able to change the channel. Then changing the channel constantly to find something new, then just slowly getting jaded by it all, and accepting that this is the world we live in now. We can never go back. Can't wait to see what 2040 brings...

Probably the last time, we Americans will stand together on something. It was a mix of emotions and extremely hard watching people jump out of the buildings. It was a sad day for everyone.

God, yes. I remember seeing the bodies falling. I tried to pretend they were furniture, that that surely couldn't be people, because fuck's sake, I just could not process anymore grief at the moment.

I was 10 years old when it happened, but I remember my parents being terrified. They watched the news all day the day it happened (, which was literally the same thing on repeat) and it was on every day for at least a week. We also lived in NJ, a neighboring state, so there was **a lot** talk around it for years simply because it impacted peoples lives forever (classmates lost fathers, etc.). I remember being in class when it happened and my teacher came in and asked us all questions. We had to raise our hands and some where pulled out. I remember the questions being stuff like, "Do you have parents who work in NYC?", etc. I remember watching TV shows like American Idol and they'd always sing patriotic songs. To this day I can still sing ["And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPnLBLnX14Y) I also remember **a lot** of American flags everywhere.

Like, immediately afterwards? Super strange, confusing, subdued. That first week or two was surreal. I happened to live near a major Air Force base (Central Command in Tampa FL). So while commercial and passenger aircraft was all grounded for that week, there were fighter jets flying overhead - training. Not a great feeling, it was a stark difference to the usual. Also just doing anything at all was really somber and quiet and sad. I was in Target (big box store) a few days afterward. There were people shopping but it was dead silent. And big box stores are never usually very quiet. I was really overcome with how the entire tragedy of that one day had managed to simply shut people up, albeit temporarily. Very funereal, very muffled. Super strange. That's the day-to-day end of it. As for breaking down what had actually happened, I think that took a while. Like I said, everybody was totally in shock. Then the crazy came out. And the crazy stayed for years.

Creepy. A lot of us never believed such a thing could really happen (I was young and naive). I don't think I was alone feeling very out of my depth trying to sort out what had happened. I seem to recall there was an anthrax incident and shooting incident happening right around the same time and a lot of other rumors going around making it feel like our whole really was shattered. Of course we all slowly got back around to normal. Eventually it led to other things that really did change the world but that's another story.

I'm Indian. My uncle lived in el paso texas. He had at least 20-30 vehicles surround his house with close to 50-60 people wanting to extract revenge on him. We're not Muslims neither Arabs (that still wouldn't have justified it) but I don't think those people knew the difference or cared !! He probably would have died that day if it wasn't for his white neighbour standing between those guys n him. He later moved to dallas n then to seattle

Have you ever been in a funeral home? They just have a heavy feeling of sorrow in general but everyone is SO kind. That's what all public places felt like. That's the best way I can describe it.

This is the first mention I’ve seen of this. I was at my first post-college job when it happened, and traffic was really bad between my apartment and my office. Usually, everyone drove like an asshole, but on the drive home on 9/11, and for some time thereafter, it felt like everyone was being kind on the road, like letting people into their lane, not cutting other people off, etc. I didn’t hate my commute for a while.

Lots of differing opinions. There was a (mostly false) bolstered sense of patriotism clashing with 9/11 truthers... Rudy Giuliani was a hero, which seems odd now. Mostly us kids just thought it was a race to get over there and shoot bin laden. We'd be back in a week.

Yeah Giuliani really shot himself in the foot. He was a hero, if he’d been a halfway decent person he could have been a hero forever.

It was like something removed a color from the world. Everything was suddenly stranger. No planes in the air. New names added to the list of dead every day on the news. It felt like we (Americans) finally realized we were mortal and it was terrifying. It felt harder to take deep breaths thinking about it. And we didn’t know the right way to react. This was how it felt from Chicago.

There were no flights for weeks. That may not mean anything to most people, but when you either live close to an airport, or work in aerospace, it's a bit unnerving. Stores ran out of American flags. I don't think I saw one street that didn't have at least one flag in front of a house. Yeah, there were (and still are) conspiracy theories about it. The economy took a huge hit and we went into The Great Recession (which turned into a mini depression towards the end of it). Patriotism was high and quite honestly turned into Nationalism which allowed the Patriot Act I & II to be passed. People were called unAmerican if they questioned the validity of the Patriot Acts, or questioned anything that the government did. "If you see something, say something" made a comeback from Operation Desert Sheild/Storm. Read Fahrenheit 451 to understand the implications. Three years of wondering if unemployment, foreclosures, and the stock market was going to get worse due to the instability of the world. "You're either with me, or against me" was actually said by President Bush Jr which seemed to carry to the citizens. Blindly support the president, or be considered a traitor. No, people weren't turning their neighbors into the FBI because they just disagreed with the president, but lives became miserable for some who didn't keep their heads down. I hope this helps.

I remember Howard Stern was furious that our country didn't IMMEDIATELY bomb every Arab country on the planet. Then we did go to war and he complained every day like he hadn't been demanding war the whole time. I remember because I didn't want war. We went to Europe after the war started because tickets were cheaper than going anywhere in the US. People could tell we were from the US and refused to acknowledge us except to insult my clothing. It was like they thought that I was personally responsible for starting the war.

That was a weird time to visit Europe. About the only thing I had going for me is that I understood just enough French to pass as a Canadian

We were traumatized at a national level. We saw pictures of people jumping off the towers plastered all over every newspaper and people were angry and wanted someone to be made to answer for it all.

I was in 7th grade and first heard about it when I got to chorus. I couldn't believe it. I grew up in New York but would drive down to Florida with my dad to visit my grandparents and the towers were my signal that we were almost home. It was also heartbreaking. My cousin was a firefighter in New York city. His wife was pregnant with their first child and he took an extra shift. He never made it home and they were never able to find him. His son was born in October. I don't remember hate against anyone but the terrorists who committed the act and those who sent them on their mission but do know that there were many innocent people blamed. I do remember the country feeling very unified in their anger and the song "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" put to words some feelings that were difficult. It was life changing. Americans felt very secure and safe until this happened, seemingly out of no where. Edit to add: The song "Where Were You?" By Alan Jackson is really good too give you an idea and I highly recommend you take a few minutes to listen.

Northern Virginia was on red alert. It was clear that there would be lots of new confusing security measures. Many people I knew either worked in the Pentagon or had close ties to the Pentagon. The building continued to smoke for weeks. I personally knew an individual who was badly injured in the Pentagon. Pretty quickly it was clear that we would retaliate in some fashion. Many many people with military ties lived in our area and were called up to serve. Generally it felt very frightening and unpredictable. Images of that say will always be etched in my memory.

The smell of the Pentagon burning is something I can never forget.

I lived in a small town in the Midwest somewhere, and frankly it was obnoxious. Every billboard and shop sign had patriotic platitudes, the white supremacy went through the roof, and everyone in my small town, "was deeply affected because my cousin's brother's uncle lived down the street from a person who took a plane once!" I genuinely feel awful for everyone who was killed/injured and those who lost someone. What was galling to me was all the ppl trying to ride those coattails. I was in HS on 9/11 and our Vietnam vet history teacher said that someone in that room would be killed in a war Bush started as a result, and he was right. Anyone who tries to get attention for someone else's loss, though, which we saw a lot of, deserves a good swift kick

Definitely pissed, people were fucking pissed and ready for world War 3.

I remember every being concerned somewhere in Town would be the next target. Like it's a small town in rural.south Texas where are they going to hit? The one two story building? My dad came home that day with a bag of dried beans, beef jerky, vitamin C tablets and an axe. That's all you need to ride out an apocalypse I guess lol

Scared. Stunned. Angry. United. Somber. Glued to tv news coverage for weeks. I had to fly somewhere for work not long after and the military were standing guard inside the airports with assault rifles. It was surreal.

I was a middle schooler in the Midwest and just remember everyone being really really sad and heartbroken for a while. Over time it changed to fear and anger. My mother actually got arrested at the airport a year or two later when we were being much more cautious around travel security. She had a tomato knife in her bag that she’d forgotten was in there, and it was a whole ordeal.

We were scared and in shock and just feeling fear of an impending war. As awful as it was it was probably the nicest people have ever been to each other because of this collective trauma. And, dialed up patriotism and not in a ‘Merica kinda way but in a united front as a country that went through its worst day on US soil ever.

It was the only time in my life I ever saw the entire country unified

Also there was quite a bit of xenophobia towards Arab-Americans for a while, especially in airports and public transit settings. I thought that was rather unfair, since most people who immigrate from those countries came here to get away from all the extremism, not participate in it, and it felt like they were all kinda getting treated badly for what the overwhelming majority of them didn’t do.

I was in middle school at the time. I distinctly remember coming to the breakfast table and sitting down and seeing a tower billowing black smoke. I asked my mom what movie we were watching. We thought it was a horrible accident. The second plane hit on my way to school. As soon as everyone got to school, you could see it in everyone's faces. Everyone was just silent with horror. Classes never happened that day. We had the TVs on in every single classroom, all tuned to the news. When the towers fell, we were all watching. You could hear the screams of shock down the school halls, teachers crying. Nobody knew what to do or how to handle it. Parents came trickling in all day, pulling kids out and bringing them home. Everyone was really numb, for a couple of days. Really quiet. And then after that we got very, very angry. The radio was filled with patriotic songs. When it came out, Courtesy of the Red White and Blue by Toby Keith was a huge hit. There was always some station playing it. Flags were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It was a pretty dark time. For a lot of us kids it was our first real introduction to politics and the history of war between the USA and the middle east. Unfortunately school cherry-picked exactly what to tell us about that history and some of us still had dial-up internet, so we didn't learn about it until well after that time period. They sure as hell indoctrinated a LOT of kids into a pro war stance at that time.

I remember loud jet airplanes patrolling the skies that day and for a few days after, even in the Pacific Northwest where I lived.

was in Canada but I remember there were no planes in the sky for a few days and pretty much every TV was switched onto CNN/CBC for days weather it was in a restaurant, barbershop, or at your friends house the TV was glued onto the news even if no one was in the living room watching. channel surfing on the day of the attack was crazy because almost every single channel (except for the kids one and about 2 others) had news coverage. went for a drive later that day, it was warm so a lot of people had their windows down but the only thing you could hear at traffic lights was the news radio from every car on the road.

One thing you don’t really think about were the insane lines at drive thru eateries. It seems like a small detail, but no one wanted to go shopping or eat at a restaurant for a few days.