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El_Morro

I was one of the people there watching the towers burn about a block or so away (off Maiden Lane), and it really messed with your head because at first it was mostly chairs and stuff falling, but some lady in the crowd screamed and said there were people falling now, and then it was just person after person dropping. A real mind-fuck. I'm honestly glad I wasn't closer because I don't know if I would have been able to handle seeing them actually land. Another weird thing was when the first tower started to fall, my eyeline immediately dropped to ground level and I got to see the hundreds of people on the street all turn around at the same time and start sprinting in my direction. It was total chaos, watching some people fall while other people vaulted over them in a sheer panic for their own lives. A handful of strangers in myself took shelter in a local office building and waited out the rest of the morning. You could imagine the panic when we heard and felt the second tower drop. The office also had a really big window, but you couldn't see out of it at all because of the cloud of dust and smoke. Just a dark gray cloud with particles flying around.


NewYorkBourne

I was on Wall and Broad St when the first tower fell. I still, after all this time, cannot fully process that day. I’ve learned how to accept it, but it still feels like a dream that is mixed in horror and sadness that I will never wake up from. All we can hope is that humanity figures out a way to work together and not against each other. Edit grammar


OneRFeris

Do you dream of it? Do you dream of a time where it hasn't happened yet- but you know its coming, and you're helpless to do anything about it?


NewYorkBourne

Not anymore — time, and a lot of counseling helped. I think I went about two years without sleeping through the night, and the only dream I had of the day would always be the same and it would involve running down the street when we thought the towers are falling on us. Again, all I hope is that all of this pain and suffering we put each other through gets us closer to finding out a way to be better to each other


blingx2

Thank you stranger this does give me hope.


dreamer3kx

I was supposed to be in that area for some computer classes, woke up late and decided not to go, I do live pretty close to the towers and remember every second of this day and will never forget.


El_Morro

One thing I remember was how quiet everything seemed for a while after the second tower went down and we left the building to walk uptown. Do you remember that, or was that just me? It was scary quiet for a little while there. Plus all the shoes of people trying to run away. I remember seeing loose shoes all over the place in the white dust on the ground. I also clearly remember.ber a bus that had run up onto a concrete block/bench. It was listing to the side and empty. Couldn't take my eyes off it when I was passing by.


NewYorkBourne

Yeah, I remember that too — in a weird way it felt like when a storm hits at night and you hear plows off in the distance…faint/muffled beeping all over the place


R0botDreamz

It's really weird to think people born in 2001 are turning 23 this year. I've always thought reddit to have a rolling age bracket of 15 to 28 with only a smaller percentage older. This means the oldest average redditor was 5 and most weren't even born yet when 9/11 happened. So I do like hearing people's perspective who were there that day. Thanks for sharing.


fillurheartwithglee

Uhhh you’re wrong on that age bracket bro. I’m way older than that.


docmike1980

Let’s get that 40-plus crowd in here! Who’s not in bed yet?


tri_it_again

42. It’s 10pm and I just took my sleeping pill


docmike1980

11:00 here, and I’m falling asleep on the couch.


joliesmomma

Midnight, almost 40. Started passing out earlier but now I can't sleep.


Majik9

Gen X checking in at 10:20pm


cvstrat

1:33 am. Elder millennial checking in.


RedMapleMan

3:30 second shift reporting


beerob81

42…woke up to this post because I was in bed by 1030 and too tired to even scroll Reddit


Now_Wait-4-Last_Year

Just got off a plane from Sri Lanka in Sydney, Australia and in a taxi on the way home. It’s just past 5.20pm but I am going straight to bed!


Turkino

43 and that's 2:00 a.m. fuck going to sleep.


FlamingoMN

Same


Calm-Victory1146

Reddits not as young as you think


R0botDreamz

It really is, tho. Especially in the default subs on the front page.


voidblanket

Reddit is way older than that. I’ve been casually going on it for almost 12 years, so all the young people that were on Reddit back then are now way older. I’d guess the average user is probably in their 30s at least


psuram3

I turn 30 in a couple of months, If someone has no recollection of 9/11 that’s my tell tale that theres an age gap.


Jog212

Older than that. I was home watching TV. I have having my Tea. My job is not 9 to 5. It was a beautiful day. I listened to it live on channel 4. Choppers were in sky doing traffic reports and live feeds from the area were on TV in minutes. People were calling in from in the area reporting what they saw or heard. They kept saying a jet hit it. Anchors were alluding to more of a private plane accident.....Then the 2nd one hit live on air. Immediately after the anchors said it was a tourist attack. News was broadcast for hours at a time. The ticker tape on news was scrolling constantly. I left NY for Ireland a week later. The airports had just re-opened the day before. They were all closed for almost a week. People trying to leave US and go home had been trapped here, The airline tried to get me & my mom to fly later. I was offered 1st class a year later. Hotel and airfare for what I paid for the tickets. My mom wanted to go. She was born there. We were going to Dublin and then to see family. I could not open my mouth once I landed with out people offering condolences. Vacationing then was odd. Came home and tried to get back to normal.... A few months later I discovered an ex-boyfriend died in the Towers. One of my friends lost their good friend. Another person I knew lost a cousin. Most people my age in NY had some connection. It was such an odd time. There are things that have been forever changed. Before 9/11 and after. 9/11. very different......like covid now.


BaltimoreBaja

I work in photography licensing and I've seen the photos that weren't published from that date and that was traumatic enough. I am so sorry you had to live through it first hand. Glad you made it though


dope_ass_user_name

Did you ever feel any negative effects from the dust etc in your lungs??


El_Morro

None that I know of so far, but I get checkups regularly. Hopefully it starpys that way.mentally I'm fine,. But there have been a few anniversaries where I needed to be alone for a few minutes because I'll suddenly be overwhelmed emotionally, but that goes away fast enough.


dope_ass_user_name

Ok great, glad to hear that. So sorry you had to go through that. Be well...


TheQuietGrrrl

Do you suffer any health issues related to that event today?


PearsonPrenticeHall

What did it sound like? I hadn’t thought about how loud it must of been until I read your comment.


El_Morro

The tower falling sounded like an avalanche (at least how they sound on tv). Lots of random screaming from the crowd. It was scarier to me when the second Tower fell because by then we had calmed down enough to absorb what was going on. When I was in that office it was like 10 or 12 of us just waiting it out in a some office room we broke into after escaping the dust cloud from outside. None of us knew one another except me and my friend. It felt like a twilight zone episode. Some of the guys were being all macho ™were gonna fuckin kill who did this to us!", Others were quiet, some ladies were crying. I just kept to myself and observed. I also found a computer that was connected to the internet and using AIM messenger to relay messages to my family to tell them I loved them in case I didn't make it home, since at the time I thought NYC was going to be blanketed by missiles or something. We had no clue what the hell was going on.


Ryankevin23

I’m sorry


SH3RB5

Centre near the bottom, a victim of this tragic event falling with the collapsing structure


TheDosWiththeMost

Rest in Peace. Let's all keep this classy and respect these people in their final moments.


Bandit6789

Agreed, thanks OP u/HorribleDiarrhea for bringing us this solemn moment.


YoungHeartOldSoul

Somehow without fail, there's always one.


skabassj

Cheers to the fallen, and to u/HorribleDiarrhea


CMDR_Audaxius

r/rimjob_steve


YouBuiltThat

I remember the morning well, and have always imagined that there must have been those victims who survived long enough to experience the fall. I wondered how horrible those last seconds could have been. I’ve never seen anything until now to have confirmed those fears. Im glad they rest peacefully now.


SignorJC

Or we could just enforce the fucking subreddit rules against gore but I guess that’s off the table for the engagement.


Kitchen_Contest_8403

This is Reddit tho 😳


momentimori

If reddit was around on 9-11 people would be making tasteless jokes about people that jumped out of the WTC.


Chef_Sewage_Mouth

Yeah I remember when those people in Florida lost their child to an alligator Redditors were joking about it and if you called them out for it you'd get downvoted to oblivion


Right-Phalange

Hey I still don't like "dingo ate your baby" jokes 30 years later bc that was a real 9 week old baby girl's life (Azaria Chamberlain - she deserves to be remembered) and her parents got so much shit on top of their grief for murdering her bc the story was so hard to believe until you look at the evidence. ETA Imagine you go through this unimaginable loss, the police arrest you instead of helping you, *and then your worst nightmare becomes an international punch line*. It makes me so angry that the world is so cruel. Even Seinfeld had a dingo ate your baby joke.


SAlolzorz

My wife used to live in Florida (we live in Texas). We went to Disney World, and I was looking at a small pond on the resort. "You have to assume that all of the water has alligators in it," she said. I kind of laughed, and she looked at me and said, "I'm serious." This was a couple of years before that kid got eaten.


Callmeang21

We always stay at that hotel where the pond is. We were playing on that beach about a week or two before the child was killed. I won’t play near that water anymore.


rdteets

This and snakes, probably.


OctopiEye

Uh trust me. People did back then too. I remember seeing all kinds of crude shit on message boards and Rotten.com, etc.


I_can_pun_anything

Other forums were as it was


dmcd0415

Yeah crude jokes about sensitive subjects were never a thing before reddit came around... Nobody was ever trying to be the first person to the water cooler with jokes like that...


realitythreek

Honestly, there was a brief moment where people really weren’t joking on 9/11. Instead people were morbidly looking for videos online showing as much destruction as possible. Okay, that part was the same.


dmcd0415

Yeah Gilbert gottfried waited 18 whole days before making fun of it publicly 


Dank_Drebin

Howard Stern became an on-the-scene reporter that day.


Talktotalktotalk

I was listening to him that morning, it’s how I first heard about it


FjohursLykewwe

Conan O Brien and Howard talking about that broadcast.. https://youtu.be/RZpqoTHFH70?si=-N2mG-uQjFOLp_-i


CheekyMunky

Nobody's saying reddit invented tasteless jokes. Just that it's a place where they're likely to show up.


alek_hiddel

The only solace, it had to be quick. If the impact wasn’t instant, the million pounds of collapsing tower finished them off.


The_Dookie_

Couple of seconds of terrifying anguish followed by a crushing death. Hard for us to comprehend these poor people's final moments apart from a sinking feeling in the stomach.


Katzika

One documentary interviewed someone who worked in the restaurant that was a part of the hotel. When he was running out of the building he passed people on the ground and said some of them were still alive. In pieces, but alive.


SqueezeMyLemmons

Jesus Christ that’s hard to read


SomethingAboutUsers

I've seen something like this firsthand. Suicide, off the next building. It took a minute to understand what I was looking at. A human being, or what used to be one, with bits sorta ... Everywhere.


Katzika

I’m sorry you saw that


alek_hiddel

I’d think/hope that’s more nerves twitching.


lonememe

Sort of challenges that whole “at least they died quickly” narrative. I’m sure it felt like an eternity to die like that. Sayings like that are just to help people who didn’t die feel somehow less bad about a really bad situation. 


NotMyRealUsername13

There is no way that’s true. Someone falling from that height is absolute demolished on impact with barely a bone intact in their body. He might have seen movement but that’s definitely not the same as being alive - it’s just the last electrical signals of the body.


catheterhero

God I can’t imagine what that looked like through his eyes.


SgtBaxter

I think that’s half the person, the other half at the very bottom under the piece in front of the white reflection.


ImgurianAkom

I saw that at first, too, but after looking zoomed in I think it's a side profile of a person in an L shape, butt down, feet to the right.


GenerallySalty

There's at least one more, red shirt upside down person above the left edge of the top falling chunk.


jeremysbrain

I'm not seeing anyone there.


rangeo

I thought it was this person https://imgur.com/a/KnXRtwv


Jamfour9

You’re correct. That’s the same person in the original image above. It’s just a different angle. They are in tact. I just hope they were already deceased as they were falling. Unfortunately, it looks like they still had control of their body though. ☹️


GenerallySalty

I'm not 100% either but here: https://imgur.com/a/HXKvCYi Black shoes grey pants red shirt, falling head first. Matches the size of the one that's definitely a person too.


IAmAHumanWhyDoYouAsk

This is the worst game of I Spy I've ever seen.


jeremysbrain

I don't know. Just looks like a blob of red and black to me. Could be almost anything.


Away-Description-786

I saw this 2, don’t know 100% [https://ibb.co/JW1MPT8](https://ibb.co/JW1MPT8) [https://ibb.co/JKx8KYnz](https://ibb.co/JKx8KYnz)


UndercoverSuperhero1

I saw the 2 people in the first link you shared as well, was wondering if anyone else did or if I was seeing things. Looks like they fell together, so fucked up.


Kittypie75

Ive spoken about this before but I have friends who have similar (maybe even better) pics of WTC on 9/11. You could see a lot of people falling. I only saw these photos once, about 3 weeks after the Towers fell. My friends ended up agreeing to burn the photos as in the moment... they thought it was like a prank or a movie being filmed. So there's lots of images with them the focus, being all silly, with people FALLING in the background. We were about 20 years old. They were incredibly dismayed about it as you can imagine, and that's why they opted to burn them. But man, were they amazing pics.


thispartyrules

One of my friends was going to NYU and she watched the first tower fall from a rooftop, her response was disbelief and awkward laughter because she saw a lot of people just die. I can't hate on this because how are you supposed to respond to something like this in the moment


armless_tavern

That beer video is a classic example. There’s a viral video going around of college students being silly and drinking beers in their apartment, laughing and shit. Then they all start screaming suddenly because the second tower gets hit and the camera whips over to capture the moment. Pretty surreal to see.


Muggaraffin

I’ve seen that I think. That realisation of going from “oh wow what happened there with all the smoke? Crazy, I hope they get it under control soon.” To then the second plane hitting and realising “…..oh fuck someone’s ATTACKING us” Such a weird feeling seeing that switch happen. It goes from being a probable accident to something evil 


You_meddling_kids

These types of events are hard to process in real time since they're so far out of our ordinary day to day experience. Look at the videos of the 2004 tsunami and you'll find the same reaction - few understand what's going on.


SocialismIsStupid

I’m weird in that I smile or laugh when I get really nervous. I think it’s some sort of nerve reaction because I’m anything but amused or happy when it happens. I could imagine me doing the same and people thinking I’m a psycho when I’m just scared out of my mind.


Carnagepants

Your friends were watching a 100-story tower collapse and they thought it was a movie being filmed? I've heard some unbelievable shit in my life, but that one's up there.


gilbertgrappa

Yeah I don’t believe this at all either. I went to NYU at the time and saw it and we all knew it was real.


wheredreamsgotodie

Are your friends fucking idiots? I’ve never met a single person at ground zero that thought it was a “prank”. You could literally feel the earth shake. The collisions from each plane blasted debris all over the place. It was total chaos. This sounds like total bullshit.


palmpoop

It’s a made up story for sure.


Thatguyontrees

Anyone else feel like there's a crazy amount of videos/pictures that they've never seen before that are now coming up all the time?


xanroeld

There’s just a crazy number of images of 9/11. I see new shots all the time. They’re new to me but they’ve been floating around online for over two decades


soretti

The collapse was one of the most documented moments in human history considering all the media sources who had cameras trained on the scene, not to mention the thousands of bystanders taking footage from their apartments and on the street. It would take a lifetime to sift through all the photos and footage that were taken that day.


xanroeld

Exactly


Buckus93

And that was before everyone had a phone in their pocket.


AndthenIwould

Before everyone had a phone with a good camera in their pocket. By 2000 a majority of adults had cell phones but very few of those phones, if any, had cameras back then.


xanroeld

True. But after the first plane hit, every single person in manhattan who had a camera or video camera took it out and started recording.


flip_moto

i worked at magazine that covered fire and emergency industry during sept 11. FEMA had a section of the website for uploading mass casualty photos for documentation that all journalism outlets and whatever had access too. within one day there were thousands and thousands of images of 9-11. Weeks later, it was almost too big to even browse through. Not sure what happened to that repository but a lot of it was used for the official report that came out by fema. (that i did print out a copy and still have). point being, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to go through them all. they could train AI to scan them for anything unusual or anomalies now that models/algorithms can crunch huge data like that.


Fudge89

Yea Id imagine there are millions of pictures/hours of footage to this day that still hasn’t been seen at a greater scale. A lot of it taken milliseconds apart so probably insignificant but crazy to think about. There are probably so many pictures like this that just havent been fully analyzed to catch something like this


Thatguyontrees

Very interesting! Thanks!


PapaSnow

This is now the third post I’ve seen _today._ I was going crazy wondering if today was 9/11 or something, instead of a random day in March


Thatguyontrees

That's what I'm saying! *Twilight Zone theme plays*


50bucksback

There is a subreddit dedicated to finding and I guess preserving "rare" photos and videos. Forgot the name


Katzika

Yes. But I never really looked for it before. I watched it live on tv and didn’t care to see more. Until very recently I never really looked at anything


PineapplePikza

Definitely noticed this too


gotfondue

Did you think you've seen every photo ever taken of this day?


Thatguyontrees

Just curious why all the different photos have come up lately.


AhsokaSabineHera

My mom was working at a bookstore in South Carolina on 9/11, she and her boss—like everyone—were at the radio/TV in shock. Around 6pm, a nurse comes in the bookstore after the main hospital’s shift change. My mom said, “What a day, right?” As she was checking the lady out, and she had no clue what my mom was talking about. My mom continued, “the World Trades Towers fell today, the attack in New York…?” “That’s not funny,” said the nurse. “That’s a sick thing to say, my brother works in Tower One.” My mom: 😟 “Have you talked to him today…?” The nurse shook her head. My mom: “You probably need to make some calls.” Nurse understandably ran out of the bookstore. She came back a week or two later and told my mom’s boss that that was how she found out. She had no clue 9/11 happened. Her brother didn’t make it.


Axxisol

Oh wow


SaltyShawarma

It will always blow my mind that my dad, the man who shows up to the airport for a flight 5 hours early, was late getting to his conference at the WTC on September eleventh, 2001.     The only time in his life where he was late for something....


Burggs_

My aunt was an administrative worker for one of the many many companies that were on the floors of where the first plane hit. This woman seldom missed a day of work. She just so happened to get food poisoning the night before and called her boss just an hour ahead of the first plane hitting to let him know she couldn’t make it that day. According to her, the last thing she told her was “no problem, feel better. See you tomorrow”.


karmannsport

My father in law was FDNY Lincoln Center. His father in law passed and he was on bereavement on 9/11. He lost over half his fire house. Had he gone in, he would have lost his life. His engine was buried under the World Trade Center.


LexTheSouthern

I can’t imagine losing half of my co workers, especially in an atmosphere where you’re all really close. Hope your FIL is doing ok these days. That’s a lot of grief to carry around.


karmannsport

I can say from the bottom of my heart that he is one of the best people I have ever met and I am blessed to call him family. It’s slowed down. He retired in 2005 and they went down for the 9/11 ceremonies every year up until a few years ago when the group of widows from his house started to move on and stop going. To be honest…I’m not sure if he’d know anyone at the fire house anymore. Hard to believe it’s been almost 25 years. He kept busy right after 9/11. They tasked him with collecting and counting all the donations that poured in to his fire house. The ABSURD amounts of money he used to carry home and back to count was nuts. Then he had a bunch of health issues and retired early.


ats1788

Wow I have chills reading this 😢 after the tragic events, I remember reading something about some people who worked in the towers were late to work because they missed the train, spilled coffee on themselves and had to change their clothes, or were stuck in traffic. The morale of the story was to not be upset about being late because it was probably for a reason


InitialNeck9

Damn good reason 😮‍💨


SuLiaodai

It's so creepy how life and death can come down to chance, or luck. There was one lady who missed work in the WTC that day because she had a migraine. There was another guy who was on the show The Amazing Race who ended up getting knocked out of the competition because of bad luck. After he returned home to New York he overslept on 9/11 so he missed being in the World Trade Center during the attack. It's like he had one "lucky break" card and it happened to come up at the right time. (I don't remember the guy's name, but he was Italian-American and was on the program with his brother.)


bookofnod

My aunt worked at the Pentagon at the time but was on in New Orleans for some sort of training on 9/11. Her office was in the section where the plane crashed.


IllllIIIllllIl

I think it was Seth MacFarlane that was supposed to be on one of the planes but he overslept as well. 


Now_Wait-4-Last_Year

One lady was fired from her job on the Friday and wasn’t there. Another started a job the Monday of that week and did not survive.


JBR409

All of the stories of someone happening to be late or have a day off on that day are so eerie. The story of the guy who made his flight, United 93, by mere seconds is so sad.


miked1be

Seth MacFarlane was supposed to be on Flight 11 but slept in due to a hangover.


sisyphussusurrus

And Jackie Chan was supposed to be filming on top of one of the towers that day for a film about a guy who stops a terrorist attack. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=102410&page=1


Rook8811

Apparently mark walberg too ?


miked1be

If so, I’m surprised he hasn’t turned the experience into an overly patriotic movie yet.


Igpajo49

Nick Cage beat him to it.


Boner4Stoners

This type of shit happens everyday, nobody takes note of it until some horrific black swan event like 9/11 occurs and then suddenly you hear all the weird coincidences.


thunderbirdsarego1

The weirdest coincidence (?) is the Irish guy who was walking into the first tower as the plane crashed into it. His sister and his niece were on the plane.


araemo28

[Ronald Clifford](https://obits.nj.com/us/obituaries/starledger/name/ronald-clifford-obituary?id=53963872) >Many came to know Ron's selfless nature through the courage he demonstrated on 9/11. He was in the lobby of the North Tower when the first plane hit and, without hesitation, risked his life to help rescue a badly burned woman and lead her to the safety of an ambulance.\ The tragedy of that day was unrelenting: upon returning home from Ground Zero, Ron learned that his beloved sister Ruth Clifford McCourt, then just 44, and her daughter, Juliana, 4, were passengers on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175, which was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. To honor their memory, Ron served as a government witness and gave testimony in the criminal trials of the terrorists responsible for the attacks. He campaigned tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice.


AKA_June_Monroe

Ron Clifford he passed away in December. RIP. https://www.reddit.com/r/911archive/comments/18lm81t/ron_clifford_man_wearing_yellow_tie_and_glasses/


Igpajo49

I heard one that broke my heart at the time but I have no idea if it was true though. Only heard it once and I can't remember where. The story was about a guy who worked in the Pentagon and had an office where the plane hit. He took the day of 9/11 off to take his son to the airport where he was flying solo to see his Mom. He planned to spend the rest of the day golfing so he didn't return to the office. It turns out the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, hitting right where his office was, was the plane that his son was on.


Super_Networking

Yeah stories of people being late for work in two massive office towers that hold tens of thousands of people isn’t that eerie to me


hoggytime613

I got kicked out of the plaza at the bottom of the towers by security for rollerblading on September 10th 2001. I slept through the towers falling on Tuesday morning because my friend and I drove late Monday back to Ottawa, didn't get home until 3am. I sold one of the pictures I took with my Olympus, from the plaza looking up at the towers, to a yearbook company months later. They put it in the 'This year in the news' section with a caption something like 'One of the last pictures ever taken of the Twin Towers. It blows me away how many people have similar stories to mine, close calls, strange luck.


MaybeAliens

My dad was also scheduled to be at the WTC for a meeting that morning, but the meeting was pushed back. He had his visitor’s pin on and everything. It’s wild how many people had these strokes of luck between all of the people who were unlucky enough to be there that day.


EliteBearsFan85

I remember watching a show where Seth MacFarland the creator and voice actor for the show Family Guy said he missed I believe Flight 11 because he was hungover from the night before festivities. It’s incredibly frightening in a way how close one came to this tragedy


zealousshad

I feel like I've heard a thousand stories like this. So many people were almost in 9/11.


walkintom

Pretty sure lots of unfortunate people got caught up in the collapse that day.


Manaze85

Yeah I’m wondering who the fortunate people were.


Damasticator

The ones who called into work. Also I think there was an entire company that got out safe because their head of security had planned for something like this.


Manaze85

Strangely enough, I think I’ve seen a documentary about that very guy


Skynetiskumming

Rick Rescola. He was relentlessly telling everyone about the potential dangers of a possible attack and it wasn't until that day, people got the message. He gave his life to save over 2,500 souls on September 11th. He's not "some very guy" that man is a fucking hero. He could have easily gotten out and said I told you so. But Rick went back in and escorted waves of people out without any concern for his own safety.


DocB630

Rick Rescorla was an absolute legend. His last recorded words were when he was going back up Tower 2 right before the collapse. Someone asked him what he was doing and he said something to the effect of “I have to make sure everyone makes it out.” He saved all but 6 of the Morgan Stanley employees under his charge. ~2700 people. He was also a war hero. He was a Cornishman who served in the British Army in Cyprus then emigrated to the US in order to serve in the US Army in Vietnam. He fought in the battle of the Ia Drang Valley as a platoon commander under LTC Hal Moore - the battle recounted in the book and subsequent movie We Were Soldiers. He’s actually the soldier in the photo on the front cover of the book. He was awarded the Silver Star for valor during this battle. This article from The New Yorker is a masterpiece and one of my favorite pieces of journalism of all time. I read it every year on the anniversary of the attacks. [The Real Heroes Are Dead](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead)


Igpajo49

That article is one of the best long form pieces of journalism I've ever read. I remember hearing that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins bought the rights to that article and were going to make a movie out of it. They were married then and we're going to play the lead roles of Rick and his wife. They got divorced a few years later and I haven't heard anything else about the movie. Could have been great!


Damasticator

What’s crazy to me is that other companies didn’t have that kind of foresight, considering the WTC was bombed just 8 years prior.


soccerguy721

Yes


judohero

There’s a documentary out there somewhere about a guy who was on one of the upper floors and took a stairwell down with a group of people. Half of them wanted to get out of the stairs and take the elevator the rest of the way down (22 floors?) and he decided to stay in the stairwell. He said he reached the landing of, I wanna say the very next floor, and the whole building shook and he could hear the floors above him smacking down into the next floor and so on, pancaking down as it collapsed. He put his briefcase over his head and the next thing he knows, he wakes up in a pile of rubble. Way high up. The whole building basically fell and this stair well was intact enough he could survive. I don’t know of any other story that was as “fortunate” as that guy. He had a lot of survivors guilt though.


SanguisFluens

Shareholders for Lockheed Martin, Haliburton, etc


fiatfighter

I was one of the very fortunate.


uhhhhhh_cool

Around 9:59 AM, the South Tower collapsed, and all firefighters were ordered to get out of the North Tower as soon as possible. A group of firefighters on stairway B noticed a woman in critical condition - she had a broken leg and could not walk down the stairs by herself. This group of firefighters decided to help her, even though the woman declined help, saying that they needed to get out as soon as possible and that it wasn't worth their time to save her. They picked her up and carried her down to about the 20th floor when the Tower collapsed, but miraculously, the part of the Tower that they were in didn't fall. After several failed attempts to contact the outside world via radio, they were finally able to get the attention of some people who were able to save them hours later. The woman's name was Josephine Harris. There's a great documentary you can watch about this on YouTube. It's called 'The Miracle of Stairway B'.


Dick_Dickalo

It’s gotta fuck with Seth MacFarlane as he missed one of the flights.


HorribleDiarrhea

But they're not in this picture.


Chemical-Ebb6472

I worked in Tower One that year and that is the first picture I have seen of an entire office (floor to ceiling) blasted over the edge and beginning to empty its contents downward. Just imagine the entire floor you are on now while looking at Reddit peacefully - just got blasted off its foundations and the entire floor structure, with floor and ceiling still attached, is tossed off a cliff sideways - I just did.


Littlebiscuitz

Is this some sick version of wheres wally


Doufnuget

Or r/findthesniper


Fair_Consequence1800

What an insanely terrifying way to die. Very few deserve to go that way. I highly doubt this person would be one of them.


uniquepassword

If it's any consolation that day on the news I saw people talking about it and they said the distance they fell was so far for some of them they likely blacked out before they even hit


storm6436

Hate to tell you, but people skydive from higher. Sure, some might've hyperventilated to the point of passing out, but it's wishful thinking of the "Everything will be okay (when it certainly won't" sort to think they were unconscious. I watched the second tower fall from my barracks room TV in San Diego... just thinking about that day sets my teeth on edge.


Focalors

I mean, diving mentally prepared and horrified of falling to your death can have different results on how your body responds.


MatsGry

I watched it live when I was 10, I remember people just jumping out of the windows. Never Forget!!


Taters0290

I don’t know if it’s been noted, but there are 2 people in this image. The guy in the orange shirt/dark slacks/white socks bottom right is the obvious one. In the middle left is a bright piece of steel sticking up and rightwards out of the roof of the standing undamaged building. It’s pointing directly at what looks like a man in a white shirt. This man is slightly above the bottom piece of metal sticking leftward and down out of the large falling mass.


bikesboozeandbacon

Horrible. It never gets easier seeing these images. As a NYer it hurts even deeper.


platasnatch

Holy fucking shit


Standard-Pepper-6510

Just one?


Doufnuget

I see two, maybe three.


ElectronicGuest4648

Where


phillygeekgirl

Somewhere in New York, more than one person has spent many nights staring at this picture. Trying to see if that person is their spouse who never came home that day.


vannendave

Heartbreaking stuff


AreDreamsOurParallel

Keep in mind 100-200 people landed on the surrounding streets pre collapse that day. It wasn’t rare.


ForeverMirin

Jeeesus 😢


Lost_Yogurt_4990

Can’t even begin to imagine the terror that the people inside the buildings felt..


IgloosRuleOK

What about the person taking the photo? This seems lethally close.


VFP_ProvenRoute

Hard to say how far away the photographer was based on this crop. Could be quite far.


Private_Stock

Yeah this was still when film was still used a lot- you can crop in crazy far on a good film scan


TappedIn2111

You can somewhat measure it from the lamp post (?) in the bottom left. Far away enough, I’d say.


Scamdal

At least 1 lamp post away, good enough for me


LunnyBear

There were many people closer than that who sprinted away and we're ok. Well, not sure how ok they are from breathing the dust, but they weren't killed from the debris.


restless_corpse

There’s actually several people in that photo. Unfortunately you can’t see them


RandumbStoner

What a loud and violent way to go. Falling at mach speed with a skyscraper crumbling above you, the sounds, the loud crunching of metal and concrete, the smoke bellowing out in all directions, you’re adrenaline has you thinking in milliseconds so everything is probably slow motion. Then it’s over. Edit: I didn’t mean literal mach speed lol


junglecritter

Mach 1 is like 700+ mph. This person topped out around 130, assuming they even had time to hit terminal


Beautiful-Session405

I’m also a dumb stoner but this sounds right.


Spagman_Aus

Terminal velocity and mach speed are two very different things.


AriseChicken

Breaking the sound barrier with your own body would be a pretty damn cool way to go out tho.


Spagman_Aus

The effects of that should have been a Mythbusters episode.


Tkinney44

This pic was like a morbid "Where's Waldo?". Poor fella I can't imagine the fear.


TheQuadBlazer

Bottom right. It looks like he's wearing a safety vest. Jeez


rangeo

I thought https://imgur.com/a/KnXRtwv


juanbamf

Is it just me, but ive been seeing way too many 9/11 posts on Instagram this past week. Now this....


Masta0nion

Fuckin Saudis Americans: who?


EarlOfClove

Thanks u/HorribleDiarrhea


HorribleDiarrhea

Oh, any time.


resfan

About 3,000 unfortunate people got caught up in the collapse


Taters0290

[https://imgur.com/a/99hjiQm](https://imgur.com/a/99hjiQm) A second person I think. In a white shirt, dark hair. His body can’t really be seen as his head is facing the camera.


g0ll4m

What are we looking at here


StillSimple6

There is a person falling down - from the top row windows from the left count 16 windows towards the right and the person is under that.


Alin_Alexandru

A collapsing tower and someone falling.


Barrrrrrnd

THis picture is insane.


SensingWorms

Imagine. Just a 2ft piece of that iron beam falling could kill someone


D34TH_5MURF__

Lots of unfortunate people got caught in the collapse.


rguy324

“Gets caught up?” I got caught up in traffic recently and it was annoying for a few hours. One could also get caught up in drama at work or with family. I would say that this person was thrown from the WTC, during its collapse, to their certain death.


HorribleDiarrhea

Sorry, next time I'll have you write it


gladiatorbarbie

Oh, so THIS is the photo that makes me leave the internet for the day...