Slashdot Mirror
Air Force One Flyby Causes Brief Panic In NYC
pdclarry writes "A Boeing 747 that serves as an Air Force One backup and two F-16 fighters escorting it caused a brief panic among office workers at the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan this morning, as large numbers evacuated the buildings. The incident was also spurred evacuations in Jersey City across the Hudson River from Manhattan."
of fuckin' wussy people.
"HOLY COW! Here comes a plane flying near our wonderful New York City! It looks like it is going to hit a building! We better run for it!"
Come on!
It's pretty terrible that we as a nation are this scared by such events.
It's amazing how much people live in fear these days.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Da Plane, Da Plane...
I won't lie, I irrationally freak out every time I see a plane flying low. Although it's never anything- just some sight-seeing tourist plane. Still freaks me out. I don't live in the city though, I live in central NH. I can imagine why it freaks out New Yorkers. So before everybody goes on the whole "everybody's just over-reacting" thing, why don't we instead consider other options:
-Building tall buildings underground, instead of above.
-Requiring high altitudes for all planes, military or civilian, and producing auto-shoot auto-aim turrets around the ciy with no warning shots.
- Include parashoots as standard emergency materials for skyscrapers?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
First off, to get it out of my system:
Was also spurred evacuations
*headdesk*
Okay, now for the real comment:
A plane is being escorted by F-16s. And this causes hundreds of people to flee for their lives by making a mad dash out of their building? There's being careful, then there's being an overly paranoid idiot. I'm pretty sure that if the jets are there, you'd be safer *in a building* rather than where all the explodey shrapnel can get to you.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
It's easy for me to say that this sounds ridiculous but then again I wasn't in the surrounding buildings evacuating when the towers were on fire. I think it'd be safe to assume that any plane being tailed by military fighters isn't going to be causing much trouble though.
Sure people got scared, and rightly so, but is was HIS OWN FAULT.
mnem
Politics is just like the internet: the louder, the flashier something is; the more it jumps up & down for your attention, the likelier it is to be poisonous to your system or at least utter BS.
What an irresponsible idea to "surprise" people this way (and unless you blanket the public with warnings for the week prior, it's going to surprise a lot of people, no matter how many notices there are on the White House's website).
Sure, sure, the people of New York could have run some numbers and figured out that there was really no threat, but come on -- in a case like this you're going to want to be safe before sorry. And remember, the smartest people in town just blew up the global economy! ;-)
Seriously though, what next? Pilot an unmanned 747 into the Empire State Building but make it blow up harmlessly at the last second, all without even warning the FAA?
This is like those towns whose police think they're clever and noble for pulling over good drivers to "reward" them with $5 gift cards to Starbucks.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
This was performance art by the Obama administration, the better to show people what paranoid idiots they are.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It wasn't Air Force One. It was the president's backup plane. It would only become Air Force One if something happen to the real Air Force One.
Actually, Air Force One is only takes the tail number Air Force One if the president is actually on board. Otherwise it goes by it's actual tail number.
This story happened, what, 8 hours ago? Jeez, get over it already and watch out for the next scary sh!t to happen.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
Planes don't fly low here anymore. Its not allowed. Certainly not 747s. For the people that were here Sept 11, 2001(I was one of the many)....its very upsetting, disturbing....to look up and see a plane that low and near. So don't jump to conclusions about people over-reacting. Its a real thing for New Yorkers and others in the area.
I'm in hoboken, and I didn't see any of this. Thanks for gluing me to my computer, slashdot.
People should stop being so godamn insensitive? I mean, a lot of these people either worked in or around the WTC when it was hit. A lot of them lost family and friends in those buildings. There's ALWAYS going to be a sense of fear instilled in these people because of 9/11. It's not that they haven't gone on with their lives, it's not that they harp on the subject, it's that these people witnessed the greatest terrorist event in the history of the United States. If you think you wouldn't be so concerned about a Jet colliding with your building, either killing you, forcing you to jump from 70 stories up, or coming down on top of you, I suggest you think about the horrible realities that September 11th brought to that city and its people, and hwo you'd feel if someone close to you died so senselessy and terribly.
Unfortunately for people who experienced the collapse of the WTC towers first hand, low flying planes crashing into buildings is something that could reasonably happen, and one could argue that it is not sane to wait and see if an unusually low flying plane is actually going to crash into a building before taking steps to save one's life.
terrorism
-noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
Does this not be definition prove that the terrorists have in fact won? Fleeing for your life every time a plane fly's a little lower then normal sure wouldn't be a way I would want to live my life.
A 747 is huge and its pretty difficult to really guage its proximity and altitude. I can easily see peoples hearts jumping if you suddenly looked up and saw this. I work near an airport and when the light and angles are just right the eyes can play some pretty nasty tricks. I remember one time driving in and having my heart jump out of my chest simply because the angle that a 777 was taking off and climbing made it appear to almost stall in the air. For that split second I thought for sure it was crashing.
Oh how soon we forget. I think people in NY are a bit more sensitive to the topic than the rest of the country/world when it comes to planes flying low and they have every reason to be. Anybody consider that current office workers somehow knew or were related to the victims of 9/11?
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
we'll shortly see all involved prosecuted as terrorists, right?
There's no way that another terrorist attack on NYC could happen again. How is Bush going to set it up if he's not even in office
One man with a gun can control 100 without one
"Because if it's not an American flag, it's probably a bomb."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
and oh look: a bumper crop of smug slashdot comments calling lower manhattan office workers panicky fear-addled fools
bonus comment: its better to stay inside the building. and this is actually modded up (facepalm)
let's just break it down for you world-weary heart-heavy wise men:
if you saw airplanes flying into office towers on 9/11, then the sight of a 747 a few hundred feet off the ground, nearly clipping office towers in lower manhattan, followed by an f-16, this just might persude you to leave the area as well. but naaah... clearly its low-iq hysteria, right?
you may now continue your overly judgmental certitude in your rural basements, safe in your knowledge that all reactions you disprove of are nothing more than irrational fear. you of course are immune to this. when it comes the federal government's wiretapping policies, copyright laws, and anti-pornography crusade, rather than prudent moves to dispel these unwise ideas, the proper reaction is panty-twisting pronouncements of the end of democracy and western liberal ideals. right?
truly, you are all level-headed fountains of wisdom of the ways of humankind. not in any way hypocritical asses
where oh where would we all be without your insightful words? hmmm. maybe with a little less self-serving and smug condescension? naaah
look: an anti-pornography law! whine and moan about the end of western civilization. nothing fear-addled there
blind overly judgmental hypocrites. that's all i see
xoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Think of the children...
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
I was going to friend you after I read this, but then I realized: I already had.
Is it possible that people are complaining about the wrong thing here? Sure, the discussion about whether to run or not is interesting, but how about whether people should have been informed or not?
Given that there were memos sent to numerous organisations, and yet the information was not disseminated at the will of Obama, isn't there a more pressing question here?
Like, why would the president want to scare the crap out of southern manhattan? It's not a huge stretch to assume that flying a 747 low over Manhattan would scare people...
Seriously, people, all they did was evacuate. So what? A few office buildings lost a day of work. Ooooh...scary! You're definitely overreacting to alleged overreacting.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Almost as hilarious as replacing the old Twin Targets with the new Freedom Target. Even more people, in an even smaller space.
Sheesh.
As a general aviation pilot (I'm a regular guy who flies 2-seat Cessnas and other small aircraft on weekends for fun), it's refreshing to see that the double standard for military and VIP aircraft isn't universally applied. I've had more than one lunchtime conversation where someone loudly swears up and down that a 2-seat Cessna 152 is a WMD -- despite only weighing around 1300lbs, barely being able to carry two people, being able to cruise at 110mph on a good day.
Anyway, I can now enjoy a little schadenfreude, while I welcome the presidential airlift crew to my world. Granted they were joyriding in an airliner (which weighs 735,000 pounds and travels 600mph, which can carry 1423 times the kinetic energy of the little Cessna that I buzz around in) with a couple of fighters jets (which are threatening in any circumstances), which is a formula that has a proven track record as a threat to national security... So what they did actually matters! But now they can feel a little twinge of what I've had to go through these few years.
Even though my airplane is around 1423 times safer (based on k=mv^2) for the people on the ground, I have to put up with the same magnitude of hysteria as these people.
And, no, I don't fly very much anymore -- it's just not as much fun as it used to be with the TFRs, fighter jets, and general martial-law in the sky. Maybe I'll try hang-gliders or paragliders in order to address my deep need to get my feet off of the ground now and then.
It might just be me, but in that picture, the fighter is clearly in an escort position, not a pursuit position. Escorting fighters always fly slightly behind, and slightly above, the plane they are escorting. A plane in pursuit would be much further back, with their gunsight piper locked on. If it were an unauthorized intrusion, there would be one plane in escort formation, with one behind it in case they were given a weapons free order so they could enforce it immediately. Also, there's the fact that a terrorist is probably not a well-enough trained pilot to be able to keep formation anyway. Of course, the fact that I grew up 15 miles from an airforce base/airplane production facility where planes being tested often have chase planes would mean that I would recognize this better than many people.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Based on other comments, my opinion will clearly be unpopular. But how is this not akin to shouting "fire!" in a movie theater? Lower Manhattan is full of people who lived through 9/11, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a low-flying 747 being escorted by a fighter jet would send up warning flags for those people. Add to that the fact that a lot of people stuck it out in the Twin Towers expecting to be rescued (and in doing so, died), and it makes some sense that people would high-tail it out of a tall building in the vicinity. Given all of that, I think it's rather small to dismiss a bunch of people who reacted to this today as wusses.
This wasn't a criminal act, it wasn't an act of terror. It was an insensitive and stupid act. Seems to me a little extra thought could have come up with a better solution than doing this that DOESN'T run the risk of sending a lot of people into a panic?
Besides, isn't this what Photoshop is for?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
While I appreciate your point, fact is, there wasn't a 747 involved in 9/11.
Although I have some part of me that appreciates the accuracy, I cannot help but think it reasonable that a person seeing something falling into the category of "very large airplane" flying near tall buildings now, would have some cause to wonder why it was there when it almost never is - especially with a jet escort.
Just like you should not yell "fire" in a crowded theater, to me it seems very insensitive to fly a jet right over a major city well outside the usual airline approaches.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It seems they've been successfully terrorized.
Average Number of Deaths per Year in the U.S:
Bee/Wasp - 53
Spider - 6.5
Scorpion - 0.5
Centipede - 0.5
Given an average American's lifespan bugs are more dangerous than terrorists. As for the world in general the top animal killer is the mosquito which helps help kill about 3 million people per year. Thank god they didn't see a bug.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Don't worry, if the shit really hits the fan we'll be able to separate the Internet Tough Guys from the real tough guys.
:)
I fed the AC trolls in this thread too
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I hope the irony of posting such a comment as an "Anonymous Coward" is not lost on you.
Next time that shit happens, I'm first in line at the ferry (excepting the elderly, the very young, and the preggers).
$next_in_line = preg_replace('/you/', 'me', $next_in_line);
Or does pregger have another meaning?
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Did you look at the photo at the top of the page? To an untrained eye, that might well look like "pursuit", rather than "escort".
Shrapnel isn't explodey. Bombs are explodey.
Shrapnel is explodified
You're welcome.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
CNN Story
According to CNN, the FAA and Air Force informed the NYPD and the NY Mayors office that this was going to happen, but the staff at both didn't think it would be necessary to 1) inform the public, or 2) inform the Mayor himself(!).
No wonder NYC is a mess :)
(not sure why the initial version of this was posted anonymously)
I really am not denigrating new yorkers here, but I must confess that I do not understand the reaction.
This isn't intended as a smug comment, so please do forgive me if it sounds so.
I understand that low flying planes are scary, particularly in the circumstances, but I'm not sure what's expected to be achieved by panic and evacuation. If the plane is close enough to be a threat I sincerely doubt that heading to the lifts is going to save the day. If it's not close enough to be a threat, the F-16s will handle it should it look like becoming one. Either way, action is either needless or pointless.
And, before anybody tells me I have no idea what it's like, etc, etc, etc - I work in London, and on the day of the tube bombings was sat in my offices, right above a train station. My boss was out of the country and asked if I was going to evacuate, so I explained that anything that hadn't gone off by 11am probably wasn't going to, and got back on with work.
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum
You have correctly discerned that, for significant portions of the US population, "the terrorists have won." There's a certain segment of the American citizenry that is 5 seconds away of losing their minds due to various terrorist scenarios they've had thrown at them by various parties.
The Venn diagram of that group with the "do it for the children" group overlaps quite a bit.
And exactly what options do these "escorts" have? A big jumbo jet being "escorted" can still go where it wants to go. If you mean they could shoot it down, it is flying over one of the more densely populated areas of the world. Shooting it down there would probably result in as much destruction as if it just smashed into a building around there.
This isn't like some dude in a getaway car can get pushed by a squad car off to the side or something, "escorting" means they are close by observers and can do the menacing "waggle the wings" at them and use harsh language over the radio. In other words, they are about useless if in the situation as described in the article. If the potential hijackers have control of the plane, once they are at or near their target, which the escorts don't know what that is, they can most likely still hit it or get extremely close.
Blame the city of NY, not the Feds. Apparently they had plenty of notice but didn't do anything with it.
Were you in NY during the power outage? We didn't know what the heck was going on. Power was out everywhere. Cell phones didn't work because the towers didn't have power. Same with radio. For a few hours, many people had no way of knowing what was going on.
In NY,NY there are young models all over the city looking to be "discovered" so it stands to reason enough of them are looking up, see a plane, and they think it's going to fall on them so they start running. Others follow the pretty bimbo's running and screaming.
you know it's true, the same thing happened when a car on the street overheated and the radiator started venting.
The funny thing is, where were they running to and why did they think the plane was going to hit them if they didn't move?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Air Force One 2, perhaps?
... would affect the average slashdotter how, exactly?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Sep 11, 2001: Air Force One does low altitude flyby of Manhattan buildings. People fled their office buildings in terror, afraid the plane would hit a building. The public ridicules them as cowards for evacuating for such a minor disturbance.
Apr 27, 2009: Terrorists fly commercial airliners into WTC. People stay put in their buildings, because the public ridiculed them for evacuating on Sep 11, 2001. Thousands die because they did not evacuate at the first sign of trouble.
Looking at it from that perspective, would you any of you like to retract your criticisms of those who evacuated today? In the timeline above, would you still criticize people on Sep 11, 2001?
I hope this has made at least some of the "we are a nation of pussies" people change their attitudes and understand the situation people were in today. Many of people who evacuated today were in NYC on 9/11, and they had every reason to evacuate.
-William Brendel
I was going to say something like this, but the parent poster beat me to it.
Really, folks: To react with such, well, terror over every little thing, is only an indications that the terrorists have won.
There's no realistic way to outrun a jet on foot, or an elevator. So why bother with the panic? For fuck's sake: The only way to get out of the way of something like this means that the last thing going through your mind will be your spleen.
I, for one, would take this as a sign that I should go up on the roof to have a cigar and watch the strangeness, perhaps after asking the boss if he'd like to join me with the bottle of bourbon that he always keeps in his desk drawer.
Of all the things to be scared of, terrorism in the US should not be one of them.
Kid-proof tablet..
This is slashdot, and you are calling this a technology story? This is almost as bad as Google News calling anything including a tech-based company a Science and Technology story.
Hypothetical situation: You're sitting on the tube. Suddenly a guy stands up and starts shouting something in a language you don't understand whilst waving around a backpack with smoke coming out of it. At the same moment, an announcement comes on the loudspeakers saying that there's an emergency situation and everyone should exit the train at the next station (which you're just pulling into).
Do you:
A) Get up and leave the train.
b) Sit there whilst everyone else leaves smug in the knowledge that it's a false alarm?
Because that's what happened today. I evacuated because I was told to by my company's security team, at that point none of us knew what was going on - just that there was an unidentified low flying plane in the area and we should leave. I work in a 50 story block right by the waterline - we'd probably be one of the first hit in a repeat of 9/11. Was I nervous? Sure I was. And you would be too.
(BTW, I grew up in London and know all about IRA bombs and all that stuff, and I also was on the scene on 9/11. I'm a security theater skeptic of the highest order but in this case I think the evacuations were 100% justified. I thank my company for being on the ball enough to get us out so fast).
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
735,000lbs (mass) x 600mph^2 = 264,600,000,000 lbs x mph^2/ Divide that by 110mph^2 to get roughly 22,000,000. Divide that by 2000 (giving 700 pounds of people/cargo) to get 11,000 times the kinetic energy.
Turns out it wasn't for a photoshoot, it was just for a SINGLE PHOTO!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090427/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_low_flying_plane_purpose
"WASHINGTON An administration official says a presidential Boeing 747 and a fighter jet flew low near ground zero in New York City Monday because the White House Military Office wanted to update its file photo of the president's plane near the Statue of Liberty."
American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5217186/US-authorites-divert-Air-France-flight-carrying-no-fly-journalist-to-Mexico.html
There is excessive paranoia going on. Face it!
Res publica non dominetur
Again, it was stupid and unreasonable, but there's a reason its there.
Not if it is, by your own words, "unreasonable"; there's no reason.
I think what we all mean to say is that the fear is irrational . It's not likely that low-flying planes piloted by terrorists will again kill New Yorkers.
The fear would only be reasonable if you saw the low-flying plane heading toward you.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Just because people evacuated the buildings doesn't mean they were terrified. When was the last time you felt terror while evacuating during an unannounced fire drill? You can take precautionary measures. Here, erring on the side of caution meant you lost a few minutes of trudgery behind your desk for some slightly inconvenient exercise. It's an easy precaution to take, and while the chances of actual danger are very small the consequences would be more than severe enough to justify the action.
Like a female rape victim "overreacting" when a man follows her into the woman's restroom. It's called PTSD folks. Even if the man was escorted by cops, say because the other restroom was broken and the guy needed to pee, it's reasonable for the rape survivor to feel uncomfortable in the situation and get the hell out of there.
Brave Sir Robin, that is...
"When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned around and fled,
Brave, brave brave, brave Sir Robin"
>>Fleeing for your life every time a plane fly's a little lower then normal sure wouldn't be a way I would want to live my life.
First of all, this plane was flying a LOT lower than normal. Doing that over NYC would be like lighting off fireworks around vets with PTSD. Trust me.
Secondly, I would rather live my life. Period. You take the honorable route- die saying, "Well, at least I didn't run"- and I will retire in the countryside where there are no fireworks. Aircraft don't frighten me, but other things do, and I would have evacuated had I been in their situation.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
It really sucks to have been closely involved in the 9/11 disaster and most of those so involved will never "get over it".
If you weren't involved, you just don't get it, so STFU.
If you were involved, you get to cloak yourself in righteous indignation and get a pass on acting like an asshat.
If you weren't involved, you get to make smarmy comments and denigrate the feelings of others like the dickhead you are.
If you currently work in Manhattan, you're at a distinct disadvantage if there's ever a major disaster.
Traumatized people are very sensitized to the things they were traumatized by.
Others not traumatized aren't so sensitive.
Lots of self-aggrandizing douchebags, traumatized or not, post to Slashdot.
As far as the topic goes:
Our government, both national and local, excels at making poor judgments.
That should cover it.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Couldn't they just have photoshopped lower Manhattan into the background, instead of doing half an hour of flyovers?
What were they thinking?
9/11 and trailing fighter jets aside, anyone who has seen Escape from New York would naturally assume that Air Force One had been commandeered by terrorists and was about to crash into Manhattan.
Seriously though, given the all too recent violent history, this was obviously a massive screw-up on the part of the Obama administration. No one even saw fit to inform the mayor of NYC of what was going on much less the terrified populace. How could one not assume the worst?
All the posters making noise about New Yorkers being excessively paranoid are either fools or Obama fanboys laying down a smokescreen to protect their messiah.
entirely true ... euh, now, what were we talking about?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Oh yea... "Psyche"..
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
Recoup your losses over 'Fallujah Civilian Massacre Mayhem' by getting '747 Panic Spreader' out onto the shelves pronto.
"Marc Mugnos was reprimanded for not apprising the mayor,"...unavailable for comment. Won't be surprised if he doesn't find out about a second kind of Bloomberg terminal.
the Air Force notified the NYPD and the Mayor's office in advance, which is standard procedure. And maybe New Yorkers should stay away from air shows.
that a 747 pilot would fly less than 200 yards from your building in a crowded city? Remember they're big. Looks can be deceiving. He was probably a 1/4 mile away. And he wouldn't have been going at "full speed" or he'd never have been able to pull the turn you described. I remember the days when we lived for this kind of event.
One of the evacuated buildings is called "The World Financial Center" - does that sound a little familiar?
1. Why did they do this on a Monday, when lower Manhattan is jammed with workers, as opposed to a Sunday, when it's not?
2. Why keep it a secret? Were they worried terrorists would try to shoot the plane down or something?
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Exactly. Good luck evacuating your building faster than a plane can fly into it.
the terrorists accomplished their task and have struck terror in the hearts and minds of people.
Sadly, our own government and all its sensationalizing over terrorism was probably more to blame than anything that happened on 9/11, but all the same, they accomplished at least part of their goal rather well.
Sensationalism in the media only serves to help them accomplish their goals. If you want to stop terrorism, the first step is to not be afraid.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
My credentials: Slashdot story from 9/13
Instead of ranting one way or another, let me just say that for those people who criticize the people who evacuated or otherwise felt concerned, consider this: just like how you may catch a whiff of some smell that reminds you of your grandmother's apple cobbler and puts a smile on your face, you can also see something like a 747 circling around downtown Manhattan to remind you of one of the most terrible days in your life and make you panic a bit.
I'm personally quite mentally sane over the whole event, but I don't blame people at all for how they reacted downtown when seeing Airforce One flying the way it did. The comments Bloomberg made of it being "insensitive" hit it right on the nose, since I'm sure there are thousands of people still that aren't as well adjusted as I.
disclaimer: I didn't know about this event until the next day, so I don't know how I would have reacted.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
lets break it down for you, idiot from NYC.
You live in a city you are afraid of.
Your problem.
You try to insult people by talking about their 'rural basements' and concerns about civil liberties.
We are not afraid of where we live, you are. We do not want to be packed like rats in a cage with no privacy. You do.
We are not all level headed fountains of wisdom, we do not think we are. You do.
You're fear is not our problem, its yours. Pointing out your irrational reaction to a situation is not our problem, its your.
I'm sorry you have a problem, but its not my problem and I will discuss it all I want. Thats the advantage we both have because of our whining and moaning.
There is a difference between what is actively going on in the country today, and what happened 8 years ago and is from a statistical point of view, never going to happen again, especially to YOU.
While you're sitting there, stewing in your own anger and self loathing, I suggest you consider a change in life style. Instead of talking about our 'rural basements' perhaps you should consider why we can talk about your irrational paranoia. We're not the ones who live in the city that you are so afraid of.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'd say a lot of New Yorkers were psychologically scarred or traumatized by 9/11. For a lot of Americans this was the single most traumatic event of their entire lives, their whole world came crashing down with the towers, they were emotionally crushed under the rubble, snuffed out, demoralized to the very core of their being, helpless. They became angry, resentful, vowing revenge, and they bombed a couple of countries "back to the stone age"
Yup, now you know how it feels to be a Palestinian, Iraqi, Chechen, Pakistani, etc., now you share something in common with your distant brothers in Lebanon, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Bosnia...or anywhere else where there has been death from above on buildings full of innocents who never did anything to anyone - usually at the hands Americans.
Yeah, except those people never get a chance to evacuate, like it was some kind of fire drill.
Couldn't the President just buy a picture of the Statue of Liberty instead of taking one while flying circles around it?
I wasn't complaining about the lack of phones and power. There is a HUGE difference in the two situations. I could live without power or phones just fine. In fact I never even use my phone. The issue was that everything suddenly went down and there was no way to find out why.
It's not like people were running around screaming and crying because they didn't have power. Some people thought that one of the possible reasons that the effect was so wide-spread was an orchestrated attack on multiple power and communications stations. That's not an unreasonable thought considering it was shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
If security are telling you to get out, fair enough. But if I'm on a tube train with already-mentioned guy speaking a language I don't understand, and the two SWAT (SO13, in my neck of the woods) officers with him don't bat an eyelid, why on earth would I?
The plane was under escort. Unless you assume the escort was compromised as well (in which case, just who do you trust?) that tells you that the big plane will be handled one way or another.
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum
You're thinking too much in binary terms.
There are lots of options between (and outside of)
(1) We know this plane is safe and the reason for escorting it is entirely friendly.
and
(2) We know this plane is in the control of terrorists who are bent on taking down yet another tall building in New York.
Moreover, neither of those options is going to seem reasonable to me.
If there is a friendly plane and escort, why didn't I know about the air show?
Terrorists who knew what they were doing have done the running airplanes into towers trick once, and got the reaction they wanted (validation).
Even if terrorists take over a plane, the passengers now know it's war and they know they have no chance of surviving. When you know you're going to die anyway, you suddenly know that fear is useless, and fear is the only real weapon the terrorists have to control the passengers. The terrorists who know what they are doing know this.
Terrorists who don't understand this won't be able to organize another one of these.
That leaves a couple of options, and none of the options that come quickly to mind are comforting.
Maybe there is a plane with pilots who have been incapacitated?
Maybe a crew member has gone crazy?
In any of the cases that seem plausible, the fighter escorts are going to be focused on support or on warning more than on shooting. That means, if shooting down becomes the only option, it will be taken at the last moment.
Even for those of us who understand the physics, who ought to know, for instance, to look for another escort plane a mile back, ready to fire when the close-up escorts peel away, aren't going to necessarily decode the incident in the panic of the moment.
Clearly, the bureaucrats who failed to pass this on to the public fell down on the job.
You are correct, although not the mere mention of Germany but the mention of Nazis.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore