Don't have regular TV so we got a call from a friend that morning- "some crazy stuff just happened..."

Then another call from another friend a few minutes later, then the original friend "hey you better drive up to Uncle Joe's house and check this out on the TV."

So we did. I said "let me see a videotape, we need to record this, they always change the story later." And sure to form, Bloomberg TV had an "explosives expert" on saying the building was imploded from inside the building due to how it fell, reports of people running out that heard explosions inside, etc. They showed bomb squads checking out car bombs at a NYC high school, told of a fire at the State Department building and a whole host of other crap that was never reported on again.

We watched for a short period of time, leaving the tape recording when we left. We drove home, closed the gate by the road, that was it. I think maybe we went and got some more diapers at a local country store as we only had a few months worth.

Every other survivalist I knew at the time sat around watching it on TV, kept calling me or emailing saying how they were going to BO in just a bit, had filled up gas, etc. but to a man they all sat on their asses.

And of course- NO ONE knew right then what would or what might continue to happen. It was that "analysis paralysis" that got people- sitting on their asses watching TV when they should have been moving. NO ONE KNEW what could or was going to happen next- was the country at war with a real foreign power? Who knew?

Don't chastise the people that did BO, hey, they DID SOMETHING, and probably gained a lot of experience. And they put their family in front of pride, the almighty dollar, etc.  

What happened with most people was that they SAT DOWN and started watching TV, reading the net, etc. and that was it, that was the extent of their forward motion. Keep that in mind...... Going to be a helluva lot of people logging on to Arf as the S is hitting the fan posting "is this it? Should I actually start buying stuff and learning things now?"  type posts. Going to be way too late at that point.

Once a week we get stuck in the airport covering security there for a shift.
Usually on our Fridays on the assumption that when the flights aren't going out it gives us a chance to catch up on paperwork and go home with an empty inbox for unfinished reports
As such our desk sits right between two car rental companies.
Seeing how they handle reservations, I'll make a semi-educated guess that the rental companies have a certain number of pre-rentals that were already made when planes were still flying
Even with flights stopped, their corporate policy seems to be to hold that rental for a period of time before the car can be released for another customer to rent
Airport rental companies don't keep a whole lot of cars on site. They rely on turnover of cars being dropped off by departing passengers and then re-rented.
A major weekend locally like the NASCAR races, Cornell Homecoming etc requires that the companies pre-plan and have hundreds of cars shipped in on car carriers
The next weekend they are shipped back out on carriers to the next place that needs extra cars or rented at really cheap rates to get them to another destination
No out-going flights means no drop offs from departing passengers, so they have to hoard what they have for the existing reservations until those cars can be released for re-rental
I am guessing it would have taken an edict coming down from corporate HQ to change how your local car rental agency handled things on 9/11

If anyone here actually works for a car rental company maybe they can better explain how the system works

Bohr_Adam... checking with Snopes, you are correct, though I typically don't read any chain e-mail... somehow the name bin Laden got on the board, though I remember spelling it with as Ben Laden... If my familiarization with the name did not come from the Iran-Contra testimony, then possibly from the investigation into the KSM first attack on the Towers

This.

I was a senior in college when it happened.  Heard about in on my drive in to campus.

I kept going to classes until they were cancelled.  Hung out at the student union watching CNN most of the day.

Then went to work where we watched CNN all night.

I was a New York City Cop.  Because of my inattentiveness some months before, I was pretty much useless that day. It still kinda bugs the shit out of me.

On May 11 of that year, I had my left leg amputated below the knee due to an off duty motorcycle accident. I could’ve kept it, but would’ve had to walk with a cane, and probably would’ve lost my job.

I got my prosthetic leg the last week of August, and returned to work on Sept. 4th, exactly one week before 9/11. (Answering the phones and handling the property room) Luckily, I went back on the street, full duty, about a year later.

That day, I actually took a vacation day to play in a State Police golf outing. There were probably a dozen NYPD guys playing that day, though I didn’t know any of them personally.
We got there about 0530, and the tee off was 0645. A couple holes in, the S.P. boss came around in a cart and told everyone that a plane hit one of the towers.

All personnel were to continue until further notice. We all realized at the time that we had no cell service. A few holes later, the same guy came up on a cart and said a second plane hit. He also said that NYPD requests that no further personnel attempt to respond, because they are attempting to evacuate Manhattan.

We picked up our balls and went to the club house and saw all hell breaking loose on TV. My buddy, who was a retired trooper drove me back to his house where my truck was. I was living with my girlfriend (now my wife). I couldn’t contact her due to the phones being jammed, so I bought a bunch of food and water and left it in the kitchen, and left a note. “I’ll see ya when I see ya.”

At this stage in my “healing”, my leg (stump) was often a bloody mess, because it was still getting used to the prosthetic. I packed a bunch of bandages, spare-leg items, and my crutches and headed to my Precinct. (It was the 34th, at the northern tip of Manhattan)
Oh, I also had my AR, 12 mags, and 1-k rounds, in addition to my duty-Glock.

The ride in was surreal. It was just before noon, and there were NO cars on the Parkways or highways. I went from Dutchess County to Manhattan in 45 min. (Usually took an hour and fifteen) At various points near the city, patrol cars were blocking the highway, and I just held up my parking plaque out the window, and was waved through after slowing down to 30 or so…  

When I crossed the bridge between the Bronx and Manhattan, I could see the smoke, 7 miles downtown. The next exit was closest to my precinct, so I bailed there and got as far a 2 blocks from the Precinct. There were cars double and triple parked everywhere. Apparently, all precincts were walled off 2 blocks out. A lot of the parked cars had PD plaques in the window, so I just found an opening and parked.

I stuck a piece of duct tape to the windshield and wrote my last name in black marker, and started emptying all my shit out of the truck. I put a uniform shirt on, (was still wearing a golf shirt and shorts) slung the AR, and tried to carry the ammo cans, crutches, and box of medical supplies over the hill and down Broadway to the command.
A younger Dominican guy came running up and grabbed my crutches, I started to point the AR at him and he’s like “NO NO.. I help I help!!”

He took the crutches, one of the ammo cans and the box-o-band-aids, and humped them down the hill for me. I could just barely make out that he kept repeating “The Lord’s Prayer.”  (He showed up at around 3AM with his mom and a shit-load of food)

I figure I walked in around 1300. The midnight Lieutenant was still on the desk. (This poor bastard was on the desk during every blackout, riot, et al.)
I just asked..”Where do ya need me?”  He told me there was ONE sector (2-man car) on patrol for the whole Precinct. There’s usually between 5 and 8 at any given time.
He told me to take the phones, which had gone unanswered since 0800.

There was virtually NO crime (reported) for that whole week.

For the next 10 days, I slept a couple hours a day on one of the wooden benches in the locker room. I spent most days answering the phones, driving digging crews down to the pile, (every 4 hours there was a 12-hour digging crew)  I’d bring one crew down, all clean, wearing a uniform shirt, jeans and work boots, and take back the previous crew who were almost unrecognizable because they were all white with dust.

It was a few days before I found out that 4 of the guys that were killed I had worked with somewhat regularly. (They were Emergency Service Cops)

There were cops showing up from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Canada,…Shit. Just about everywhere…

It was about 2am on Thursday, that my girlfriend finally got through on my cell. I finally went home around the 20th or 21st.

THAT was my “kick in the ass” to be better prepared. It was also a huge reminder that sometimes you CAN’T bug out. Or worse..YOU will have to go to the danger, because no one else can or will.
Being "prepared" on your own is just the responsible thing to do. I think it is also really important for when you CAN'T bug out, you figure out how to prepare for your community as well. (in terms of "Big Picture" items..)

I was getting ready to go to my first day on a new job-- working on the ID access computer network at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. We ended up being about two weeks late for work. I was watching TV at random and happened to turn on the news right after the first jet hit, and saw the second hit-- then flashed hard on Clancy's story about the Japanese guy who hit the White House with a 747 (The Bear and the Dragon?) --It was clear after the second hit that it wasn't a fluke accident, but I did not go full bugout-- though when I called my boss and he waved us off, I did clean all my guns and reorganized my ammo supply so the big stuff was on top. What a horrible, horrible day . . .

Was sitting in senior government class in high school.
We went down to the library and rolled out a TV to watch the coverage and saw the 2nd plane hit live.
It was quiet for a while...

I was stationed at Fort Campbell, KY, with the 101st ABN DIV. We had just finished PT and were getting ready to clean the barracks common areas prior to attending a 0900 EO class. As soon as the class ended, we were ordered to don our full battle rattle and report to the arms room, where we drew weapons and ammo. I spent the rest of the day guarding a fuel point with three of my soldiers, carrying an M4 and 210 rounds of 5.56.

Fort Campbell was locked down, with armed Apaches and Kiowas patrolling, and up armored Humvees, armed with M2's, Mk19's, TOW's, and SAWs at every gate, major intersection, and important building. My unit took over gate guard within a few days. By early October, I had been brought back from a line platoon to the BN S-2 (Intel / physical security section) to replace our Intel Analyst, who went to SOCCENT. By Thqnksgiving, the BN had guys in Pakistan, and I was in Kandahar by the end of January.

It was my freshman year of high school, I was in Japanese class. We pretty much went about our daily schedule as planned, with some classes watching the news

Once again referring back to what I have noticed while sitting between those two desks is that the national reservation numbers reserve stuff at a particular location without a solid idea of what's actually available on the ground

I was in my 8th grade History class when the principal walked in and whispered something to my teacher. She turned the TV on and they were replaying repeats of the first plane hitting the towers.

I went to bed on Sept10th reading the running man and had just finished it. If you have ever read it, the ending and the morning of sept11th were quite odd. I was starting a new job on sept11th. No Bug out needed. Went to work and hammered out the day.

If I had to guess, it was after the Embassy bombings in Africa in 97 or so. Thats when Bin Laden really appears to have became a "public" figure in the US.

Ben, Ibn, Bin... same thing.

If "Ben" is good enough for Charlton Heston, it's good enough for me.

That book would have made a great movie when shows like "America's Most Wanted" were on the air and popular.

Alas, all they did was make a goofy action movie that shares little more than the title. Nowadays, the whole story wouldn't work with the different tech.

The part that always hung with me is how at the end of that book, the guy crashed his plane into the building while giving the finger..


seemed odd to wake up to Sept11th.

I was living in Alexandria Va mad working in Georgetown.  I had a managers meeting that morning at 8:00.  As per my usual, I used the pentagons parking lot as a short cut to get to work.   I was in our meeting when an employee came in and told us a plane had hit the first tower.  We ended our meeting and headed for the break room.  Watched the second plane hit.  We had to leave to go to our next meeting in Tyson's corner.  From the time we left the break room to the time we got in a car, the third plane hit.   I remember thinking, great, here come all the false reports and crazy starting.  We'll we made it around the corner and saw the smoke.  We headed out to the Tyson's corner area and there was no one on the roads going into DC except emergency and unmarks.

It was two days before I could get back into Georgetown and get my truck out.

11th grade math class, principal came up on the PA system saying a plane had crashed in NYC.  My teacher stopped class and went to get a TV, we watched the 2nd plane hit and the 1st tower come down on a black & white TV on a rolling cart.  Most of our teachers had us continue the day as planned, including a couple of tests.  That afternoon we still worked out as normal, but nobody was really into it.  We ended up doing a short workout and sitting in the grass afterwards...it was very strange as no planes were flying and the skies were completely quiet except for the occasional .mil helicopter or jet.

No bug-out plan, I was just a kid.  However, my grandfather loaded up some things and headed out to his rural parent's home.

My job at the time involved making Tuesday morning deliveries of important legal documents to a firm on the the 47th floor of the 75 story Columbia Tower in Seattle. I had heard the 2nd plane hit on my way to work, and a co-worker who hated my guts reminds me to make the normal delivery right away.

Told her no way I am making that delivery. She tells me I have to make the delivery or she would email our supervisor and suggest I be terminated immediately for insubordination. Told her go right ahead, but I'm not going anywhere near the tallest building on the West coast.

Just then a local broadcast broke into the national telecast with news that the Space Needle and Columbia Tower were being evacuated, thus making the delivery a moot point.

The following year several disks were recovered in Tora Bora highlighting plans to drive jets into the Space Needle and Columbia Tower on 9/11 which likely would have happened had they not grounded all aircraft. I placed a copy of this news report into my supervisors inbox.

I didn't have a bug out plan but jacko,Liz Taylor and Brando did.
http://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/244798/How-Liz-Taylor-Michael-Jackson-and-Marlon-Brando-fled-9-11-to-Ohio-in-a-hire-car

I was late for work that morning and was on the Westside Highway headed south in Manhattan.  Traffic was crawling and when I got to 158th st I saw why.  There was a roadblock and and only emergency vehicles were allowed to pass.  All other traffic had to exit at 158th st.  I got back on the highway north and went home.  Later in the day an A-10 buzzed my house at low altitude and scared the crap out of me.

Was on my way into work on LI, NY. Watched the towers collapse on TV. My reserve unit's medical department activated. I went home, got my gear and heading into Ground Zero for a couple days. We live about 70 miles east of NYC.

LI is a bug in area. There's no getting off the island if there were some catastrophic event. On 9/11 and immediately after.there was no need to do a thing at all.

Got the sense (as the day went) that it was somewhat limited. Where I did flip a bit was two months later when Flight 587 went down in Queens. Wife was at her parents house in Nassau County and I was about 5 minutes from her in paramedic school. When word of the crash got around they cancelled class. Lots of guys went to the VFDs. I grabbed my wife and headed east back home expecting more planes to come out of the sky.

I was a student at the University of Florida. Watched things unfold on the news, took the bus in to class, and shortly after classes were canceled due to "threats" and "associations" in Florida. My gf drove up to get me since the busses were packed with massive lines waiting to get home. Called some family and laid low, that was about it. Felt no need to bug out or panic.

I was in DC practicing as a witness at an attorney's office.  We were watching the shit go down in NYC when the plane that hit the Pentagon flew by the window of the office.  We bailed out for home (Baltimore) right after that.

I was at Ft Campbell, little did I know that In 2 1/2 months later I would be in Afghanistan

I was in DC working in a government building. They evacuated the building and I went to where my van pool would normally meet. No one else was there so I decided to walk to Union Station. They had it blocked off when I got there so I walked to some other station to get north. Found a running train that took me to Bethesda and then got on a bus to go to Frederick, MD where I lived at the time.

While I was walking through DC it was pretty quiet, lots of people but they were mostly calm. A couple of times I was walking down a street and the police and other security type folks would start yelling for everyone to get away from an unattended backpack or something.

Cell phones didn’t work and at one point I found a payphone that had a line a mile long. I waited in line to call my wife and tell her that I was fine.

Probably the scariest thing that happened that day was at Union Station. A cop was standing there and I asked him if he had any news. He said yeah, there’s apparently another plane coming and they think it’s aimed at the capitol building (which was a block or two away). They had fighter jets flying over DC at the time so that news coupled with sounds of airplanes made me a bit jumpy. I’m sure that there wasn’t a reliable way for the cop to know where flight 93 was headed but who knows, maybe the heroes that took the flight down saved my life.

I was home in Las Vegas and got a call telling me to RTB and warning order.

I was having breakfast with my wife in New Paltz as the planes flew overhead to NY. We went home and turned on the radio as my wife got ready to do her late night shift in the Ghetto. We couldn't believe it.

She insisted on going to work, so I handed her a Walther PP and told her to be careful. We live 75 miles from the city, so no bug-outs or panic.

Working "election duty" in Brooklyn and was then bugged out by the department to lower Manhattan and then to downtown Brooklyn to help all the people walking over the bridges. The day after I got assigned to guard a mosque.

Was bugged out at the time, had 9.5 acres in a rural area and surrounding chunks of acreage were used by people for hunting and camping and a decade later people started building their retirement homes out there.



I was watching something on hbo, had been up all night and usually slept in afternoons, and got a call from my sister saying other sister was ok.  HBO never broke in to say anything had happened.  I don't know if this was cause of the c-band satellite dish programming or what.  Had a weird subscription because of the monster dish.



Anyway, I was bugged out and not working much if at all.



Family was all fine and some said if it continued they would be heading my way from their city or urban homes.  Told em to load food and first aid and the basics that everyone has at least a little bit of usually.



I live in another state now, just rent rural and with my job I would probably be going to work so others with families could go home or help relatives in the cities.  I have some extended family still urban but lots of the older relatives are retiring and if needed know to stay home or head out depending on what is going on.



I agree with some of the posts that some folks could put themselves at risk traveling while the nuts are out.



But I don't disagree with TJ and others who had to get home one way or another.



Everyone has to make that call.



Extended family knows to figure on me being at work one way or another, depending on what is going on we can wind up doing all sorts of odds and ends.



Having instructions and knowledge in place is important for those who might wind up at your place when you can't be there.



Having a way to communicate, even if it comes down to notes here and there, is important as well.



I bugged out when cincy had their hissy fit.  I was urban at the time but close enough to not want to be near the mess.

At work, miles from nowhere. I knew at approx. 6:30 AM PDT that the towers had been hit
Came to the shop for lunch and my buddy said the Twin Towers were gone. I said what do you mean? He said "Fucking gone! Laying in a pile." I went
Didn't bug out. I went to church after work and prayed for our country.

I was working on a public works project (waisted water treatment plant). All contractors on the job bugged out. Everyone on my crew was advised to fill up their gas tanks and report back to work the next morning if the country was not in turmoil.

I was in Vancouver, Canada after having driven there a few days earlier.  Spent the day listening off and on to the news while trying to decide how get home.  Canadian military jets were cruising the skies and it was a bit surreal.  Continual radio broadcasts were saying the border was closed so don't even try it as the lines of cars were miles long.  Decided in the wee hours of 9/12 (couldn't sleep) to drive to the border and try to cross into WA state and then to home (MT).  I figured if I couldn't cross there I would just start working my way west and hit the border crossings until I found one that would let me through.  About 5 a.m I rolled up on the Peace Arch(?) crossing.  No cars at all.  4 guys with rifles asked for my passport and looked in the trunk.  Then they said "stay safe" and waved me through.  It literally took seconds to go through.  I realized all the radio information was complete bullshit that was likely just to keep the border crossing from getting overwhelmed.  Happily, it was completely anticlimactic and not what I expected to have to go through to just get home.

I will say that ALL the Canadians that I interacted with in Vancouver were extremely helpful and friendly on that day.  I can't begin to describe the feeling of people wanting to give me free coffee or whatever and asking if they could do something for me.  They were great and I will always remember being treated so well.

Me and my boss were in LA to train some servicers on new equipment.  I was suppose to go to Seattle and Portland, he was going to San Diego and Phoenix.   We ended up going to San Diego and Phoenix together and then driving home in the rental car. We kept the radio on for news.  I got tons of overtime that trip.

I was at my desk in midtown Manhattan...could not bug out for several hours, until they reopened the bridges and tunnels, and restarted mass transportation.

So, did the only thing we could do, other than walk 12 miles home:  went to the bar downstairs and drank and pondered somberly about the day's events, prayed that all friends and family were safe, prayed for the lost souls and their families, and wondered what the future would bring.

I was on the way to work in South Carolina.  I did IT at the time.  I heard on the radio talk show when it happened, they broke into the normal broadcast.  I continued to work and we setup a TV so we could watch what was happening.

No plans to bug out.  We would have bugged in I guess, as we didn't have any other place to go.  Family would probably have come to us if things got that bad, as we were the only ones that lived out in the country.

I went to work, listened to,every USAR team locally get activated, and bugged no where.

I was in 8th grade, wearing my football jersey as we had a football game that night.  I went down one hallway and saw my classmates standing around the tv in the science teacher/basketball coach's room.  I noticed one girl was upset and crying, went to ask her.

I saw the 2nd plane hit before I could ask her and knew why.  After that, there was an announcement that all after school activities had been postponed and we weren't having our football game that night.

Didn't have a bug out plan being that young, living in a somewhat rural area, we didn't really have much to be afraid of.

thanks everyone for sharing its nice to get to know you all and hear about everyone's journey. . .

the picture you disrespectfully photoshopped still sucks.

ar-jedi

too bad!

on the drill pad in basic training

this was just before the final ftx

I was about to head to my buddies and finish welding his roll cage before going to work at the steel mill. I thought it was a movie but turned out I was wrong so I loaded up my dads mini 14 and colt .357 with a few mags for the mini and 3 speed loaders for the .357. I called my girlfriend who was back home in New Jersey and she could see the towers burning. I finished the welding went to work and after work met up with some buddies to get food and heard from a bunch of people that the mosque near us was being guarded by the local pd and hundreds of cars were driving around it looking to start a bunch of crap. At work we had a strict attendance policy but half of the people called in. The next two nights we all stayed at one buddies house loaded up and the mini and revolver went with me everywhere for a couple weeks.

I was 16 years old and was getting ready for school in a small town in central California. My mom was stuck in Europe, and my dad got called in by his department in the city. I was pretty much alone that whole day. I went to school because I didn't know what else to do. We watched the coverage in class. I was really scared for about two days.

The 89 earthquake screwed me up as a kid and kind of started my prepping habit at an early age, 9/11 kicked it into overdrive.

Your picture is in very poor taste.

To answer your question two planes hitting two buildings didn't trigger any must leave points for me.

I think we spent most of the next day refining procedures for ammo accountability and teaching use of force. We had no shortage of Uncle Sam provided toys. It was a better training event than most training events.

I was living in Chicago at the time, in a lakefront neighborhood a few miles north of downtown. I had gotten laid off a couple weeks before and had just interviewed for a new job. I woke up at about 7:40 Chicago time to hear Peter Jennings' voice coming out of the radio, which was a big red flag. I had put my TV into the closet for the summer, and almost hurt myself when I ran for the closet to get it out. I saw the second plane hit.

I spent the next couple of days glued to the TV. A friend worked for .gov downtown at the time and her building was evacuated, so we ended up having lunch together while watching the TV.

I remember hearing the fighter jets overhead at all hours for a few days.

Another friend was on the west coast for a business trip. She was in the process of trying to show her apartment to sublet it, but she was unable to get back to Chicago to show it. So I got keys from the management company and showed it a few times until she was able to get back to Chicago.

Later in the day on 9/11, I called the company I had interviewed with and told that I had passed all the tests they had, but since HQ was in NJ, they had to wait a few days to find out if they could hire me. I did end up getting the job.