16 ms·

The Bomb That Changed My Life

460 points by shadowsun7 15y ago

alexholehouse 15y ago
Captivatingly written. I know what the author means regarding taking, "paralyzed by fear" as something figurative, not literal, until it actually happens to you. I remember a few years ago (2006) seeing two very large military transport aircraft flying incredibly close together, very low, and directly towards the building I was in (on the 10th floor). I literally stopped mid sentence - they obviously turned away and went on to the nearby RAF base but for a while my brain just seemed to freeze. After the event, I felt a bit of a fraud and worried people might think I'd done it for dramatic effect, but it was totally involuntary - I just sat, motionless looking out the window for about 5 seconds.
richthegeek 15y ago
Thank you for sharing this - I was 17 and away from home (and news) when this happened and it never really struck home what happened that day.
corin_ 15y ago
Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? I ask because I don't think, in the same situation, I would have been able to resist it, and I honestly have no idea what effect that sight might have. When you do feel fear on public travel now (and I guess it was even worse in the past), what goes on in your mind? Is it one of those things where you know really that your worry is foolish but you can't help yourself, or is your entire brain telling you that you could be in trouble?
- berntb 15y ago
  >>Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? Advice: I know people with PTSD and believe it is a good thing if you can avoid getting it yourself. Personally, I can handle blood. But as a Scandinavian, I have a hard time seeing suffering even for a Westerner.
  - iskander 15y ago
    On the other hand, seeing violence up close gives you a better understanding of experiences many people outside the affluent west have to deal with. I ran back toward my bus after it blew up in Jerusalem and I mostly don't regret it. I hav been haunted by the experience since (the smell most of all) but I also feel like I gained a lot of sympathy for people whose situations were previously totally abstract to me.
  - Jach 15y ago
    It seems like iskander's account is hellbanned, I think it's one of those rare false positives. Anyway, he replied to your comment: "On the other hand, seeing violence up close gives you a better understanding of experiences many people outside the affluent west have to deal with. I ran back toward my bus after it blew up in Jerusalem and I mostly don't regret it. I hav been haunted by the experience since (the smell most of all) but I also feel like I gained a lot of sympathy for people whose situations were previously totally abstract to me." ------------------------- Not everyone's meant to be a reality junkie. A body can only handle so much (like heroin). http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/dispatches-from-real-america.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/dispatc...
- swombat 15y ago
  > Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? Yes, absolutely. Considering the impact this had even without throwing in the horror of seeing mutilated bodies, I think that was the right decision. It might have felt like I was in control and sane enough to handle it at the time, but considering how I spent the next 2 hours wandering around london zombie-like, I clearly was not. When you do feel fear on public travel now (and I guess it was even worse in the past), what goes on in your mind? Is it one of those things where you know really that your worry is foolish but you can't help yourself, or is your entire brain telling you that you could be in trouble? I know that it's foolish, I know that the chances are infinitesimal, and I know it's biased and unsubstantiated and based on racial prejudices which I abhor. And yet, I'll find myself reminded of that feeling of paralysis, and of being stuck in the tube those 45 minutes. It's not a pleasant experience, so when I change tube, you could argue I'm running away from the experience rather than the danger...
- willyt 15y ago
  The London Underground drivers and station staff are trained to do that. Suicides happen quite frequently on the tube and the staff are trained to distract people from what's happened and to make people quickly pass the scene and ensure they look the other way. There must be some psychology behind it.
nosequel 15y ago
Amazing writing, thanks for taking the time out to lay out every detail. It is hard to put yourself into an event like this when you at home sitting on your couch watching it on TV. I watch and see numbers (56 dead) and it is hard to really get emotionally involved with people who you most likely don't know when you have such generic details. Reading this, I feel like I was there, even for a moment. Thanks again for putting something horrible like a bombing in perspective. I'm glad to hear you came out of it stronger on the other end.
spiffistan 15y ago
Incredibly powerful writing, even more so when combined with that track.
krig 15y ago
I was in the tube that day (but at a station far from the actual bombs) and probably because of that plus travelling the next day, I saw almost nothing of the coverage or what actually happened. I only noticed that something had happened after exiting the tube and getting stopped when trying to get back down at Piccadilly. It's a strange thought to look back and know that only through random chance did I happen to be on a train that wasn't involved.
idan 15y ago
An eloquent description which captures the essence of one possible reaction. Mine was different (I live in Israel, had a similar encounter) but the core experience is similar. It seems cliche, but there is a fundamental truth to the fact that most westerners are simply unaware of what the "I fear for my bodily integrity" sensation is and does to your life. OP's newly-discovered appreciation of how crowded buses present a potential security threat is a great example. It isn't that you suddenly see your life in a whole new light, it's that you regard various mundane things with a new, orthogonal parameter: is this situation more likely to result in harm to me? Like all things, eventually you become inured and looking at a situation from a security perspective becomes a routine thought passing through your head along with "shit, I forgot to pay the gas bill." Without getting into Israel/Palestine, this is a slice of what living in Israeli society is roughly like.
- swombat 15y ago
  I can't even imagine what it must be like living in a place where this threat is constant and tangibly real...
  - cool-RR 15y ago
    I wouldn't really describe it as a "constant and tangibly real" fear. Most Israelis will never see a terror attack in their lives. I can say that I spent the 25 years of my life in Israel without seeing anything like a terror attack, or gunshots or anything. It's just a bunch of hype.
    - iskander 15y ago
      > I can say that I spent the 25 years of my life in Israel without seeing anything like a terror attack, or gunshots or anything. ...but how? Did you never spend significant time in Jerusalem (before they finished the separation wall)? I only spent a total of a few months in Jerusalem and saw one suicide bombing and was a few blocks from a shooting. Have you never been to the west bank? One of the two times I went to Hebron I saw soldiers shooting at...who knows? But they were shooting. If you live near the northern border or near Gaza you must have been exposed to rocket attacks at some point. The only way I can imagine you don't encounter violence over 25 years is if you live in a safe area and don't venture out much. Still, you must have friends or family who are exposed to violence. I find it incredible that you think it's just 'hype'.
padolsey 15y ago
Thanks for posting this. A poignant reminder.
kokey 15y ago
Thanks for that. My girlfriend at the time, got off at Euston when they evacuated the station and decided to try take a bus to get to work. While waiting for her bus, a bus exploded not far from where she was standing. Her reaction was to walk through the city to work, asking for directions along the way, walking even past my office. I couldn't reach her because the mobile network went out of action. She didn't want to come to my office because she knew I traveled in early to make it to a meeting and didn't want to disturb me (the meeting obviously got canceled). It's been hard for me to understand the thought process that made her want to take a bus when the station was being evacuated, and made her want to walk to work after that. I think it's been a case of the initial evacuation making her worry about getting to work on time and even though she didn't know about any explosions at that point she was already reacting in a panic. With the trauma of being near a blast, it must have anchored that thought process into becoming the most important mission for her to accomplish. I was on a train when they started evacuating a station, and I was praying to myself that the train leaves the station quickly in case the evacuation was for a bomb. Little did I know the bombs were on the trains themselves and not in the station, but my initial reaction was to get out of that station and to get out of the train network and away from public places and crowds as quickly as possible. This article helps explaining this thought process to me.
- willyt 15y ago
  That's exactly what I did, I used to get the Piccadilly line from Kings Cross going south around the time the bomb went off. The trains on that line at that time are really packed, about 4 to 5 people per m2, I can only imagine what it must have been like down there. But, I was 10 mins late that day and couldn't get on the tube to connect at Kings Cross. People were running out of my normal station but I ignored that and walked down to Kings Cross thinking 'stupid Northern Line I'll get on there'. When I got to Kings Cross there were lots of people milling around and walking away from there, I think I asked someone and they said the station was closed. So I just got on a bus on Euston Rd and went to work as normal. I bumped into a colleague on the bus and she said she had been walking past an air vent outside Russell Sq station when there had been a huge inrush of air and a deep rumbling sound. I remember saying to her that it was probably just the power supply going out, maybe a transformer explosion or something (we had just been discussing mitigation of transformer explosions at work a few days before). Obviously, it was a weird day at work, nobody did anything really. It was too far to walk home, I ended up getting 5 different busses, partly because the service was all over the place and partly because I had to get off one because I thought someone looked suspicious. I grew up in London and the three lines and the bus route that got bombed were ones that I had used regularly all my life, I took it quite personally that they had attacked 'my places' in 'my city'.
tlear 15y ago
Very well written thank you for sharing, very few people can put this into words. What changed my life about 3 years ago was getting hit by a car (was my fault ran across a street to catch a streetcar). I clearly remember the whole thing, rolling over the hood, having the foot broken by the wheel. Lying on the pavement with people around me. Changed my life for the better. Funny thing, I was carrying a sandwich I just bought and got pretty upset when paramedic stepped on the bag where the sandwich was!
heimidal 15y ago
Thank you for writing about this experience. I'm sure it must not be easy to relate something so traumatic and intimate to thousands of strangers, even six years later. Many people who experience something like this never find the lesson from these experiences as you have, instead ending up with PTSD or similar; I hope that our governments can begin to respond more humanely to tragedies like this and help those who aren't able to find their own path out of fear with counseling and other assistance. Our response to terrorism over the years has largely been one of fighting the threat (and understandably so). We should add to it a response of compassion for those who, through misfortune, find themselves harmed mentally in a way that most of society cannot understand.
hopeless 15y ago
Very well written. I had a similar experience with the tricks the mind can play after a bad car accident a few years ago. Although I didn't know it at the time, I had broken almost everything except my left arm and neck. But I could quite plainly see that my right femur bent in an unnatural curve like a floppy puppet's leg. Yet still I insisted that the rescuers couldn't phone my wife because she was 7mths pregnant and had gone back to bed that morning after feeling sick. Subconciously, my brain was thinking I shouldn't bother her with this and I'd be patched up and home for dinner. I just couldn't process the obvious inputs like a normal rational person. Also, although I remained concious throughout, I don't remember much of the incident and had no idea how they got me out of the car until I saw the police photos. The mind is a strange thing.
- pelemele 15y ago
  My friend, gravely injured in a nasty accident, told firefighters not to mention anything about the accident to his mother becuase she would be scared - just 5 minutes before he died. It seems that his brain worked the same way as yours after the accident.
  - hopeless 15y ago
    I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. It gives me goosebumps to think that I might have reacted the same way but with a far worse outcome. On the other hand, it's comforting to know that others have taken the same attitude in similar circumstances. To this day my wife still hasn't forgiven me. The accident happened at 0930 and she didn't get to see me until 1600hrs.
Maro 15y ago
Well written by a regular HN contributor, but not hacker news. If somebody is interested in Daniel's writings, they can just subscribe to his RSS.
- stiller 15y ago
  I personally feel that exploring the motives for our choices is one of the most important aspects of creativity - be it creating software or otherwise. Since this experience has resulted in the writer choosing this particular career path, I believe it's relevant.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
This is really great writing. Brings back very vivid memories from that day, which in retrospect I can't believe I never wrote down. I was playing hooky from school, in a flat in Kings Cross, with my then-girlfriend, after a very late night. I was alerted to what had happened around 10am, when I answered the phone on perhaps the 7th ring, figuring I was in trouble for sciving. I think my mum had already started planning my funeral by that stage. There's probably a decent chance that, had I gone to school, given my lateness, I might have been a bit closer to the action - the moral of which I take to be "skipping school saved my life" Looking back now, I remember how the sense of relief I felt very quickly turned to a sense of despair and numbness, as more and more pictures came on the TV and more details emerged. The entire city was bleeding, but in a very strange way, much like what the writer of this post describes, a kind of zombie-like state where everything feels disconnected.
cstross 15y ago
Fascinating account of post-7/7 behavioural trauma, and how hard it was to do the right thing; it shows up both in Daniel's reaction and those of other commenters who've been in similar situations. It's not just bombs ... Accounts I've read of what happens immediately after a [survivable] plane crash are similar. Many physically uninjured passengers will just continue to sit in their seats, waiting to be told what to do, even if the plane's on fire. Another sizeable minority act through their roles as if the plane had made a successful landing; stand up to grab their carry-on luggage, then form an orderly queue. Only around 10-20% actually behave appropriately (that is, follow the emergency evacuation drill, without guidance: pop the emergency hatches and get the hell out of the danger zone without encumbering themselves). We are creatures of habit; we have great difficulty accepting the existence of an immediate and potentially lethal threat to our existence, so some of us behave as if it simply isn't there. (Which is why it takes training to instill the right reflexes for dealing with abnormal situations.) And even among those who unfreeze and start moving again, the impulse to revert to "normal" behaviour can be overwhelming.
- maeon3 15y ago
  Ive seen this phenemenon in person. I was the 2nd person on scene to a head on collision with two in critical condition. I was trying to open the doors and get the girl out by moving the seat back and testing for breathing and pulse. 5 minutes later I see a semicircle of people around the cars about 18 feet away with paralyzed people, 15 of them frozen. One lit up a cigarette. For 5 minutes. I asked for crowbars or tools to dismantle the seat so the person could exit. No one moved, it was like a movie to them. I think it is a survival instinct that has atrophied to dysfunction. Playing dead, or waiting for a more experienced leader to emerge with instructions. I was unable to register myself as a leader to those paralyzed brains.
  - mqoca 15y ago
    This is actually a social pehomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
    - 15y ago
joncooper 15y ago
Thanks for posting that. It brought my awareness to something important. I worked in 1 WTC and was about to get into the elevator when the first plane hit on 9/11. I was outside on the corner when the second plane hit. When my head started to clear some time later--a week? two?--the clearest thought I had was: if my last act as a human had been connecting a data input form to a database table, it would have been a tremendous waste of my life. Shortly thereafter I entered a new career and a new trajectory through life. The last 10 years have been amazing. Living with the visceral awareness that sudden death is possible has changed me in many ways. Mostly for the better. I do have some symptoms of PTSD. Low-flying planes freak me out intensely, as do sudden loud noises and low vibrations strong enough to shake things. On balance, though, it has catalyzed tremendously positive change in my life. I'm glad that you've been able to make the same of it. Cheers to being alive. (Bizarrely, I was also in London on 7/7. A bomb squad truck nearly ran me over (on my bike) going the wrong way down the road near Liverpool St. station, and my wife was very nearly on the Hackney Wick bus.)
- victorhn 15y ago
  I am curious, what was your previous career and your new career? and what was wrong with the previous one?
  - joncooper 15y ago
    I'm actually on my second career since then. At the time of 9/11 I was an enterprise Java programmer. We built software for MBS desks: trade capture, portfolio management and risk analytics. Finance is hugely interesting, but I was not learning any of it. I was building CRUD operations hooked up to Swing UI and a black-box (to me) analytics backend. There wasn't (and isn't) anything "wrong" with that, objectively. But I possess two things: one, a strong need for self-determination--I need to eat what I kill; and two, a love for learning that can manifest as antipathy toward using things that I don't understand. I ended up getting into finance proper and spending six years as a multi-asset prop trader at a gigantic hedge fund and then a gigantic bank, living in NYC and London. I've ultimately realized that I want to help build stuff that people use, so my lovely wife and I moved to SF and are building a life here.
bootload 15y ago
'I should be 1 of those people who can help others in this situation, not just a passive, helpless observer. I can help' Kudos Dan. I've noticed first hand as both a first-responder & bystander the different ways people react. It's broadly in 2 categories, those paralysed by the automatic Fear/Flight/Freeze response and those Individuals who shape the instinctual response with a trained response, overriding the Survival Stress Reaction [0] most people exhibit. You see 2 groups of people: those frozen by instinct and others who run towards trouble. People who are trained to respond run towards trouble. The story Dan has written is a natural human story telling response to traumatic events. Re-telling the story(s) lets you make sense of what has happened and re-gain control over their own destiny. Safety is also being sought here. Control, safety & the knowledge you won't die. Which brings me to my next point. Not everyone wakes up thinking, today's the day I'm going to be injured or killed then watch other people get injured or killed? Police, Ambo's, firemen, soldiers are exposed to this threat every day. They train hard and have the necessary support structures (sort-of) to survive. Civilians don't, so Scar stories of survival fulfil an important role. People who have been in situations such as @swombat as a civvie or @mattdeboard in the military or @idan living in a potentially dangerous environment, the key thing they are striving for is to feel and be safe. Being safe is something you don't know you have until it's not there. [0] SSR or Survival Stress Reaction is where "a state where a ‘perceived’ high threat stimulus automatically engages the sympathetic nervous system.", Siddle.,B. "Sharpening the Warriors Edge: The Psychology & Science of Training" http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Warriors-Edge-Psychology-Training/dp/0964920506 http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Warriors-Edge-Psychology-Tr...
flannell 15y ago
My wife worked in the city for one of the big banks. A chap who worked there was in a similar situation. He missed the train that had the bombers on board, but he decided to grab a bus to work instead. This also had one of the bombers upstairs which moments later detonated killing most of the people on the bus. What made it even worse is that everyone who died that day was taken to a makeshift morgue on Moorgate which is overlooked by the people who worked in his team. A really shocking day.

460 points by shadowsun7 15y ago

Captivatingly written. I know what the author means regarding taking, "paralyzed by fear" as something figurative, not literal, until it actually happens to you. I remember a few years ago (2006) seeing two very large military transport aircraft flying incredibly close together, very low, and directly towards the building I was in (on the 10th floor). I literally stopped mid sentence - they obviously turned away and went on to the nearby RAF base but for a while my brain just seemed to freeze. After the event, I felt a bit of a fraud and worried people might think I'd done it for dramatic effect, but it was totally involuntary - I just sat, motionless looking out the window for about 5 seconds.

richthegeek 15y ago

Thank you for sharing this - I was 17 and away from home (and news) when this happened and it never really struck home what happened that day.

corin_ 15y ago

Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? I ask because I don't think, in the same situation, I would have been able to resist it, and I honestly have no idea what effect that sight might have. When you do feel fear on public travel now (and I guess it was even worse in the past), what goes on in your mind? Is it one of those things where you know really that your worry is foolish but you can't help yourself, or is your entire brain telling you that you could be in trouble?

berntb 15y ago
>>Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? Advice: I know people with PTSD and believe it is a good thing if you can avoid getting it yourself. Personally, I can handle blood. But as a Scandinavian, I have a hard time seeing suffering even for a Westerner.
- iskander 15y ago
  On the other hand, seeing violence up close gives you a better understanding of experiences many people outside the affluent west have to deal with. I ran back toward my bus after it blew up in Jerusalem and I mostly don't regret it. I hav been haunted by the experience since (the smell most of all) but I also feel like I gained a lot of sympathy for people whose situations were previously totally abstract to me.
- Jach 15y ago
  It seems like iskander's account is hellbanned, I think it's one of those rare false positives. Anyway, he replied to your comment: "On the other hand, seeing violence up close gives you a better understanding of experiences many people outside the affluent west have to deal with. I ran back toward my bus after it blew up in Jerusalem and I mostly don't regret it. I hav been haunted by the experience since (the smell most of all) but I also feel like I gained a lot of sympathy for people whose situations were previously totally abstract to me." ------------------------- Not everyone's meant to be a reality junkie. A body can only handle so much (like heroin). http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/dispatches-from-real-america.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/dispatc...
swombat 15y ago
> Daniel, do you still think that following the driver's advice to not look right was a good decision? Yes, absolutely. Considering the impact this had even without throwing in the horror of seeing mutilated bodies, I think that was the right decision. It might have felt like I was in control and sane enough to handle it at the time, but considering how I spent the next 2 hours wandering around london zombie-like, I clearly was not. When you do feel fear on public travel now (and I guess it was even worse in the past), what goes on in your mind? Is it one of those things where you know really that your worry is foolish but you can't help yourself, or is your entire brain telling you that you could be in trouble? I know that it's foolish, I know that the chances are infinitesimal, and I know it's biased and unsubstantiated and based on racial prejudices which I abhor. And yet, I'll find myself reminded of that feeling of paralysis, and of being stuck in the tube those 45 minutes. It's not a pleasant experience, so when I change tube, you could argue I'm running away from the experience rather than the danger...
willyt 15y ago
The London Underground drivers and station staff are trained to do that. Suicides happen quite frequently on the tube and the staff are trained to distract people from what's happened and to make people quickly pass the scene and ensure they look the other way. There must be some psychology behind it.

nosequel 15y ago

Amazing writing, thanks for taking the time out to lay out every detail. It is hard to put yourself into an event like this when you at home sitting on your couch watching it on TV. I watch and see numbers (56 dead) and it is hard to really get emotionally involved with people who you most likely don't know when you have such generic details. Reading this, I feel like I was there, even for a moment. Thanks again for putting something horrible like a bombing in perspective. I'm glad to hear you came out of it stronger on the other end.

spiffistan 15y ago

Incredibly powerful writing, even more so when combined with that track.

krig 15y ago

I was in the tube that day (but at a station far from the actual bombs) and probably because of that plus travelling the next day, I saw almost nothing of the coverage or what actually happened. I only noticed that something had happened after exiting the tube and getting stopped when trying to get back down at Piccadilly. It's a strange thought to look back and know that only through random chance did I happen to be on a train that wasn't involved.

idan 15y ago

An eloquent description which captures the essence of one possible reaction. Mine was different (I live in Israel, had a similar encounter) but the core experience is similar. It seems cliche, but there is a fundamental truth to the fact that most westerners are simply unaware of what the "I fear for my bodily integrity" sensation is and does to your life. OP's newly-discovered appreciation of how crowded buses present a potential security threat is a great example. It isn't that you suddenly see your life in a whole new light, it's that you regard various mundane things with a new, orthogonal parameter: is this situation more likely to result in harm to me? Like all things, eventually you become inured and looking at a situation from a security perspective becomes a routine thought passing through your head along with "shit, I forgot to pay the gas bill." Without getting into Israel/Palestine, this is a slice of what living in Israeli society is roughly like.

swombat 15y ago
I can't even imagine what it must be like living in a place where this threat is constant and tangibly real...
- cool-RR 15y ago
  I wouldn't really describe it as a "constant and tangibly real" fear. Most Israelis will never see a terror attack in their lives. I can say that I spent the 25 years of my life in Israel without seeing anything like a terror attack, or gunshots or anything. It's just a bunch of hype.
  - iskander 15y ago
    > I can say that I spent the 25 years of my life in Israel without seeing anything like a terror attack, or gunshots or anything. ...but how? Did you never spend significant time in Jerusalem (before they finished the separation wall)? I only spent a total of a few months in Jerusalem and saw one suicide bombing and was a few blocks from a shooting. Have you never been to the west bank? One of the two times I went to Hebron I saw soldiers shooting at...who knows? But they were shooting. If you live near the northern border or near Gaza you must have been exposed to rocket attacks at some point. The only way I can imagine you don't encounter violence over 25 years is if you live in a safe area and don't venture out much. Still, you must have friends or family who are exposed to violence. I find it incredible that you think it's just 'hype'.

padolsey 15y ago

Thanks for posting this. A poignant reminder.

kokey 15y ago

Thanks for that. My girlfriend at the time, got off at Euston when they evacuated the station and decided to try take a bus to get to work. While waiting for her bus, a bus exploded not far from where she was standing. Her reaction was to walk through the city to work, asking for directions along the way, walking even past my office. I couldn't reach her because the mobile network went out of action. She didn't want to come to my office because she knew I traveled in early to make it to a meeting and didn't want to disturb me (the meeting obviously got canceled). It's been hard for me to understand the thought process that made her want to take a bus when the station was being evacuated, and made her want to walk to work after that. I think it's been a case of the initial evacuation making her worry about getting to work on time and even though she didn't know about any explosions at that point she was already reacting in a panic. With the trauma of being near a blast, it must have anchored that thought process into becoming the most important mission for her to accomplish. I was on a train when they started evacuating a station, and I was praying to myself that the train leaves the station quickly in case the evacuation was for a bomb. Little did I know the bombs were on the trains themselves and not in the station, but my initial reaction was to get out of that station and to get out of the train network and away from public places and crowds as quickly as possible. This article helps explaining this thought process to me.

willyt 15y ago
That's exactly what I did, I used to get the Piccadilly line from Kings Cross going south around the time the bomb went off. The trains on that line at that time are really packed, about 4 to 5 people per m2, I can only imagine what it must have been like down there. But, I was 10 mins late that day and couldn't get on the tube to connect at Kings Cross. People were running out of my normal station but I ignored that and walked down to Kings Cross thinking 'stupid Northern Line I'll get on there'. When I got to Kings Cross there were lots of people milling around and walking away from there, I think I asked someone and they said the station was closed. So I just got on a bus on Euston Rd and went to work as normal. I bumped into a colleague on the bus and she said she had been walking past an air vent outside Russell Sq station when there had been a huge inrush of air and a deep rumbling sound. I remember saying to her that it was probably just the power supply going out, maybe a transformer explosion or something (we had just been discussing mitigation of transformer explosions at work a few days before). Obviously, it was a weird day at work, nobody did anything really. It was too far to walk home, I ended up getting 5 different busses, partly because the service was all over the place and partly because I had to get off one because I thought someone looked suspicious. I grew up in London and the three lines and the bus route that got bombed were ones that I had used regularly all my life, I took it quite personally that they had attacked 'my places' in 'my city'.

tlear 15y ago

Very well written thank you for sharing, very few people can put this into words. What changed my life about 3 years ago was getting hit by a car (was my fault ran across a street to catch a streetcar). I clearly remember the whole thing, rolling over the hood, having the foot broken by the wheel. Lying on the pavement with people around me. Changed my life for the better. Funny thing, I was carrying a sandwich I just bought and got pretty upset when paramedic stepped on the bag where the sandwich was!

heimidal 15y ago

Thank you for writing about this experience. I'm sure it must not be easy to relate something so traumatic and intimate to thousands of strangers, even six years later. Many people who experience something like this never find the lesson from these experiences as you have, instead ending up with PTSD or similar; I hope that our governments can begin to respond more humanely to tragedies like this and help those who aren't able to find their own path out of fear with counseling and other assistance. Our response to terrorism over the years has largely been one of fighting the threat (and understandably so). We should add to it a response of compassion for those who, through misfortune, find themselves harmed mentally in a way that most of society cannot understand.

hopeless 15y ago

Very well written. I had a similar experience with the tricks the mind can play after a bad car accident a few years ago. Although I didn't know it at the time, I had broken almost everything except my left arm and neck. But I could quite plainly see that my right femur bent in an unnatural curve like a floppy puppet's leg. Yet still I insisted that the rescuers couldn't phone my wife because she was 7mths pregnant and had gone back to bed that morning after feeling sick. Subconciously, my brain was thinking I shouldn't bother her with this and I'd be patched up and home for dinner. I just couldn't process the obvious inputs like a normal rational person. Also, although I remained concious throughout, I don't remember much of the incident and had no idea how they got me out of the car until I saw the police photos. The mind is a strange thing.

pelemele 15y ago
My friend, gravely injured in a nasty accident, told firefighters not to mention anything about the accident to his mother becuase she would be scared - just 5 minutes before he died. It seems that his brain worked the same way as yours after the accident.
- hopeless 15y ago
  I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. It gives me goosebumps to think that I might have reacted the same way but with a far worse outcome. On the other hand, it's comforting to know that others have taken the same attitude in similar circumstances. To this day my wife still hasn't forgiven me. The accident happened at 0930 and she didn't get to see me until 1600hrs.

Maro 15y ago

Well written by a regular HN contributor, but not hacker news. If somebody is interested in Daniel's writings, they can just subscribe to his RSS.

stiller 15y ago
I personally feel that exploring the motives for our choices is one of the most important aspects of creativity - be it creating software or otherwise. Since this experience has resulted in the writer choosing this particular career path, I believe it's relevant.

josscrowcroft 15y ago

This is really great writing. Brings back very vivid memories from that day, which in retrospect I can't believe I never wrote down. I was playing hooky from school, in a flat in Kings Cross, with my then-girlfriend, after a very late night. I was alerted to what had happened around 10am, when I answered the phone on perhaps the 7th ring, figuring I was in trouble for sciving. I think my mum had already started planning my funeral by that stage. There's probably a decent chance that, had I gone to school, given my lateness, I might have been a bit closer to the action - the moral of which I take to be "skipping school saved my life" Looking back now, I remember how the sense of relief I felt very quickly turned to a sense of despair and numbness, as more and more pictures came on the TV and more details emerged. The entire city was bleeding, but in a very strange way, much like what the writer of this post describes, a kind of zombie-like state where everything feels disconnected.

cstross 15y ago

Fascinating account of post-7/7 behavioural trauma, and how hard it was to do the right thing; it shows up both in Daniel's reaction and those of other commenters who've been in similar situations. It's not just bombs ... Accounts I've read of what happens immediately after a [survivable] plane crash are similar. Many physically uninjured passengers will just continue to sit in their seats, waiting to be told what to do, even if the plane's on fire. Another sizeable minority act through their roles as if the plane had made a successful landing; stand up to grab their carry-on luggage, then form an orderly queue. Only around 10-20% actually behave appropriately (that is, follow the emergency evacuation drill, without guidance: pop the emergency hatches and get the hell out of the danger zone without encumbering themselves). We are creatures of habit; we have great difficulty accepting the existence of an immediate and potentially lethal threat to our existence, so some of us behave as if it simply isn't there. (Which is why it takes training to instill the right reflexes for dealing with abnormal situations.) And even among those who unfreeze and start moving again, the impulse to revert to "normal" behaviour can be overwhelming.

maeon3 15y ago
Ive seen this phenemenon in person. I was the 2nd person on scene to a head on collision with two in critical condition. I was trying to open the doors and get the girl out by moving the seat back and testing for breathing and pulse. 5 minutes later I see a semicircle of people around the cars about 18 feet away with paralyzed people, 15 of them frozen. One lit up a cigarette. For 5 minutes. I asked for crowbars or tools to dismantle the seat so the person could exit. No one moved, it was like a movie to them. I think it is a survival instinct that has atrophied to dysfunction. Playing dead, or waiting for a more experienced leader to emerge with instructions. I was unable to register myself as a leader to those paralyzed brains.
- mqoca 15y ago
  This is actually a social pehomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
  - 15y ago

joncooper 15y ago

Thanks for posting that. It brought my awareness to something important. I worked in 1 WTC and was about to get into the elevator when the first plane hit on 9/11. I was outside on the corner when the second plane hit. When my head started to clear some time later--a week? two?--the clearest thought I had was: if my last act as a human had been connecting a data input form to a database table, it would have been a tremendous waste of my life. Shortly thereafter I entered a new career and a new trajectory through life. The last 10 years have been amazing. Living with the visceral awareness that sudden death is possible has changed me in many ways. Mostly for the better. I do have some symptoms of PTSD. Low-flying planes freak me out intensely, as do sudden loud noises and low vibrations strong enough to shake things. On balance, though, it has catalyzed tremendously positive change in my life. I'm glad that you've been able to make the same of it. Cheers to being alive. (Bizarrely, I was also in London on 7/7. A bomb squad truck nearly ran me over (on my bike) going the wrong way down the road near Liverpool St. station, and my wife was very nearly on the Hackney Wick bus.)

victorhn 15y ago
I am curious, what was your previous career and your new career? and what was wrong with the previous one?
- joncooper 15y ago
  I'm actually on my second career since then. At the time of 9/11 I was an enterprise Java programmer. We built software for MBS desks: trade capture, portfolio management and risk analytics. Finance is hugely interesting, but I was not learning any of it. I was building CRUD operations hooked up to Swing UI and a black-box (to me) analytics backend. There wasn't (and isn't) anything "wrong" with that, objectively. But I possess two things: one, a strong need for self-determination--I need to eat what I kill; and two, a love for learning that can manifest as antipathy toward using things that I don't understand. I ended up getting into finance proper and spending six years as a multi-asset prop trader at a gigantic hedge fund and then a gigantic bank, living in NYC and London. I've ultimately realized that I want to help build stuff that people use, so my lovely wife and I moved to SF and are building a life here.

bootload 15y ago

'I should be 1 of those people who can help others in this situation, not just a passive, helpless observer. I can help' Kudos Dan. I've noticed first hand as both a first-responder & bystander the different ways people react. It's broadly in 2 categories, those paralysed by the automatic Fear/Flight/Freeze response and those Individuals who shape the instinctual response with a trained response, overriding the Survival Stress Reaction [0] most people exhibit. You see 2 groups of people: those frozen by instinct and others who run towards trouble. People who are trained to respond run towards trouble. The story Dan has written is a natural human story telling response to traumatic events. Re-telling the story(s) lets you make sense of what has happened and re-gain control over their own destiny. Safety is also being sought here. Control, safety & the knowledge you won't die. Which brings me to my next point. Not everyone wakes up thinking, today's the day I'm going to be injured or killed then watch other people get injured or killed? Police, Ambo's, firemen, soldiers are exposed to this threat every day. They train hard and have the necessary support structures (sort-of) to survive. Civilians don't, so Scar stories of survival fulfil an important role. People who have been in situations such as @swombat as a civvie or @mattdeboard in the military or @idan living in a potentially dangerous environment, the key thing they are striving for is to feel and be safe. Being safe is something you don't know you have until it's not there. [0] SSR or Survival Stress Reaction is where "a state where a ‘perceived’ high threat stimulus automatically engages the sympathetic nervous system.", Siddle.,B. "Sharpening the Warriors Edge: The Psychology & Science of Training" http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Warriors-Edge-Psychology-Training/dp/0964920506 http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Warriors-Edge-Psychology-Tr...

flannell 15y ago

My wife worked in the city for one of the big banks. A chap who worked there was in a similar situation. He missed the train that had the bombers on board, but he decided to grab a bus to work instead. This also had one of the bombers upstairs which moments later detonated killing most of the people on the bus. What made it even worse is that everyone who died that day was taken to a makeshift morgue on Moorgate which is overlooked by the people who worked in his team. A really shocking day.