THE FUTURE OF SKYSCRAPERS

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, a line of thought occurred to me that I have not caught as much as a whisper of in the media coverage. I am somewhat surprised at that, but then, there is so much to think about and to rethink in the wake of this tragedy.

There are two attack sites: the World Trade Center towers, in New York, and the Pentagon building, in DC. In terms strictly of the impacts, explosions and fires, the damage at each site was comparable. There may have been a larger loss of life in the initial hits on the Trade Center because those buildings were civilian, and more densely populated. The Pentagon was constructed three decades earlier than the WTC.

Why then is the devastation and loss of life less in the Washington attack?

The answer seems clear to me. The Pentagon building is comparable in size to the WTC towers. Both are (were) virtual cities in their own right, housing tens of thousands of work units, offices, personnel. The Pentagon is moderately tall, several stories, but it is widely spaced out, spread out. Only the area directly hit, and the adjacent areas that were pummeled with debris and the force of the impact and explosion, and the fires that burned, were affected. The rest of the building not only remains standing, but is operational and continues to function. Yet in New York, a catastrophic structural failure led to a grim escalation of the damage. The chain of events set off by the crashes there almost defies belief. I understand the physics of it, all too well, but that they managed to induce the collapse of both towers, and to do so on a business day when they were occupied, and to manage to inflict enough of the right kinds of damage to bring the towers down so quickly, before all the survivors could reach safety, that is where they achieved their "success". That is what made this event into more than a terrorist attack, but rather a successful military operation that has incredibly achieved a significant amount of damage, by completely destroying a vital nerve center of the American economy.

The towers fell, quite simply, because they were tall. The weight of floors above the crash sites allowed gravity to unlock all the stored kinetic energy placed into the building when these pieces were lifted into place using powered equipment. The building itself -- indeed any skyscraper -- is thus, in a sense, a bomb waiting to go off. These bombs will not go off on their own, but each building's structural integrity can withstand only so much applied force.

Is it wise to build skyscrapers?

Terrorism clearly presents an unaccounted for danger to buildings like the Trade Towers. I saw on a report that the structure of these buildings were engineered to withstand a collision from a Boeing 707 jet, the main airliner at the time of design and construction. They tried to account for an airplane crash, and they apparently succeeded, up to a point. Both buildings remained standing after the initial impacts. All that jet fuel and the fires, the heat, it was all too much, and down down down they came.

I remember as a child, watching the blockbuster movie, The Towering Inferno, and wondering at the time, with such a danger possible, why continue to build such tall buildings? Just because we can? Is that really wise? I can't help but ask that question over and over. Is it WISE to be doing this? Terror isn't the only threat to these buildings. There are natural forces, especially earthquakes, which could threaten them. If a real war broke out, they would make for easy targets. If a single missile can down one of them, the damage that the building itself would do in toppling would multiply the effectiveness of the attack. We've now seen that demonstrated to us in the most real, most horrible fashion possible. Therefore, is it wise to build these modern marvels? Have we erred in our reach for the stars, in this way? Have we grown infatuated with our own ability to construct these towers, without properly considering whether or not we SHOULD?

As a native of the Washington, DC area, I have a perspective that most other Americans may not, and may not even be aware of. You see, there are no tall buildings in Washington. None. Zero. This is the case because the city planners have made an artistic choice. The Capitol Building with its shining white rotunda, and the spire of the Washington Monument, the great American obelisk, are to dominate the Washington skyline. They are and shall remain the tallest structures in the city. Thus, the building codes and laws prevent the construction of taller buildings, or even rival buildings. The business district is unlike any other in the world. It is... unimpressive looking. Row upon row upon row of office buildings, all uniformly about twelve stories tall, their rooves almost all level with one another in the densest areas.

I will never forget my first trip to Philadelphia. The buildings there rise much taller. They are enormously more physically impressive than anything to be found in Washington. New York has -- or at least certainly had, although may still have -- the most impressive skyline in the world. The WTC was the centerpiece of that, but to hear the description of Building Seven, which also collapsed, as a "mere forty-seven stories" is alien to me and my experiences on the streets of DC. For that is four times as tall as any building in my city, and there can no "mere" about it.

If Washington, DC, can live with buildings no higher than twelve stories tall, so can any other city on the face of this planet. I know that tall buildings, particularly distinctive ones like the tower in San Francisco, the Space Needle in Seattle, and the Arch in St. Louis, are viewed as the defining structures of a city, but perhaps the time has come to reconsider this. Are we not NEEDLESSLY increasing our vulnerability to both disaster and to attack, by constructing buildings taller than they need to be? We have more than enough land to spread things out a little more. This obsession with packing more and more and more into the tiniest bits of "prime real estate" is a mistake, in my view. I have believed this most of my life, but now my worst fears have come true, and I must comment on this.

I'm certainly not advocating the dismantling of existing structures which, but for extrordinary threats and circumstances, are fully safe and viable. But should we not reconsider building any more of these giants? Should we not opt for smaller, wider structures, in the vein of the Pentagon building? Yes, it would take more land, and so yes, it would cost a little more, but LOOK at the cost being paid now for the vulnerability of the trade towers to be toppled entirely by a single hit, and spread damage out on a radius of several blocks. Should we not cease to build more of this kind of structure? Not out of fear, but merely out of precaution and common sense?

The east coast of the United States has not built its buildings as sturdily as the west coast, yet we are not immune to earthquakes here. There are active faults all over the US. When (not if, but when) the next major earthquake strikes in the east, are we not at risk to see more skyscrapers tumble?

This is a question that hope sees the light of day and is given all due consideration, not just here in the US, but around the world. Let us not fail to learn ALL of the bitter lessons presented to us by this tragedy.

THE FUTURE OF SHANKSVILLE, PA

Here are two paragraphs that I wrote on the night of September 11:

"I firmly believe that, with all the cell phones people had on these planes, that passengers on that last flight heard news from somebody over the phones about the crashes that had already taken place, and some of those Americans put two and two together. I believe they displayed true courage and rushed the cockpit and forced that plane to the ground somehow. It could not have come down in a better place, in terms of sparing the lives of people on the ground. That's what I would have tried, if I KNEW that I would be dead anyway if I sat and did nothing. The chance to make a difference, to help somebody else if you can, that's the true spirit of our nation. I know that's easy to say, that I would be brave in a desperate situation, and who knows in the heat of the moment, but I hope I would have had the resolve to inspire others to join me in trying to do something, and to act on my own if not. There was nothing at all physically wrong with that plane. It swerved one way, then another, perhaps with a fight going on at those very moments. Then it went down, nose dive. There was no apparent reason for them to lose control... unless the passengers fought back."

"If evidence turns up to confirm my beliefs, I will be asking my congressman to push for a memorial at the crash site. Heroes are just ordinary people who, when the moment is forced on them, reach within and find the strength to do extraordinary things. That could have been anybody on that flight. The folks on the other flights may not have had enough real warning about the intentions of the hijackers, to be pushed to fight back to try to crash the plane. I think somehow that some passengers on this crash near my house did get word or figure it out in time, and saved us from further tragedy. If true, then we ought not to forget what they achieved."

That was on the first night.

On the second day, September 12, the FBI telephoned my mother's house, looking to speak with my stepfather. They were not home at the time, and when they returned the call after checking the answering machine, the applicable FBI agents were not available to speak with them. Perhaps on the 13th, this connection will be made and the eyewitness account conveyed to the FBI.

Will that information be of any use to them? I do not know. I have already written about what my stepfather told me that he saw. There was not a lot of relevant information. He saw the plane flying over at low altitude. The plane was intact, no smoke, no signs of trauma, no signs of anything wrong at that moment other than the altitude. He said it was low enough to make out details like the windows, the area of the plane where the windows started (just ahead of the wing, he told me, and running back almost to the tail), and how high they were located in the fuselage. He described a large cargo bay door in the belly of the plane. He said it flew almost directly over the house. And that is about the limit of what he saw.

However, I have been thinking, and the more I think about it, the more I begin to see possible importance to these limited observations. Tying this in with what other local eyewitnesses observed just a mile later in the flight path, that THIS appears to be the moment that something was going wrong on that plane. My stepdad saw a smooth flight, and a mile later, local men playing golf RIGHT HERE IN MY OWN VILLAGE witnessed the plane swerve first one way and then another, as if in confusion. Or perhaps with some sort of struggle for control of the plane taking place among different people. Witnesses from near where the plane went down described it pitching, then nose-diving. Nobody saw any smoke or other signs of physical trauma to the plane and its systems. It may have been just after passing over my mom's house, and out of view of my stepdad from where he was standing (on the northwest side of the house) that the plane began to swerve.

I have heard unconfirmed reports of two different passengers on that plane phoning loved ones to say that they were going to confront the attackers, and to say final goodbyes. If true, it may have been during the moment that this plane was flying over my mom's house that the battle for control began, and was taking place as it flew over the ridge where the golf course lies, and was won by the Americans in the following seconds, when the plane was directed to its destruction a few miles further away. This scenerio at least fits with the observations of the witnesses and the final fate of the plane. If there were indeed calls placed by passengers, and they in fact indicated that they were going to fight back, it seems certain that they were successful in the skies over my county here in PA.

Will Shanksville, the nearest village to the crash site, become the home of an American memorial? The odds of that seem to be growing, at least in my mind.

THE FUTURE OF DIABLO II

Bolty has announced the imminent closure of the Lurker Lounge. I can't say as that this comes as a surprise to me, but I will miss the place. I valued it as a resource, gathering place, and heart of the portion of the Diablo community I care the most about. Apparently, Bolty was already intending to bow out of the Lounge effort. So his reasons for shutting it down (and not handing it over to someone else? Like Griselda?) are his own and not really pertaining to the attack.

He did make one small remark that I want to comment on, though. He wondered how the Lounge could be at all considered important, in the wake of the attack. Wondering what is or isn't worth it, yes, this is an opportunity to reflect on your life and the choices you are making, but you have that opportunity every hour of every day. Tragedy does force change, and sometimes it takes tragedy to move people off of clinging to genuinely unimportant matters, and on to vital activity. But it doesn't have to be that way, certainly never on the individual level, and in my view not a national level either. There were chances to avoid today's fate, that we didn't take. There were whispers, messages, writing on the wall... but we were not willing to ditch the status quo and act. So the messages get louder and louder, and today's is as loud as it gets, a once-in-a-century wake up call.

This may sound harsh, but now is absolutely the LAST time to be feeling sorry for ourselves as a nation. We should instead stick to clean emotions: anger, hurt, shock, disbelief, pain, fear -- love, honor, courage, clarity, determination. Any of those, or all of them. Even nausea and horror. But not self-pity, not worry, not doubt and anxiety, certainly not guilt. Let's not mire ourselves in self-destruction. That's what the terrorists WANT us to do. That, or fly into foaming rage and overreact.

The Lounge was (and could still be) important. AS important as these events? No, clearly not, but this is not reason enough to abandon it, just because it's only a game.

Yes, the country WILL be changed by this. Whether that is a change for better, or for worse, depends on us, the American people. Let's grieve, let's heal, let's get mad and break some heads and blow things up, and take actions that are overdue and then some, BUT... let us not cower in fear, worry ourselves to death about what our neighbors might be up to, nor be afraid to carry on with life. If anybody's doing too much gaming, they can stop or cut back, but I for one won't stop gaming just because some bastards pulled a fast one on my nation. Airport security will have to be beefed up, and perhaps now we will be willing to pay the dear and costly price necessary to wage real war on terrorism. But America does not shrink from challenges nor cower at threats nor allow others to dictate the terms of any war (well, unless they have China backing them up. Then we might take it slowly and fight with one hand tied behind our backs, but it's not a thing to be entered into lightly, playing brinkmanship with China). We firm up our resolve and, once moved to motion, act decisively. I know that's difficult when the enemy is so cowardly as not to present us with a target, but that's part of the price we haven't been willing to pay: maintaining enough human intelligence to learn all we need to know to identify the source of attacks, FIND the targets, and firmly retaliate.

We will be STRONGER after this. They've struck a blow, and damn it hurts right now. They landed a critical hit with almost no resources expended, other than the human cost of highly trained suicide attackers and lots of planning. But they can only tarnish us, bruise us a little, insult us and wreak small-scale damage. These terrorists rely on randomnity, and the poor math skills of average people, to add weight to their power they couldn't possibly garner any other way. By force of POSSIBILITY, they invoke terror on a mass of people they have no other way to harm, physically. A terrorist strike, it's a miniscule risk of being victimized... it's like playing the lotto. It MAY happen to you, but you can't afford to live your life around it. Yet they hope the mere threat of such attacks, being unacceptable even when the risk is very small, can disrupt our society and force us to change, to pull back, to be afraid.

The one thing we have to fear from terrorists is the chance of a nuclear incident. THAT we must work harder to prevent, NOW, while we still can. We need the ability to stop a single missile, or three, or five. Yet stop short of building the kind of defense that could make other major nuclear powers nervous, by shellacking the stalemate, the detente we now "enjoy" with them. If nothing else, we must remind ourselves to be humble in our own hearts, not complacent. We are NOT beyond the threat of a rogue setting off an atomic bomb, and the destruction of THAT would make September 11's events pale on the same scale that the collapse of the trade center makes playing games seem trivial.

No, we can't just go on with life as normal. But we can get back to normal life, and quickly, while we work to close the loopholes in our system and correct for the mistakes we've indulged in. All it takes is the will to get it done, and THAT is one thing an attack of this magnitude can guarantee. They've stirred the ants nest with this, and now they're going to find out what it's like when we start fighting back.

I'll miss the Lounge. I'm wondering where the Lounge patrons are going to go now. There doesn't seem to be a likely substitute on hand, and what will happen to the community without a clean transition? Lok says he will move to the Amazon Basin (linked from my site). That's a good place. I don't know if it can serve in the way that the Lounge did, but if there is no Lounge, people will either go elsewhere or fade away. Oh well, I guess Bolty's not feeling the love for the community any more, and knowing all I know, I can understand that. I wish him the best in all of his future endeavors.

Games are part of American life, though. They have to keep to their place, lest we value them more than they deserve, but that's true of anything. And I'll be damned if I let a few terrorists push me into living a cowardly life, making my choices out of fear fear fear, instead of where I want to go and what I believe I can dream of achieving. Some things will change, as they should, but this is America, and I do not believe we've grown to be all that soft now. Or... am I wrong? Judging by the lack of riots and other dopey shiznit in the streets of New York and Washington, I'd say we are earning passing marks here, so far.

So what impact will this attack have on Diablo II? I have no idea. We were apparently already destined to lose the Lurker Lounge. What players do from here, I have no idea. There has been a LOT of posting going on at Realms Beyond, and I've been visiting there (that's also linked from my page). That is diehard variant country, though, and can't hope to contain all of the wider audience found at the LL. There is the Amazon Basin, and there's Dii.net. I'm not personally happy with the hardline commercial aspect of Dii.net, at times, but I have generally greatly valued their resources as a whole. Their forums, though... I'm not sure I am fully comfortable there. We shall see.

I have no idea how this may impact games and gaming, and the gaming community and industry, as a whole, but time will have to bear that out, as well. I am expecting that little will change, though. Those are businesses like any other, and people need recreational activity, so... the games will go on. Right?

I can say, at least, that my site will continue as normal, for as long as Diablo continues to be fun to play. Moradin is working on more artwork. I am still playing some, although I had already cut back from what I had been doing. Wussie's story will still be completed, and there is Sissy yet to play. I probably will not ever play out all of the character designs that initially interested me, but that was always true. Sometimes looks fun, or is fun for a while, then fades.

So yes, this site is alive and well. Just this morning, I heard from an old and dear Descent friend, whom I hung out with extensively for a time a few years back. He is from Germany, and I played some of my finest games of Descent with him and with his son, both very talented players. He was surfing through German Diablo sites and ran across a link to my page somewhere. Such a small world, he told me, as he happily reestablished contact with me. Small world indeed, and made smaller (in a positive way, ultimately, I believe) by the response that is happening and also yet to come, to the murderous attacks that have taken place.

If not for games and gaming with people all over the world, I would not have met nor shared any time with these fine people. Games ARE important, at least up to a point. Anything that people do that is peaceful and harmless, is important. Creative works, recreation, conversation... these are simple things, but they can and do bring people together, and that, I believe, is important.

THE FUTURE OF AIR TRAVEL

I have flown the route from Dulles to LA-X. That was twelve years ago, now, but it was my first (and so far my only) use of airline travel. (I drove back across the country, from west to east. Got to visit parks and monuments, to visit cities like Las Vegas, Kansas City, St. Louis and Indianapolis.)

That's something else I keep returning to. I've flown that route. So have tens of thousands of others, but it is still eerie. I remember that flight and the time in the airports very well, because it was all a new experience to me. I remember Dulles, which is such a large, spacious airport compared to Reagan National, near the Pentagon. That one is such a tiny airport, with smallish runways and right on the river. I flew out of Dulles because it IS larger and I felt safer there. I remember some of the random people I met there. I remember what little of LA-X that I saw. It was a much shorter distance there, from the terminal to the curb, where a friend was waiting to pick me up. I remember the flight, it lasted about five hours. I remember looking down on the clouds, out the window, and later looking down on pockets of lights after darkness fell. I remember the airline meal, the bag of peanuts, and other small details, and that was all twelve years ago now.

What would I have done if that flight had been hijacked? What would I have been thinking and feeling? What would I have experienced if they had diverted that flight and used it as a missile? I cannot even begin to imagine it. But it is still eerie.

Considering how much devastation can be wrought by hijacking a plane and turning it into a missile, it seems clear that drastic security measures and upgrades will be required. The cost of NOT doing so, now that the path has been laid by these terrorists, is unacceptable. We cannot and will not allow this to happen again. But what is that going to mean? What will it cost? How will that affect American business? How will it affect everyday travellers? Average citizens? How much will it take to prevent hijackings? How willing will passengers be to fight back if this happens again?

Is hijacking now a dead-in-the-water activity? I can't imagine, after September 11, that any group of passengers will EVER AGAIN trust hijackers not to be harboring the intent of using the plane as a weapon against some specified target. The stakes have been raised on hijackings. Passengers aren't ever again going to sit quietly while somebody rams planes into buildings. They would have to bring firearms and enough ammo to kill everyone on board. And can they even pull that off without depressurizing the airplane by shooting holes in it?

There are more questions here than I can even consider, at this time. There is so much to think about. Changes must be made, but which changes, and when, and why. People who fly, they will never again be able to erase from their minds, should a hijacking take place, the events of September 11. Even if a person or group who does hijack a plane intends only to go from Point A to Point B, who is going to believe them? Is it not going to become a matter of immediate life and death? American men (at least many of them) will not sit idly in their seats and do nothing, BELIEVING THAT THEY ARE ALREADY DEAD ANYWAY.

In that regard, yet another line has been crossed. The United States may be able to get back to normal, but these hijackings, they have indeed forever changed the face of airline flying. Even around the world, where security is higher... I don't think anybody except possibly Israel has had to deal with the kind of threat posed by suicide hijackers who would use the plane as a missile. That's now a possibility dancing through the minds of all kinds of desperate and extreme people the world over, and we must all guard against it. But how? How? There is much to be considered and decided.

THE FUTURE OF VICTIMS' FAMILIES

The night of September 12, I learned that a friend of some of my friends in DC, a flight attendant and mother of two, was working on that American flight that hit the Pentagon. God rest her soul. I do not even want to think about this any more, after hearing of what they were doing to the flight attendants to distract and upset the pilots, and lure them out. The lost flight attendant, her name was Michele Heidenberger. There is mention of her in the Washington Post coverage. The children she leaves behind, I do not know and have not met. They were babysitted once upon a time by someone close to friends of mine in DC.

All across the net, as I touch base with various people, groups, and communities with which I have or once had ties, I am learning of people who know of someone either missing or who was in harm's way and survived. I am touched anew by each new person I learn of who has been affected, or who knows somebody who has been harmed. This is not like other tragedies, where the loss of life is counted in individuals, or at worst, by the dozens. The losses here are staggering, and the ripples of it reach farther through our nation and our society than I first understood. There were not only American citizens lost in this attack, but workers and visitors from other nations, as well. Who and how many, we have no idea. My condolences go out to ALL those who have been directly affected.

I am praying for the families of the victims. Their loss, I cannot fathom, but I am praying that their lives will not be completely destroyed by this, even though they have been irrevocably harmed and scarred. The bill for the price of freedom has come due again, and again, America is paying that price with our blood.

- Sirian

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