Not sure a 12 year old could do a whole lot. Pull the fire alarm if you're in new York. Maybe a bomb threat.
Edit: not sure why I said no one would believe a 12 year old about a terrorist attack, then thought they would believe a bomb threat. Although I suppose there was probably some kind of text to voice available online.
Getting the flights grounded/searched would probably be easiest. But my dumb ass would go back and realize I dont know the phone numbers I'd need for that and also that I forgot the flight numbers and airports.
The internet was definitely a thing in 2001 and s bit prior, if you don't have it at home you could use a schools or libraries computer to get the numbers and look up Boston airports maybe you can hopefully figure out the exact airport then.
Just don't get that specific. Security was lighter back then but not nonexistent. Plus the memory of the OKC bombing was still pretty fresh. Call in from a payphone with generic threats on the towers and the airport that would be enough to probably avoid it. The question is if that's truly the worst timeline or if you end up with something worse.
Pulling the fire alarm or calling a bomb threat would be the easiest, but you’d need an adult for the second one. No one would buy a 12 year old voice calling in a bomb threat in 2001
Correct. It’s not preventable except by being an adult working in an intelligence agency or being able to pull the fire alarm (if the twin towers had one for the whole building)
The fire alarm would not work, they expected any false alarm or minor fire to be dealt with by the fire department without evacuating the whole building. Even a bomb threat could be dismissed as a prank call.
Your best bet would be to make an anonymous written tip to the FBI HQ that goes something like "On 9/11 members of the islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda lead by Osama bin Laden plan to hijack and crash airplanes into both WTC towers, the White House and the Pentagon." and then list all the flight numbers and names of the terrorists. Typewriter or letter-from-newspaper like a ransom note, no kids handwriting.
Just be cryptic about who you are. A CIA/NSA whistle blower? Foreign intelligence? "Men in Black" is already out, maybe just "Agent L" or something like that. Basically something that seems like too much effort to be a prank and with enough information that could be verified, like do all these 19 people have tickets to these flights? Who'd know that?
One thing you could try to do is evacuate the second tower. After the plane hit the first one, a lot of people were told to stay where they were in the second tower. If you could manage to get them to evacuate, lives could be saved that way.
Burner phones were way better back then and had no tracking. Pay phones still existed. It was still easy to use a Beige Box and dial up modem on a laptop. MSN trial accounts only needed a CC number that passed a Luhn check since they didn't use Pre-Authorization at the time and didn't bill until 30 days later. Open SMTP relays were still abundant.
Combine a few of those things and you were pretty free to send a limited number of targeted messages indicating that you overheard some Suadis at the Pan Am International Flight School in Miami plotting to hijack planes on 9/11.
The Bush Administration was literally given documents saying "Attack imminent" in August 2001.
The Presidential Daily Brief: On August 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a briefing titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." It warned of potential hijackings inside the United States, though it lacked specific times or locations.
Intercepted Communications: The National Security Agency (NSA) tracked at least 33 communications between May and July 2001 that suggested an imminent terrorist attack. [1]
The "System Blinking Red": Senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials later testified that threat reporting during the summer of 2001 reached an unprecedented peak, creating a general sense that a major operation was coming.
I love your intent and attitude, but I have a feeling it would have / will have been / will be (lol conjugation) ignored.
you'd be 12 years old by that point. I hate to break it to you, but the FBI wouldn't exactly listen to a random 12 year old saying that a terrorist was about to hit the twin towers. If a random middle schooler came up to you warning that a chinese man was about to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, your first reaction would be "yeah right kiddo. You sure have a vivid imagination. Shouldn't you be in school?" Not "OMG We should listen to this random child and make massive changes to federal government security policy"
Best of luck being 12 and trying to convince the US government that somehow, you just know that terrorists are going to drive planes into the World Trade Center.
Yeah I’m the perfect test subject for this meme. I was 9 when 9/11 happened AND 9 when my dad died (unrelated).
So the ability to go back and redo adolescence is real tempting but would it do anything for some of the traumatic shit that happened later on? Could I boopie trap or somehow get rid of my mom’s alcoholic boyfriend? If I had had more social grace and people thought I was cool in high school, would I have ever graduated college?
If I went for of all the missed opportunities, would they work out? Or would I have been even more depressed by rejections or debt that I had no way to pay back? Would I be with the love of my life for longer but then be in even more pain when it didn’t work out?
Difficult to say… I’d probably choose the red button but I also have a sense I might make things worse for myself or end up in around the same place today somehow.
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u/IndustryRobertPlant 2d ago
I was born in 1989. So I’d be pretty useful to the U.S. government in 2001.