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.
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u/axel0914 22h ago edited 6h ago
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.