WI: 50,000 Killed On 9/11

Something else that popped up in my head while reading this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks

Looks like the largest number of deaths among non-Americans were from Canada, Japan, India, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, the Philippines, Trindad and Tobago and Germany.

Around 12% of the victims of OTL attacks were non-American, so maybe we are looking at a few thousand more victims from other nations? For some of these nations the deaths of their citizens in this ATL 9/11 might measure in the hundreds?
 
The initial WTC bombing in the 90s garage bomb was planned to have one tower fall on the other. That would have killed everyone inside and a lot of people around the towers.

Now, in the 2001 bombings its tough to make the first tower topple on the other, perhaps two planes hitting a lot lower?

Yeah, plenty of people escaped from the towers because the plane impacts were high up and non-synchronised. So, get the planes to synchronise their attacks and hit much lower down. The towers probably still take an hour to collapse, but there's a good chance that everyone above the point of impact is trapped and doomed.

So, how many people were in the two towers above, say, the 30th floor? Not 50k, sure, but it could be 15k.
 
Although the OTL toll was huge and brought about feelings of great sadness and disgust here, I think that were you to reach something as huge as 50,000 it would almost create a collective attitude amongst all western nations that this wasnt an attack on America, but all of us. This may in turn prevent a lot of the feelings that Iraq and Afghanistan were simply 'us lot following America into their wars' and that we would all willingly join the war on terror.

Just my two pence anyway.
 
This is very much the problem of asymmetrical warfare. Reminds me of the guy I spent an evening trying to talk down from a position of 'next time there's an attempted terrorist attack on this country, we nuke Tehran. Show these fuckers what happens.'

It took him an hour to accept that the Sunni and Shia divide even existed.

That sounds like a very unpleasant evening. He actually didn't know Sunni and Shia existed?
:eek:
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
This. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that many, even perhaps a majority of Americans would want to do those things if an attack on this scale occurred, but getting the government to actually go along with something like that in this day and age is a completely different story. If you're going to kill civilians, at least give yourself some plausible deniability, as few want to defend people who (publicly) intentionally kill civilians.

I think it's interesting that you say "many, even perhaps a majority" would want to brutally massacre people and then desecrate their bodies, but that only a "few" would want to defend people who actually did that. I think you might have touched on something significant about the American mindset.
 
The world reaction will depend a lot on the Arab world reaction vs the numbers of casualties.

Celebrating that may be less likely and as said many more families directly affected. The US dropping nukes is fantasy but

Pro rating up thats 670 Indians or 4x the number killed in the Mumbai attacks that could get bloody.
 
I think it's interesting that you say "many, even perhaps a majority" would want to brutally massacre people and then desecrate their bodies, but that only a "few" would want to defend people who actually did that. I think you might have touched on something significant about the American mindset.
Well, people easily stretch the definition of what a civilian is when their own side kills people. At other times, they note extenuating circumstances, or blame others for the civilians killed by their side. It becomes highly difficult to do at least the last two when officials on your side have actively voiced their intention to kill civilians.
 
This one thing I could see happening. One, possibly two Trident missiles have their warheads off loaded and replaced with the test packages used during test launches. These get fired at a number of targets In the Mideast. The Russians and Chinese are made fully aware. After the packages impact Bush demands all responsible parties handed over and also states it all stops now. Any more acts of terror any where will be seen as an act against all nations. And the next launch will not be blanks.
 
That could have been what he meant, I didn't see the whole interview, but they were surprised that Americans chose to put troops on the ground. They honestly thought that the Americans would just bomb everything that moves.

But that's almost entirely what happened. The US bombed everything that moved, and handed suitcases of money and weapons to the Taliban's opposition. With air support and unlimited backing, the Taliban's rivals turned the tables on the civil war. Thereafter, America money has been the deciding factor.

Hell, the Russians couldn't hold the country with 150,000 men. The US troops amount to maybe 30,000 to 50,000. The total of international commitments are probably less than 100,000.
 
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