WI: Bush "killed" by 9/11

Will GWB become a martyr ITTL?


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To the OP; I don't think it could happen. Heart attacks aren't total freak of nature events. Trying to induce one in someone who lived decades in good health IOTL after the POD isn't too plausible.

The more realistic way to do it would be to have Bush get killed in the actual attacks. The President isn't often in the Capitol and the White House is an extremely hard target, so either the Pentagon or the towers would be the ticket. Imagine that Bush due to some butterfly goes to New York (perhaps he is promoting some action related to the financial industry) and before he goes to the NYSC to make the speech eats breakfast with donors and bigshots in the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower. The plane hits, the tower collapses, and he dies.

Now THAT is a timeline I would read.

Marine one would not hesitate to land on the top of the wtc, fire or no fire. Imagine those pictures with Bush covered in smoke running in the helicopter as it takes off from a burning building and then a president landing in an open area coming out from the helicopter covered in ash.
 

I don't buy Bush dying of a heart attack that early, in fact I think it's completely ASB. He was extremely healthy, in his early fifties, and had a very pronounced history of male longevity in his family tree, which generally predicts how long a man himself will live (George HW is in his 90s, Prescott Bush, GWB's grandfather, lived to his late seventies, and Prescott's father survived into his mid-80s). Heart attacks don't happen easily, especially to people that young who pulled four of a kind from the genetic deck.
 
Marine one would not hesitate to land on the top of the wtc, fire or no fire. Imagine those pictures with Bush covered in smoke running in the helicopter as it takes off from a burning building and then a president landing in an open area coming out from the helicopter covered in ash.

They couldn't. The North Tower is chock full of navigational obstacles, not least of which being that enormous TV antennae and all of the littler ones. Here's exhibit A:
ufiles516.jpg


Yeah, all I have to say is "good luck." There is an extremely good reason why this was ruled out IOTL. There are also potential issues with flying into that much smoke. Plane engines eat a lot of oxygen...if they are starved for that because they're breathing too much smoke, that has the potential to cause some very serious problems very quickly.
 
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I don't buy Bush dying of a heart attack that early, in fact I think it's completely ASB. He was extremely healthy, in his early fifties, and had a very pronounced history of male longevity in his family tree, which generally predicts how long a man himself will live (George HW is in his 90s, Prescott Bush, GWB's grandfather, lived to his late seventies, and Prescott's father survived into his mid-80s). Heart attacks don't happen easily, especially to people that young who pulled four of a kind from the genetic deck.

That was what my friend wrote on the wiki. His POD is the Flight 93 Passenger revolt fails crashes in the Capitol building. The damage to an American monument, the symbol of the U.S.' government legislative branch and democractic principles, were too much for Bush to handle. So he dies of sudden heart attack in front of the school children in Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida.
 
That was what my friend wrote on the wiki. His POD is the Flight 93 Passenger revolt fails crashes in the Capitol building. The damage to an American monument, the symbol of the U.S.' government legislative branch and democractic principles, were too much for Bush to handle. So he dies of sudden heart attack in front of the school children in Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida.

Like I say, I don’t think that’s possible. Certain conditions have to be in place for a heart attack to happen. They weren’t with George W. Bush.
 
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