WI: "No one" did 9/11?

[SealTheRealDeal]

For what ever reason Germanwings Flight 9525 came to mind today, and I got an idea.

What if a few particularly depressed pilots agreed to a particularly destructive suicide pact?* How does this affect domestic perceptions of mental health? Is there a spike in discrimination based on mental health? Is there a push towards increasing the availability and quality of mental healthcare? Both? What happens when the deadliest terrorist attack in history is carrier out by "just some nobodies"?

*and we'll assume they left some sort of note(s) to make it clear that this wasn't the action of islamists or wingnuts or cultists or whatever else would be one's first guess.

 

[overoceans]

It might be hard to portray this as a mental health issue, if it's a bunch of guys acting colletively. Maybe if it was teenagers doing a suicide pact, or even a school shooting, you'd have some media handwringing about "alienated and depressed youth", but if it's actual adults, they're more likely just to be viewed as something like the Manson Family. The spin would be that the Alpha Personality pilot was the leader, and the rest of them were a bunch of eff-ups going along for the ride.

 

[MrGreyOwl]

It might be hard to portray this as a mental health issue, if it's a bunch of guys acting colletively. Maybe if it was teenagers doing a suicide pact, or even a school shooting, you'd have some media handwringing about "alienated and depressed youth", but if it's actual adults, they're more likely just to be viewed as something like the Manson Family. The spin would be that the Alpha Personality pilot was the leader, and the rest of them were a bunch of eff-ups going along for the ride.

Yes. Oh, there will be some new regulations about never leaving a pilot alone in the cockpit, mandatory psych evaluation every month, but that's all.

Also, conspiracy theorists would go even nuttier than they currently are.

 

[Theoretical_TJ]

The pilot or pilots in question get villified on an almost Biblical level for (1) killing their passengers and (2) killing a bunch of people in the WTC too, especially if they left notes. Anti-suicide autopilot also becomes mandatory. I'd imagine the suicide prevention tools and advocacy would have a rather more coercive flavor to them than they do IOTL.

 

[Divergent54]

Mental health issues would be brought up and would be gutted and vivisected by the mainstream media across the West. I'd imagine public outrage to blurr facts about mental health issues along the way due to how misinformed people are in numerous issues. Expect psychological examinations to be mandatory monthly for all pilots and for people to be more sceptical about pilot health in general. The outrage culture would also misdirect mental health issues greatly and would probably stigmatise it more so than OTL

 

[Geon]

Plus, sadly, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists would really be having a field day going off in all sorts of strange directions.

 

[overoceans]

The thing is, if they're planning to take out a few thousand lives along with their own, it's gonna be hard to write suicide notes that just sound like wails from the heart over personal issues. Anything they write is likely gonna try to explain why they're killing all those people, at which point it's going to veer into sociopolitical territory, even if just along the lines of "These brain-dead, consumerist zombies going to work day after day in sterile cold towers etc etc". At which point, the public probably just files them away as a somewhat less environmentally concerned version of the Unabomber.

Long and the short, I don't really see this rising to the level of a mental-health issue, as far as the public is concerned. The only way it MIGHT is if the point of the attacks is to draw attention to mental-health issues, not as manifested by the personal depression of the perpetrators, but as a wider social issue that they want to draw attention to, IOW "to prove that we need more spending of mental health, we're conducting theese attacks". But that's a bit of a stretch.

 

[overoceans]

Socialists Patients' Collective

A difference between these guys and the OP, however, is that the SPC wasn't about commiting suicide because they were depressed. They WERE mentally ill, but had an analysis by which the capitalist system was the cause of their sickness. So they tried to attack said economic system, in the manner of numerous other self-styled leftist revolutionary groups of the late 60s/early 70s.

 

[Wolttaire]

Well no war terror but that obvious.... no it just be like the drug war

 

[Electric Monk]

See FedEx Flight 705 for something similar. That dude had a a proper plan with a goal. I could buy something like that on a bigger scale easily.

Edit: Dollop podcast about it

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Well there's going to be a long hard look for any connections between the flight crews in question. 4 pilots deciding to crash their airliners into high profile buildings on the same day with no previous link would be extremely hard to believe. If they have a link through a religious or political organisation it wont be difficult to demonise that link, and if there's even a hint of a foreign link to that organisation all bets are off.

 

[Divergent54]

Well there's going to be a long hard look for any connections between the flight crews in question. 4 pilots deciding to crash their airliners into high profile buildings on the same day with no previous link would be extremely hard to believe. If they have a link through a religious or political organisation it wont be difficult to demonise that link, and if there's even a hint of a foreign link to that organisation all bets are off.

I mean, the OP did say there's a note left behind so if that note was shown as evidence, then possible points would be headed towards mental health by mainstream media in the west

 

[Unknown]

See FedEx Flight 705 for something similar. That dude had a a proper plan with a goal. I could buy something like that on a bigger scale easily.

And it came close to happening. Auburn Calloway (the guy who perpetrated the FedEx Flight 705 attack) was originally going to be a part of a three-person crew (which included a female first officer, IIRC) and his plan was to kill the other two and crash it into the FedEx terminal; his plan was for his family would get the insurance (IIRC, FedEx had found out that he'd lied about his flying experience and had forged documents, and he was going to be fired). His original plan was scrapped when the original crew, which included Calloway, was over the maximum eight-hour time limit by one minute. This meant that Calloway and the other two were grounded. Since FedEx allowed its crews to fly on cargo planes as passengers free of charge, Calloway hitched a ride as a passenger and attacked the crew that flew the flight, injuring all three so badly they never flew again (imagine what could have happened if he and the other crew members had flown as scheduled).

That was horrifying...

 

[MFP4073]

Any stats on how many times 2+ depressed people who aren't lovers (or emotionally attached) randomly decide to commit suicide in a way that causes mass death, requires long-term planning, precise co-ordination and then follow it out?

This seems a little far-fetched without a unifying cause - Depression isn't a "cause" that recruits people like revenge or political goals.

I can see a twisted individual attempting to co-ordinate this and then the rest (the depressed people) turning the individual in.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Hmm.... a passenger aircraft headed to JFK airport drifts slowly off initial approach. Inquiries from ATC elicit no response. The deviation from the approach path increases and deviates with increasing rapidity. Tho the aircraft transponder continues as normal there rare no voice transmissions from the passenger plane. Its flight path becomes a decent and a curve, a shallow spiral towards Manhatten. Eventually the decending aircraft intersects one of the WTC towers, resulting in the complete disintegration of the aircraft, a fire from the residual fuel, and 90 minutes later the collapse of the tower. Investigation reveals nothing useful about the aircrew, the passengers, or the aircraft, or of the last 90 minutes of the flight. The flight recorders were severely damaged & little of use was recovered. While ordinarily the auto pilot would have to be disconnected to reproduce the final flight path, subsequent investigation shows a few malfunctions in the engines or controls could overcome the efforts of the auto pilot to keep a correct flight path & allow the actual path to be reproduced. Remnanats of the crew are to few and too contaminated for any conclusion.

 

[Changundramon]

Stigma against mentally ill people becomes strong enough that the number of hospitalizations would sky rocket. Hiding depression and other conditions out of shame is already normal in a lot of places OTL. In this TL- oh, boy.