And I mean in like, The 2011 Japan earthquake where our days literally got faster, COVID because … Y’know. COVID. Etc.
What’s a time in your life you experienced something like that, when was it and what ended up happening to you?
9/11. It was the only time in my life I saw newspapers publish extra editions.
For those too young, extra edition as in “extra, extra, read all about it,” when a news story is so big that the newspapers publish a whole nother edition later in the day.
Talking of the news on September 11th, 2001, I had that day off and was sleeping in that morning when my sleep was interrupted by my (landline) phone ringing, I groggily answered and it was my best friend frantically telling me to put on the news. I fumbled, still half-asleep, for the TV remote while mumbling “what channel?” and she said “any channel!” just as I turned the TV on and, sure enough, whatever channel it was on was showing what was happening.
It’s a funny trope in film and TV to have characters generically tell each other to “turn on the TV/radio/etc.” without specifying which channel or whatever, and the required plot-fueling info just happens to be broadcasting live on whatever station is already tuned in. That’s the only day I remember that actually happening to me in real life.
For me too. Watching that footage where it’s live and the second plane hits and everyone is speechless trying to process. Longest 5 seconds we will ever witness, it’s 5 seconds that went from “oh my an accident how could this happen” to “the world is not going to be the same after this, there’s no going back”
I must say that nothing afterwards has ever given me the feeling of This Changes Everything quite the way the fall of the Berlin Wall did.
Two evenings ago I had dinner with a friend who grew up on the other side of the wall. It’s not something that we really talk about very often, but it’s impossible to forget.
Something similar happens to me. I get shocked every time I meet someone who was born in the USSR.
2016 Brexit referendum was quite a turning point.
2016 - woke up and swore at the TV twice that year.
Once for brexit, and again for the US elections.
Never have I had so little faith in humanity.
oh my God it’s been almost 10 years hasn’t it? It feels like it was maybe 3 or 4 to me.
I had a crippling migraine. I thought I was going to die. I crawled to the bathroom and ran the tub, tears streaming down my face. I felt so weak, every movement made my head feel like it was going to explode.
I got my partner to grab me some water and Advil as I lay in the bath. I stayed there all night: head pounding, wishing I was dead, dreaming of drilling a hole in my skull with a power drill just to relieve the pressure behind my eyes.
Eventually, it passed, but it lingered for the rest of the week, consistent, though much less intense.
The following day, I got a call from my mother. She was worried about me. It turns out she’d had a dream that I had died in a bathtub, and she wanted to check in.
Later that day, I saw an article on quantum immortality, and remembered a part from the game Alan Wake, where a TV segment you can come across discusses the theory.
Essentially, at certain moments there is a quantum break, which creates alternate realities, where you, or you conciousness shifts to a universe where you are still alive, but also creating alternate versions where you die.
so basically,you never experience your own death
Sometimes I wonder if I did die in that bathtub. The world I woke up in only seems to be getting stranger and stranger each day.
Or perhaps not. Who knows? There are many mysteries in life. And to many, that’s what gives it meaning.
Who am I to question the incredible strangeness of existence? And who would I be if I pretended to know its secrets? …Evidently, nobody of consequence.
Horrible and weird experience aside, to anyone else reading this: That could have been a brain bleed or aneurism. Not that I’m a doc, but if you ever have pain that severe immediately go to a hospital.
you’re not wrong, in my case i just suffer from chronic migraines, have my whole life. MRI didnt pick up anything unusual, all general tests came back negative, by all defintions i have a “healthy” brain. i live in canada, and the former conservative government cut a lot from healthcare in our province just before covid, so now it takes forever to see a doctor or a specialist. im still getting more tests done, itll just take a while since im in no “immediate” danger, lol.
NDP are trying to re open some hospitals that were closed and build new ones now that they are in power. so hopefully it goes back to like it was before the cons, or maybe better. either way is fine with me, lol.
Hope your path forward is quick and you get a solution to your ails!
I remember explaining having the same phenomenon of a feeling that that was what happens to peoples conscience, everyone has their own dedicated server for their own life to continue, essentially.
I love hearing other people’s brains sharing the same concept as me, wild when a planet of 7+ billion can do that.
Way back in 2024. Things were bad, but then, in October, there was a tectonic shift in the US, when the impossible became reality. There was a limbo for a couple of months, but in January this year we (the US) was flung back into 1940, and since then the years seem to be going backwards.
From 1940, 1930, 1920, 1910, 1900 and looping back around to
^1984, ^^1984, ^^^1984, ^^^^1984, ^^^^^1984
Back when I was living in Germany in 2020, I took a walk around the small city my family used to live. Everything was fine and normal.
But when I walked back home, everything changed for the worst.
Why? Because it was day Covid was declared a pandemic.
I still think about the walk that changed everything!
COVID didn’t feel like it was going to change everything all at once at first to me. Lots of “2 weeks and it’ll be over” talk. Then reality slowly set it.
9/11 felt like all at once to me, same with the second Trump election. Like I woke up and things were different.
Back in 2001 I slept with the radio on and was on the US west coast. So I literally woke up September 11th to live breaking news that life would never be the same.
I woke up just in time to turn on the TV and see the 2nd tower get hit.
When my mom called me at 5AM to tell me that my dad had a heart attack and was unresponsive
I think it was 2022, when Russia attacked to the Ukraine. I couldn’t believe it happened. I couldn’t understand why and why Russia made such an asshole move. Why start a war in Europe, when all you needed to do was make trade and get your land straight up to rich. How stupid you need to be to think otherwise?
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I completely agree. Also every day afterward just hoping it’s not going to be bad and just seeing it get worse and worse and worse.
I was MASSIVELY hung over on 911 and had my cbc radio on as I exited my room. I thought it was a radio drama. It made everything go sideways and thought the world was ending for a bit.
was it really that big of a deal? i’m european and can’t really understand whether people want to make it seem like such a big deal, or whether it actually really had anything to do with most people’s lifes?
Not american but I think it was the sense that war only happens far away for america, so 911 was a huge shock?
It was that big of a deal. I was in my early 20s and the event was devastating for multiple reasons. We didn’t understand what exactly was happening or why. Suddenly the country was being attacked in spectacular fashion at multiple locations simultaneously (it wasn’t just New York, it was also Washington, DC, then another flight that the passengers fought back so it didn’t reach the terrorists’ destination).
Whoever did this had planned super well and knew how to get us. We didn’t know who or why, what was going to happen next? Would bombs start blowing up in major cities? Was this a chaotic prelude to an invasion by another military? No option seemed impossible in those early hours as we watched the carnage live.
It was one of the most life-changing events in our country’s history. Hell, I was in first grade on the total opposite side of the country. (Living in Las Vegas NV at the time) had no relation to anyone in New York or anywhere even close to that area, and even I could feel the impact.
It was a total cultural shift in every sense of the word for the US. It was the first time in our history that a foreign power had directly attacked us on our own soil. And even more than that, the most unifying time in our nation’s history as well, oddly enough.
thanks for sharing your perspective. i feel like i’m starting to understand what you all would have felt like.
What’s the biggest building in your nation’s largest city?
Knock it down killing everyone inside.
Big deal, or nah?
Well, while utterly terrible, that would pretty much only affect people here in our nation, that’s not something that would give the feeling that “the universe had just changed”.
I don’t think it was the destruction of the building, but rather the implications of the inevitable maybe century to follow which would bring reduction in human rights, war, chaos, political upheaval.
One could argue that the political chaos were in right now could be traced back to 9/11. I was relatively young on the day, but still an adult who fully grasped the fork in the road this would take us down, and I was not wrong or overreacting.
It was our Franz Ferdinand.
9/11 was absolutely a start if not the absolute turning point to the madness that afflicting this country today.
I mean the post was asking about a time you thought the world was ending.
I was 18. When I say hangover I mean coming down off some Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lol so when I heard the radio being all shouts and people freaking out I definitely thought it was all about to go world war 3. Looking back obviously it wasn’t life ending for me but I’ll say, it permanently changed how north America treated air flights and media started getting crazier then. Things were different in North America after that.
Much lighter than the other comments, but waking up to the Luka Doncic trade was nuts
DUDE! I barely follow basketball and I was like WTF? One of our radio stations had Luca’s Mom as a recurring guest and she’s hilarious. Gonna miss her too.
9/11, 2008, MTHFR diagnosis, COVID shutdowns.
Every Thursday morning
