Shouldn't it also be the media's repeated statements, etc? The government mentions something briefly and the television stations spend hours of air time ratcheting up the fear factor until it's at a fever pitch. I think we overlooked a lot of people being gun downed or being victims of other street crime before the terror alerts, too, though. New York used to be notorious for such behavior. You're looking at it like "This happened. That happened. They're related" when that may not be the case, especially since behavior such as this is not at all new.
I'm sorry I don't have time to look all these things up for you, but I recall several incidents, including about a dozen killed and about 100 injured back in 2000 when someone set off a teargas grenade in a nightclub. There are others. Sometimes small fires get people rushing to the exits. Sometimes other things. The common thread is too many people in the building, too few exits and some panic inducing element. People have panicked before terror alerts were ever a concern. There's nothing so far to lead us to believe that this time was any different. We have a lot of survivors, they'll tell us whether the terror alert was what was on their minds as they rushed to the exits. But if you want to attribute it to terror alerts, that's fine with me. I had a guy cut in front of my on the highway yesterday, I'm pretty sure it was because of the terror alerts. He was panicking to get home to his family and duct tape up his windows, I'm sure, and that's why he was in such a hurry he cut me off and made me have to slam on my brakes. Damn you President Bush and your terror alerts! You almost caused an accident on the Tollway!
You're right. I meant to blame the media as well for running with the story to the extent that they are.
you guys are sick. I get up when I have to and no earlier. Usually I force myself to between 7:30 and 8, in order to get ready for work (I don't wake up instantly... I'm usually doing the last of my preparation and watching dumb music videos to try to wake up). This Saturday, I woke up at noon and was taking a nap again by late afternoon. Not atypical. Over Christmas break, I immediately shifted to a schedule where I didn't get up until about 1 p.m. and made myself go to bed before the sun rose. Yes, the morning is a great time of day... to <i>sleep!</i> That's <b>all</b> it is good for. Everyone should realize this and agree to all go back to sleep. Oh, and don't use "good" and "morning" in the same sentence.
This wasn't quoted in the original article, but CNN is now reporting: From this, it sounds like they weren't panicking because of what chemicals might do but because of what they actually were doing. People had strong reactions to the mace or whatever it was. They probably did think about terrorism, but I don't imagine the reaction would have been very different a decade ago. It was very much like having a fire in the building. They don't say in the article explicitly, but it sounds like they had a lot of fire code violations that caused the deaths of many people.
There's not much coverage in the national news despite the fact that 21 people died. Maybe cause the victims are BLACK?
It's on the front page of cnn.com, foxnews.com, usatoday.com, yahoo.com, msnbc.com, chron.com, nytimes.com, latimes.com. It was the first thing I saw when I read the news this morning when I woke up.
Well if they had been good citizens and spent time in the military then they would recognize the taste and smell of tear gas and mace. But since they were slackers, they freaked out. It is a terrible tragedy, although it reminds me of that nightclub scene from hellraiser 3.
Maybe you can't read the national news on your computer because the text is in BLACK. You should switch the background color on your screen to a color other than BLACK so you can read the BLACK text.
A tear gas grenade would cause that to happen anywhere, mace isn't as strong and would not cause something like this to happen under normal circumstances. So.. you think that people weren't thinking that some kind of deadly chemical agent had been released? They're just running for the hell of it then eh? You're comparing that to what we're talking about? Apples and oranges man, apples and oranges. Such a sad attempt at satire, really.. Apparently you can't put two and two together. People wouldn't just FLIP OUT for no reason. They have to be provoked. A funny smell wouldn't normally make people panic like that, but when the media and the government are CONSTANTLY pumping us full of fear about the chemical war fare boogie man.. naturally you're going to reap what you sew.. pumping people full of fear only brings death and destruction.
