WI: 50,000 Killed On 9/11

[redlightning]

I remember when the attacks of 9/11 had many people thinking that up to about 50,000 people could be inside of the World Trade Center when both towers collapsed. What if this had been true, not to mention the deaths of people around and on the ground? How would Americans react differently to such a high death toll?

 

[Dayton Kitchens]

I remember when the attacks of 9/11 had many people thinking that up to about 50,000 people could be inside of the World Trade Center when both towers collapsed. What if this had been true, not to mention the deaths of people around and on the ground? How would Americans react differently to such a high death toll?

Not too differently. Once the death toll reached the "thousands" it hit a special nerve with Americans.

The only thing with "50,000" would be people would be saying "nearly as many as in Vietnam"

Americans would be somewhat more fanatical, somewhat more nationalistic, but not enough that actual events wouldn't be recognizable.

 

[Evil Opus]

I can't imagine the American response being much more overwhelming than it already was; post-9/11 America saw increased enlistment rates and overwhelming public support for the invasion of Afghanistan. I think the only way to make the American response much more extreme would be to include the use of nuclear weapons, and I don't think that happens unless al-Qaeda had gone nuclear first.

 

[Tallest Skil]

I think the only way to make the American response much more extreme would be to include the use of nuclear weapons, and I don't think that happens unless al-Qaeda had gone nuclear first.

We might go nuclear if they had gone chemical or biological, but nothing less than that would spark it; you're right.

 

[Alex1guy]

We might go nuclear if they had gone chemical or biological, but nothing less than that would spark it; you're right.

Nuclear against who though? I mean seems a bit of a waste to nuke Kabul... Like breaking a nut by dropping a semi-truck on it.

 

[Meadow]

Nuclear against who though? I mean seems a bit of a waste to nuke Kabul... Like breaking a nut by dropping a semi-truck on it.

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.

 

[Grimbald]

Quicker reaction and much less respect for the borders of near by nations but otherwise much the same.

No Iraq though.

 

[Andrew T]

Quicker reaction and much less respect for the borders of near by nations but otherwise much the same.

No Iraq though.

Serious question: why would a greater 9/11 death total mean no invasion of Iraq? Unless this is a very clever joke that Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney both happen to be in the North Tower on 9/11?

 

[Timmy811]

Nuclear against who though? I mean seems a bit of a waste to nuke Kabul... Like breaking a nut by dropping a semi-truck on it.

Tac nuke on Tora Bora?

 

[Mike Stearns]

Nuclear against who though? I mean seems a bit of a waste to nuke Kabul... Like breaking a nut by dropping a semi-truck on it.

I saw part of an interview on CNN couple of years ago with a former associate of Bin Laden and he said that Bin Laden believed the American response to 9/11 would be "200 missiles." I agree that it would take a lot for the Americans to escalate to nukes, but I could see the Americans responding with a mass ICBM barrage with conventional warheads in an attempt to hit every suspected Al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan all at once, and then launching the ground invasion

 

[Alex1guy]

I saw part of an interview on CNN couple of years ago with a former associate of Bin Laden and he said that Bin Laden believed the American response to 9/11 would be "200 missiles." I agree that it would take a lot for the Americans to escalate to nukes, but I could see the Americans responding with a mass ICBM barrage with conventional warheads in an attempt to hit every suspected Al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan all at once, and then launching the ground invasion

I find that both terrifying and fascniating. Effectiveness of such an attack?

 

[Anaxagoras]

I saw part of an interview on CNN couple of years ago with a former associate of Bin Laden and he said that Bin Laden believed the American response to 9/11 would be "200 missiles." I agree that it would take a lot for the Americans to escalate to nukes, but I could see the Americans responding with a mass ICBM barrage with conventional warheads in an attempt to hit every suspected Al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan all at once, and then launching the ground invasion

ICBMs with conventional warheads? That would be an incredible waste of money and would also freak the shit out of China and Russia. If the intent is to deliver conventional warheads with great accuracy, what's wrong with cruise missiles?

 

[Mike Stearns]

If the intent is to deliver conventional warheads with great accuracy, what's wrong with cruise missiles?

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.

 

[Mike Stearns]

I find that both terrifying and fascniating. Effectiveness of such an attack?

If they're using MIRVs, I think potentially very effective, as that would be somewhere between 1,600 and 2,000 warheads, depending on the number of warheads per missile.

 

[MUC]

50k dead can very well mean nukes are on the table as an option.
Nuking Afghanistan terrorist bases is the most probable result IMHO.
The effects on the economy would be more severe with several financial companies losing alot of specialists.
No ICBMs, no cruise missiles. Probably a couple of B2s with free falling bombs.
It's cheaper and more secure (cruise missiles can fail in flight and you don't want them to crash land in Raliban held areas).

 

[Georgepatton]

For a little perspective, 50,000 dead would be the worst terrorist attack anywhere, ever. Whole cities were bombed to rubble in World War 2 with fewer deaths. This is edging up to the initial death toll from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

To have this happen, from a clear blue sky, to an America at peace and right with the world, is a thunderbolt without precedent. It would be the most dead in a single day in American history.

OTL, less than a tenth as many died, and we chased the perpetrators across the globe for a decade. The response could, and would, only be more extreme.

 

[jmc247]

Quicker reaction and much less respect for the borders of near by nations but otherwise much the same.

No Iraq though.

The only way no Iraq happens is Saddam has to wake up out of his demented mental haze and realize the U.S. isn't screwing around. Saddam's actions in the weeks and months after 911 were if anything more belligerent and in your face against the U.S. then before 911... being the only nation on Earth to publicly celebrate the attacks and then to have Saddam put up posters of himself around Iraq smoking with the twin towers burning in the background was a very bad idea.

Iraq hails attack on US

The entire world - almost - has reacted with horror to the news of Tuesday's terrorist attacks against the United States - the entire world except for Iraq.

As condolences poured in from everywhere - even from Libya and Iran - Iraq rejoiced, saying the terror attacks were a "lesson for all tyrants and oppressors" and the fruit of American crimes. "America burns," read the headline of the country's official al-Iraq newspaper, which declared: "the myth of America was destroyed with the World Trade Center in New York."

Elsewhere in the Gulf, newspapers were unanimous in their condemnation of the attacks, but al-Iraq wrote: "It is the prestige, arrogance and institutions of America that burn." The paper said it would be difficult for the US to find the perpetrators of the attack, since America has made so many enemies. "Thousands if not a million or billion hands were behind these attacks," it said. "Brutal America, suffering from illusions of grandeur, has inflicted humiliation, famine and terrorism on all of the world's countries and today it reaps the fruits of its arrogant and stupid policy," said an official Iraqi statement.

The official statement, read on television Tuesday night, said: "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity. "The statement said the attack was, among others, a result of America's support of Israel. "The destruction of the centres of American power is the destruction of American policy, which has veered from human values to align itself with the Zionist world, to continue to massacre the Palestinian people."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1540216.stm

If the 50K number wakes Saddam and makes him act like Iran, Syria, and Libya after 911 instead of as a pro-terrorist dictator that gave more then enough ammo to Cheney and others to convince Bush that Saddam might be the kind of guy to finance the next 911 then the invasion of Iraq might not have happened or if it did happened at some later date.

But, the problem with that idea is that Saddam was getting really out there in by the late 90s and early 00s and I doubt even the 50K number of American dead would break him out of his delusions and descent into dementia and loony thinking.

Qur'an etched in Saddam Hussein's blood poses dilemma for Iraq leaders

It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.

The vault in the vast mosque in Baghdad has remained locked for the past three years, keeping the 114 chapters of the Muslim holy book out of sight - and mind - while those who run Iraq have painstakingly processed the other cultural remnants of 30 years of Saddam and the Ba'ath party.

"What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment fund, standing near the towering minarets of the west Baghdad mosque that Saddam named "the Mother of All Battles". Behind him is the infamous Blood Qur'an, written in Saddam's own blood.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/19/saddam-legacy-quran-iraqi-government

 

[Kaptin Kurk]

The real "effect" is that there are many more 9/11 families than OTL, which makes them a political force in the country some 16-17x what they historically were. (And providing for them that much more expensive.) I suspect this in itself would have ramifications, both for U.S. politics and the world. Exactly what, is hard to predict, but adding 47,000 victims adds 100,000s of people directly effected by the attacks at least, which probably changes the history and trajectory of millions of lives in America. I'd argue that this would, in fact, be destabilizing to the OTL.

 

[Laqueesha]

*snip*

I thought that poster was made-up, but it's real all right.

 

[Dayton Kitchens]

"200 missiles" almost certainly referred to Tomahawk cruise missiles with conventional warheads.

At that time, many in the Middle Eastern regions were expressing disdain at what some were calling "Tomahawk Diplomacy" by the United States. What they saw as a U.S. reluctance to use actual soldiers and instead fire off volleys of cruise missiles whenever they needed to show they "meant business".