Slaughterhouse 37

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I'll give you a discount. Post a picture that doesn't have you or anyone you know in it and write 500 words on what it means to you."

The documentaries proved it later; at least 200 people had chosen to jump from the burning World Trade Center rather than remain inside. For me, the overriding story of September 11, 2001 was one of asymmetrical information.

The gentleman in this picture knows what the rest of us do not; there are no escape routes from where he is. (Estimates identified him as Jonathan Briley, a sound engineer who worked at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top of the north tower of the World Trade Center.) The smoke is enveloping the stairwells, there’s no way a helicopter can land on the roof, he can probably hear the pins holding the trusses buckling as the building nears structural failure. When there is a difference between what you know and what everybody else knows, that’s asymmetrical information. He had to accept what every human being does eventually, and many are cognizant of it before it happens. Today I am going to die. But I will decide what my fate is; not some misguided zealot with a box cutter, who shredded my building with a jetliner.

The plane was delayed out of Newark; Flight 93 didn’t get off the ground for an extra 41 minutes because of congestion at the airport. The cockpit was warned of cockpit intrusions on both flights that had already hit the World Trade Center. As the passengers were herded to the back, they called from Airfones and cell phones to their families. They explained that they were being hijacked. The families, the operators, explained what was happening hundreds of miles away in New York and Washington, and at that point the passengers of Flight 93 had the asymmetrical information that the other passengers aboard the other planes did not. Passengers, crew, and civilians had all been taught the same thing regarding a hijacking, or a robbery, or a mugging: Don’t resist. It’s not worth your life. Give the robber what he wants – the register, your wallet, your phone, your cooperation – and you’ll live. But in scores of phone calls, the people on Flight 93 were learning the asymmetrical information that their training and philosophy was bullshit. Today I am going to die. But I will decide what my fate is; not some misguided zealot with a box cutter, who told me to stay here and I won’t get hurt: I know this is a lie.

But there are happier endings.

Three weeks after 9/11, a mentally deranged man on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles attempted to rush the cockpit. Half the plane jumped up to stop him. In December of 2001, when Richard Reid attempted to detonate his shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami, he was subdued by the other passengers with plastic handcuffs, seatbelt extensions, and headphone cords. A doctor administered Valium from an in-flight medical kit; I like to think that was done via the broken off stem of a wine glass from First Class. Five months earlier, he could have held up his shoes with the fuses sticking out of them, said he had a bomb and to do what he said and no one would get hurt – and people would have complied. That was the safe thing to do, you see. But the passengers in December 2001 were not the same travelers of August 2001. Today I am going to die…if I don’t do everything to resist, fight back, and overcome this zealot who’s trying to frighten me.

Your beliefs don’t scare me. Your masks don’t scare me. Your methods don’t scare me. And it’s not about being a hero or being famous or leaving a legacy. Because if given a choice to die praying for mercy or with my hands clutched around a terrorist’s throat, if the choice ends with my dying either way and there’s no hope for survival, there is but one guarantee: They’re going first.