1 Day In America, 2: I didn't immediately think anything too terrible had happened. That may sound weird because a jet plane hitting a skyscraper seems like the definition of too terrible, but remember that for most of my life threats had either been wildly outsized, or remote and nonexistent. In my lifetime, to that point, major world events were the Iranian Hostages, Ronald Reagan being shot, the Challenger exploding, The Gulf War (which, in 2001, was not the first Gulf War but just *the* Gulf War), Bill Clinton's impeachment. Those were not really threats of any sort. Then there were the world-enders: Nuclear war. AIDS. These were so potentially horrible it was hard to think of them at all. I still remember the morning after I and probably every living American watched "The Day After." I felt bleak and haunted and hopeless for a day or two. A fictional Armageddon was the biggest threat I'd ever faced, to that point. A plane hitting a skyscraper? Not on the same scale.