Terrorism’s Electronic Fallout: A Barrage of Alarming E-Mails

Thousands of Angelenos received an e-mail Friday, yet another message pertaining to the horrendous events of Sept. 11. It was headed “Just Be Aware” or “Don’t Want to Scare You.” For something trying not to alarm, it did an appalling job, warning of West Coast terrorist attacks this last weekend while bearing all the marks of an urban legend.

It had the ubiquitous well-placed friend or family member (“my cousin who works currently with Diane Sawyer but used to work in the White House”), who doesn’t circulate these missives unless he or she feels “strongly about it.” And the specific details: “Bus, mass transport, WATER. The fear is biological terrorism, possibly Saturday.”

It concluded rather chillingly: “Please just send a simple note [to friends and family] saying, ‘Might not be a bad idea to buy bottled water for the weekend and avoid mass transport.”’

Hoaxes of all kinds proliferate. I received three urgent missives one evening last week between 5 and 6 p.m. urging me to light a candle outside because a satellite photo was being taken of the U.S., and the candles would be a show of solidarity. Nice idea, but one that fits best in our computer dustbins next to “deodorant gives you cancer” and the Bonsai kittens.

I e-mailed about 50 friends and colleagues last week to survey the surge of attack-related e-mail. Had they, like me, had a slew of it? Were they especially moved or incensed by any? Did they light a “satellite” candle? All but three of my respondents reported that they had, indeed, lit a candle and had been notified to do so by e-mail. They had all also been inundated. Many cited the bright, cogent essays of Deepak Chopra and Michael Moore--polar opposites these--as especially worth a read. And the words of the near-inescapable Afghan American writer Tamim Ansary: “When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler.”

Jokes were few, but poems are on the upsurge. A recovery worker ends his gut-wrenchingly: “I have the Trade Center on my shoes.” And newspaper excerpts abound, especially Peter Hannaford’s Flight 564 piece from the Washington Times about a pilot instructing his passengers how to overcome hijackers: with blankets, shoes and books.

There’s Ariadne, the Native American shaman, who wrote Sept. 14: “The information I have is that New York City will be totally destroyed by atomic weapons as soon as next Thursday. Everything west of the Great Lakes is safe.”

And a Brazilian psychic who prophesied: “Soon there will be blood in Rodeo Drive.”

There’s the story of a Pentagon rescuer finding a “thick open book on a chair. It was a Bible. It was not burned. Nor was anything around it on the two floors above it.”

Not to be outdone are astrology and numerology. An astrology e-mail reports that Sept. 11 spelled “inevitable breakdown, destruction and transformation of known and established structures.” On the day of the attack, Saturn and Pluto were “well-aspected by Mercury,” which, besides other things, is “the sign of twins.” The Nostradamus e-mail--a widely circulated hoax--also mentioned twins: “In the city of York there will be a great collapse, two twin brothers torn apart by chaos.”

The numerology message remains unsettling. The date of the attack: 11/9. 9 + 1 +1 = 11. Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11. After Sept. 11, there are 111 days of the year left. Flight 11: 92 people on board. 9 + 2 = 11. Flight 77: 65 on board. 6 + 5 = 11. One journalist colleague I polled wrote: “I was particularly frightened by the numerology e-mail about everything based around 11. So I’m not flying to New York on Oct. 1st, but the 2nd instead.”

There’s a scary one based on what purports to be the call number for “the first flight that hit the towers”--Q33NY. Type that number into your computer, convert it to a font called Wingdings, which creates symbols, and it metamorphoses into a plane, two towers, a skull and crossbones, and a star of David. Q33NY, though, is not the call sign of any of the planes involved.

The eyewitness accounts remain curiously compelling, perhaps because they are undiluted by media. There’s the nurse/EMT who raced to the scene and worked more than 24 hours straight. While driving home, still wearing scrubs and a mask--”I know I must have looked like something out of a war movie”--she stopped to get gas. “When I finished pumping, the foreign-born cashier told me there was no charge for me.”

One last e-mail perked up my spirits considerably as I wrote this. I’m English, not American, and unfamiliar with Dr. Seuss. But this anonymous author hits all the right keys:

And the Binch heard the most unpredictable thing.

And he couldn’t believe it --they started to sing!

He stared down at U-ville, not trusting his eyes

What he saw was a shocking, disgusting surprise!

Every U down in U-ville, the tall and the small,

Was singing, without any towers at all!

He HADN’T stopped U-ville from singing! It sung!

For down deep in the hearts of the old and the young

Those Twin Towers were standing, called Hope and called Pride

And you can’t smash the towers we hold deep inside.