REACTIONS OF SOCIETY AND CONSEQUENCES FOR PEOPLE.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 394.

TEXT C

But also life for ordinary people changed. Many were emotionally affected or angered, some even had to deal with traumas and psychogenic disorders.

Many of the fears people suffered after September 11 are obvious. Some of them did not dare to work or go shopping in skyscrapers or large department stores for some time after the attacks. Panic buying was common and many were afraid of using drinking water because they thought it could be poisoned. Many more people were afraid of flying in an airplane or attending big events.

On the other hand, for thousands of people the attacks provoked a marked positive change to their lives. At the time the towers were still burning "there were reports of marriage proposals being made, divorces being called off" and "young singles hitting the bars in search of physical comfort", which was later called "terror sex". Nine months after the terrorist attacks New York was blessed by a baby boom. From January 2002 onwards the preparation courses for parents-to-be at the "Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center" were fully booked for several months. At the "Long Island College Hospital" 20 percent more childbirths took place than the years before.

Sports events also have a great potential to become targets of terrorist attacks. There are hardly any other events where such large numbers of people come together so closely. After September 11 many sporting events such as the "Major League Soccer" were postponed or even cancelled and not just in the United States of America. The U.S. government tried to assuage people's fears. It spent, for example, an additional $40 million on security for the Winter Olympics 2002 in Salt Lake City. But many people have nevertheless avoided large events since 9/11.

For most people all over America and Europe the relative safety of the former decades had evaporated. It was the first time for more than hundred years that the United States of America had been attacked on their own soil. The attacks not just claimed more dead than Pearl Harbour in 1941. In September 2001 all victims were civilians. The terror attacks quashed a whole generation of Americans' illusion of their own country's invulnerability. The feeling of secure ness disappeared when the airplanes hit the World Trade Center. This was probably the reason why there was so little resistance to the government's security laws, which were approved just weeks later.

A tremendous wave of patriotism swept through the United States after the events of September 11. Sales of flags, ribbons and patriotic pins hit record marks. The attacks and the fear of a war generated a national feeling which made it nearly impossible to preach dialogue and diplomacy or to criticize the President or the government's foreign policy for weeks after September 11.

But it was not just the fear of war which scared the people of America. Anthrax cases in the United States and later in Europe horrified people only weeks after the September 11 attacks. Initially it was thought that mail containing anthrax spores were sent by Islamic terrorists, but soon it grew clear that these crimes were committed by enemies of the government.