NationStates Jolt Archive

OK, gonna try this again, and only including some more recent news events, only going back to about 1980 or so, since that seems to target the vast majority of players on NS. Got all new choices this time, only repeat choice is 9/11, because that one is just too big to leave off.

So, which was trhe most influential news event IN YOUR LIFETIME??

You will note MY personal choice is not even listed in the poll, since I have already stated, for the record, that, for me, it was the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

I hope this offers a few more choices for people, anyway.

Columbine.

This was (for me) the first of several disasters (followed most notably by 9-11) that lead to the increasingly conservative attitudes toward free speech and looking/acting different than what was considered the "teenage" norm.

*grumbles about not being able to bring "dark colored guns" into a Con*

I'm going to go with the Sept 11 attacks, but with a caveat--it's more significant because my daughter was living with me and I got to see her reaction as well as mine. For me, my political rite of passage was the Iran hostage standoff. I can't say I understood it at the time, but it was the first time I realized something big was going on in the world, in a place I'd never heard of before.

I was still very young when the Wall came down, so I don't remember much about it.

"9/11" was certainly big, and very influential for the world, so I chose that. Plus I watched it live, while when the wall came down, I was in bed already...

Did anyone choose the first Gulf War? That was the first time they turned war into a prime time spectacle, wasn't it?

I'm going to repeat what I put in the original poll...

Even as a Brit, September 11th probably affected me most. Not perhaps for the human suffering, I'm ashamed to say - I remember the news reports from Ethiopia in 1984, the Armenian earthquakes, floods in Bangladesh, genocide in Rwanda, and a whole host of huge-scale human catastrophes. Actually, now add to that Darfur, the Tsunami, Srebrenica, the Kursk, Beslan, and countless others. In terms of human loss, the WTC didn't seem that monumental.

I think the biggest impact was that feeling that the world had changed - that things had stepped up a level. I grew up with the background awareness of terrorism courtesy of the IRA and their occasional forays into England - London, Manchester, etc. (let's just pray that the laying down of arms they announced yesterday is genuine) - but the attack on the WTC was on a different level completely.

The other impact it has had is on the governments of Western nations. There's this drive now towards harsher and harsher controls, and greater restrictions on civil liberties. Those consequences of September 11th will affect us all for a long, long time.

I picked the Wall because I was 5, there, and one of the "Wallpeckers"! :D

I'd say Sept 11, despite it being in the US and me being in Australia. I still remember that day: I didn't know anything about it till i got to school and someone was talking about it. I remember watching the news at school and home with my friends and family...

Edit: I'd say that if the bombings in London had happened first, it would be them that affected me more... It was more the idea of terrorism that the actual event

What about the Beslan school siege in Russia?