The Hidan Archive documented in real time the collapse of the Twin Towers, the wave of rumors and "prophecies," the race for biometrics and databases, and the fear of biological terrorism. A quarter of a century later, we can examine what has stood the test of time: why the towers really collapsed, what the dust did to the rescuers, how the trauma continues for decades—and how the problem of information sharing, identified as early as 2001, became one of the key lessons of the investigative committee.
in the morning September 11th 2001, 19 Al-Qaeda members took control of four passenger planes. At 8:46 a.m., the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. 17 minutes later, another plane hit the South Tower. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew tried to regain control of the plane. 2,977 people from more than 90 countries were killed in the attacks.
A quarter of a century has passed since then. Enough time for an event that was burned into the memory of those who lived then to become history for an entire generation. But from a scientific perspective, the story of September 11 did not end when the smoke cleared over Manhattan. It continues in studies of engineering, medicine, psychology, epidemiology, security, information science, and even in the study of the spread of rumors and conspiracy theories.
For the scholar, the 25th anniversary has an additional dimension. The website was already up and running at the time, documenting reactions to the event in near real time. Rereading the archive allows us to do something that memory alone cannot: see what people knew and appreciated before commissions of inquiry, medical studies, and thousands of scientific articles provided the fuller picture.
When reality overtook Hollywood
As early as September 12, 2001, one day after the attacks, the newspaper published an article titled "The 'Doomsday' wars were not disconnected from reality"He dealt with the strange feeling that the images broadcast from New York seemed familiar, because American cinema had already shown time and again the destruction of Manhattan's skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, and other American symbols. But on September 11, the images left the cinema screen and entered reality.
A day later, an article appeared on the website that attempted to answer one of the questions that preoccupied the world: How could two skyscrapers that were designed to withstand enormous loads collapse after the planes hit?
The title then was "Experts: The Twin Towers Collapsed Because of the Heat That Melted the Steel Beams". This is a particularly interesting document in retrospect, because it demonstrates how knowledge develops after a disaster. The assessment that fire was a decisive factor was correct; the word "melted," however, was inaccurate. The steel did not have to reach the melting point for the buildings to collapse.
The steel didn't need to be tempered.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology investigation, NIST, which lasted years and included computer modeling, film and photo analysis, material testing, and approximately 1,200 interviews, provided a much more detailed picture.
The aircraft impacts cut and damaged load-bearing columns, and in particular tore off much of the fireproofing that covered the steel components. The jet fuel ignited large fires on several floors. Temperatures reached about 1,000 degrees Celsius in some areas. The steel did not melt, but its heating greatly reduced its strength. The floors sank, pulling in the perimeter columns, and eventually an unstoppable structural failure began, as she explains. NIST investigation into the collapse of the towers.
This is also one of those cases where the engineering explanation is important far beyond history. The claim that "jet fuel cannot melt steel" has become one of the pillars of conspiracy theories about controlled demolition over the years. But the claim attacks a mechanism that no one needs to explain the collapse: there is no need to melt steel to weaken a steel structure in a fire.
NIST found no evidence to support a controlled demolition. The later collapse of Building 7 in the complex was also investigated separately; the institute concluded that uncontrolled fires and thermal expansion of steel components led to a failure that began in a central column area and spread throughout the structure. Findings of the NIST investigation into Building 7 Describe the collapse mechanism.
This is how science works after a disaster: the early explanations are not necessarily false, but they are partial. As more evidence is gathered, the mechanism becomes more precise.
Eight days after the attack, we were already fighting in Pike.
If it seems that the fake news phenomenon was born with Facebook, X, or artificial intelligence, the September 2001 archive provides a different reminder.
On September 19, just eight days after the attacks, I published an article in the journal about the “resurrection” of Nostradamus. “Prophecies” attributed to the 16th-century astrologer that seemed to predict the fall of the Twin Towers were quickly circulating online.
However, some of the sentences were composed from different passages of Nostradamus, others were modified, and one of the most famous texts was actually written years earlier by a student who wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to write a vague prophecy and then adapt it to events in retrospect. This is how it was described in the newspaper article The "Resurrection" of Nostradamus.
The phenomenon predates social media as we know it, but the mechanism is completely familiar even in 2026: a dramatic event creates an information vacuum; people quickly seek an explanation; a surprising or frightening story spreads faster than its verification.
Years later, the focus shifted from Nostradamus to theories of controlled demolition, missiles, replaced planes, and government conspiracies. In 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, the newspaper extensively discussedThe wave of conspiracy theories and their scientific refutations.
In this sense, September 11 was also one of the first major events of the Internet age in which the world could watch in real time not only the event itself, but also the formation of a parallel system of "alternative facts."
Will technology save us? As early as 2001, the question was who shares the information
A month after the attacks, on October 13, 2001, I published the article in the newspaper "Recruiting technology to fight terrorism"In the US Senate debate, there was already talk of facial recognition systems, retina scanning, smart passports, fingerprints and databases.
But the most interesting part of looking back 25 years was actually much less futuristic: information sharing.
The article described how government computer systems were unable to transfer information between themselves, and sometimes even between units within the same organization. It was possible to collect vast amounts of data, but it was useless if the person or authority that needed it could not see it in a timely manner.
Three years later, the official 9/11 investigation commission determined much the same thing. In the final report She identified human and systemic resistance to sharing information as one of the key obstacles to the ability to “connect the dots.” Information existed in customs, immigration, FBI, CIA, and other agencies, but the system had difficulty processing it and connecting sources.
This is perhaps one of the most surprising things about rereading the archive: The main problem identified weeks after the attack was not a lack of a sophisticated algorithm, but rather organizations that were not talking to each other.
The technologies themselves did arrive. In November 2001, the US Transportation Security Administration, TSA, was established. Over the years, advanced scanning, baggage CT systems, ID verification, watch lists, employee screening, and imaging systems were added. What was in 2001 a proposal for the use ofBiometrics and databases has become part of the routine of a traveler's life at an airport, as shown TSA's use of facial recognition technologies.
The disaster that entered the lungs
But the heaviest scientific legacy of September 11 only became apparent over the years, and it was medical.
The collapse of the buildings created a huge cloud of concrete dust, glass, fibers, metals, combustion products, and many other materials. According to estimates by the Federal Health Program, hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to pollutants, risk of injury, and difficult physical and mental conditions during the attacks and the rescue, evacuation, and cleanup operations that followed.
The consequences are not a closed historical chapter. World Trade Center Health Plan Treats rescuers, workers, and survivors across the United States and monitors respiratory and digestive illnesses, cancer, mental disorders, and other illnesses that can be linked to exposure and events. According to Peer-reviewed article published in JAMAAs of June 2026, more than 154 rescuers and survivors have registered for the program.
Data released by the FDNY ahead of the 25th anniversary shows the extent of the damage among firefighters and rescue workers exposed to the site. 10,562 FDNY personnel have already received medical clearance for at least one WTC-related physical condition, including respiratory illnesses and reflux. 4,257 have been diagnosed with cancer and 4,496 with at least one mental health condition. More than 84% of those registered are still participating in medical follow-up.
In other words, the number of victims of September 11 is not limited to the 2,977 people who died that day. Medically, the event continues to occur in the bodies of people who breathed the dust a quarter of a century ago.
Trauma doesn't follow the calendar either.
The same is true for the soul.
Peer-reviewed longitudinal study followed 12,822 World Trade Center rescuers for 20 years and found that symptoms of PTSD do not necessarily decline in a straight line over time. On average, they peaked more than a decade after exposure and only then did they decline moderately. About a tenth of the subjects still had elevated symptoms two decades after the event. Among those who suffered fromPTSD, the median time to improvement was almost nine years.
This is a much broader lesson than 9/11. In mass disasters, there is not necessarily a quick return to “normalcy” after the rubble has been cleared. Psychological damage can appear, change, or worsen years after the initial exposure.
And science has changed too.
The attacks themselves were not a biological attack, but weeks later, anthrax letters arrived in the United States, plunging the scientific community into a new conflict: Should all scientific knowledge be open when that knowledge can also be used to develop weapons?
Exactly one year after the attacks, the newspaper reported that scientists had already begun to censor themselves and that journals, academies, and governments were debating the limits of publishing research in microbiology and biology. The deciphering of the anthrax genome was one of the cases that ignited the debate, as described in the article. "To be on the safe side, scientists are already censoring themselves".
This debate has not disappeared. Today it is known under the concept of "dual-use research": the same knowledge can advance medicine and public health, but under different conditions can also help those who seek to cause harm. Here too, one can see a direct line from the world after September 11, 2001, to today's scientific discussions.
Twenty-five years is a good time to examine ourselves.
The great advantage of an archive is not that it proves that "we knew everything back then." Quite the opposite. It also preserves uncertainty.
In September 2001, we still didn't know exactly why the towers collapsed. We didn't know what diseases the rescuers would develop. We didn't know how airport security would change everyday life. We didn't know how enduring conspiracy theories would be.
But several things have already been clearly demonstrated: the Internet is capable of spreading fiction almost immediately after an event; databases are useless if organizations do not share information with each other; technology alone does not solve human and institutional problems; and a disaster of a few hours can create questions that occupy science for decades.
A quarter of a century after September 11, this is perhaps the most important scientific lesson. Science is not a mechanism that provides a perfect answer the day after a disaster. Its power lies in its ability to go back to the evidence, to correct earlier explanations, to follow people for decades – and to replace what seemed right to us then with what we can know better today.
Questions and Answers
How many people were killed in the September 11 attacks?
2,977 people were killed at the four impact sites – 2,753 in New York, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. This number does not include the 19 hijackers.
Did the fire in the Twin Towers melt the steel?
It was unnecessary. According to NIST, the impact of the planes damaged the structure and removed fire insulation. The fires heated and weakened the steel components, the floors sank and the perimeter columns pulled inward until structural failure began.
Are health effects of September 11 still being revealed?
Yes. More than 154 rescuers and survivors were enrolled in the World Trade Center health program by June 2026, and monitoring of physical and mental illnesses they developed continues.
What was one of the most important intelligence failures before the attacks?
The September 11 Commission pointed out, among other things, a deep problem with information sharing between agencies and databases. Interestingly, the same problem had already appeared in an article in Bidan in October 2001, just weeks after the attacks.
The scientific article
- Twenty-Five Years After 9/11—Lessons From the World Trade Center Health Program
- A 20-year longitudinal cohort study of post-traumatic stress disorder in World Trade Center responders
More on the subject on the science website
- Mobilizing Technology to Fight Terrorism – October 13, 2001
- The "Resurrection" of Nostradamus – The False Prophecies After September 11
- The September 11th attacks: a fertile ground for conspiracy theories
- Fahrenheit 2,777 – Why steel doesn't have to melt for a structure to collapse
- To be safe, the scientists are already censoring themselves
One response
One of the important things I haven't heard mentioned is the missing airplane engines. That's the only thing I can't figure out.