I was also about as far from NYC as you can get so I really didn't have much context for it. The day of was so weird. I woke up hours after it happened, jumped on IIRC having no idea, and some random Russian person messaged me to say "Sorry about what happened, good luck surviving WWIII". It was hours or maybe a day or two before I figured out what had actually happened. Some people thought China had attacked us (from where? The Atlantic? We were so ignorant). It was eerie, there was always a huge amount of air traffic in my city, big planes and small bush planes, and the skies were empty for days. The only thing up there was air force fighters on patrol. We had an air base, so I was used to seeing them, but not like that.

After that, I got caught up in the propaganda for a year or two, then started to get suspicious, then got dragged out to pride by my hippy girlfriend to put on a prison jumpsuit and a hood and walk in the parade with my hands chained over my head, protesting Gitmo. It was one of my first real political actions, and also the first of many times I got booed for "ruining" pride with politics.