O.K. Bomb

December 21, 2023

Explosive Intrusion

Many people, even a couple of years younger than me talk about September 11th 2001, as the first time they realized or really processed that there are people wanting to do others harm on a massive scale. Some people even a couple of years older than me reference other events… I was nine when the bombing happened in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the first time I realized it.

I happened to be home sick from school that day. I think I had the flu or something. When I was home sick… I watched the Price is Right. The show had started like ten minutes ago, and I was just getting into it when the news broke in. I was so angry. I couldn’t at that moment fathom anything outside myself. Not only that, but I just wanted my show back on. This felt like the problems of adults.

That’s when I saw the building.

I imagined the amount of… well… people that were me sized, that could fit inside. If even half those people were hurt, whoever did this must have really been mean. It was a shock to my system, how could anyone be that mean?

Impact

As more information came out, I realized it wasn’t just this one building impacted. Over 500 other buildings were also damaged in some way. I thought… How many of those were houses? Where would people sleep? How would they feel safe ever again after an intrusion like this? At this point in my life, I didn’t even want people talking to me unexpectedly, much less an explosion damaging where I lived. It was a shock to my system.

Then… there was the human toll, in the end, 168 deaths and 680 injuries happened. If I were there, I would have been just one of those.

My nine-year-old mind was shocked by this.

I was home alone, so my only way to process this was with the media… There was a story about how people who found the emergency exits the fastest faired the best. To this day, any time I’m in a public space I always hyper focus on finding the emergency exits before really “settling in” and I always keep track of them in relation to me. If you’re out in public with me ever — ask about the emergency exits.

Too Young

I was too young for my parents to talk about this with me, if they did, I don’t remember it. And maybe I didn’t ask. If they weren’t going to discuss it, I wasn’t going to start that conversation. I had more important questions to ask them. I persisted; I got information on the radio anytime I was in the car with them, and I pretended to ignore it. (This was mere moments before the internet was big) Each piece of new information I got shook my world even more. It was just a series of words at first: Islamic Terrorists (what’s Islam?) bombing (why would someone even consider) fertilizer (how can something made to help growth be turned to grow death) then the narrative changed… Domestic Terror (this one made sense) Far-right wing (what does that mean) Waco, Texas (what happened there?) FBI Investigation (What’s an FBI — this one I did ask my parents) guilty, prison, jail. I never did hear about the real stories. I wonder how the people who lost loved ones are doing today.

Perspective

Through the upcoming months of my life, I started learning and researching about this event every time I could do it subtly. I spent a lot of time in the library (internet access) and covertly watching the news. This was about to be the same time the internet was coming to be a thing. Learning about all of this was the first big personal research project of my life. I had to find out why people thought it was okay to kill this many people.

I went down this path to learn the term collateral damage. How could human life ever be considered acceptable collateral damage? When you sit disconnected from humanity, or when you see certain lives as below yours or the enemy; this is the pain that happens.

So I cried. If someone can treat any life like that, anyone can treat someone I love like that. I had just lost my someone who was effectively a grandparent. (That happened just that winter) and I was still raw from that as I experienced all this.

Information

I was hungry for information; it was a new day of information. Cable news had been around just long enough to be relevant; we had CNN. I got hungry enough that watched it myself. I had no taste for it before. But the new thing all of a sudden was the internet. That fall, CNN “Interactive” launched. Now all of a sudden, the internet carried information that was closer to live. I could get information without needing to have it broadcasted to me.

I didn’t really have an interest in computers before this. But now computers could do astonishing things. The website of CNN quickly became one of my favorites. There is no single moment that lead to my career in technology… but this one contributed for sure. Who remembers NETSCAPE?!?!?!

I had to have faith that this instance and these people were an anomaly, and this was reinforced by the FBI’s investigation with the code name OKBOMB. Read about it all after the fact. They moved fast. They arrested the culprits (I don’t even want to write their names) a quick trial later. Not only that, but they were behind bars and all was right with the world. I could go back to my life. But now… my life is internet connected. I was hungry for information. I was hungry for impact. The internet, was going to be a thing. I knew it.

Allorien

And so, like me; Allorien was there. At that moment. In April 1995. He was shaken up; just like I was. He wanted to see the impact around him; just like I did.