September 15, 2001

6:47 PM

$200 million in gold and silver buried under WTC.Get there first and it's yours! No harm done in picking up a bar of gold. (Via Nando)
posted by HoldenCaulfield (31 comments total)

Geez, only 5 days and the AP has already run out of things to report.
posted by dewelch at 6:53 PM on September 15, 2001

That was my thought some time after it happened. Could there really be a rescue worker who would also pickpocket the rich and violently deceased? Sick thought, though it will be news someday.

Somehow I don't think this is the wealth redistribution the republicans feared. . .

buh-du-duh
posted by crasspastor at 6:57 PM on September 15, 2001

Oh my. Now it really IS turning into a Die Hard movie...
posted by crunchybird at 7:03 PM on September 15, 2001

crunchybird - I was thinking the same thing when posting! How strange. Oh well, I can tell you this much: when they recover the gold, there will be less of it then there was prior to 0.81*.

*9/11 = 0.81818181 to infinity
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 7:32 PM on September 15, 2001

The .81 thing*. no.
posted by dr_emory at 8:02 PM on September 15, 2001

Not just no. Hell, no. Let's not cute this up too much.
posted by ColdChef at 8:15 PM on September 15, 2001

o.3 not a big deal. but it worth is akin to blood money now!
posted by iac6969 at 8:26 PM on September 15, 2001

I hurt. Don't you hurt?
posted by internook at 8:35 PM on September 15, 2001

No one is "cuting" anything up ColdChef. Persoanlly 0.81 is in a sense symbolic of that day. In any case it's more original than 911 or 9.11 or 9/11 etc. I think I was the first to express it as that number on MeFi and quite frankly, eightyone hundreths is going to become a symbol.
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 8:37 PM on September 15, 2001

.81 will be a uniquely American symbol, since the date is written as 11/9 elsewhere in the world.
posted by kindall at 8:44 PM on September 15, 2001

Can someone clue me in to 0.81 reference? I must have missed the memo...

Thanks.
posted by davidmsc at 8:47 PM on September 15, 2001

kindall I agree with you on that one. Besides anything over 1 seems kind of strange if you know what I mean.

davidmsc, nine divided by eleven.
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 8:53 PM on September 15, 2001

Davidmsc, the / is used as a division symbol on computers. Therefore 9/11 is nine divided by eleven, which is .8181818181 . . . etc.
posted by alan at 8:54 PM on September 15, 2001

There is no more gold anymore. I stole in already. I'll give it back when you all promise not to kill each other.
posted by Hildago at 8:57 PM on September 15, 2001

Earlier post where I mention 0.81
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 9:03 PM on September 15, 2001

there's also between five and ten thousand wallets and purses in the rubble. conservatively, each likely contained at least $10 to $20. go get it, fellas.
posted by quonsar at 9:46 PM on September 15, 2001

I think I was the first to express it as that number on MeFi and quite frankly, eightyone hundreths is going to become a symbol.

Hey, if it helps you, go for it. Just don't get angry if no one follows along. Now is not the time to bicker over things like these.
posted by ColdChef at 10:17 PM on September 15, 2001

And here I was thinking .81 was a nerdy stardate instead its a nerdy division problem.

.81 because 9/11 or 911 is too easy.
posted by skallas at 10:52 PM on September 15, 2001

"....the / is used as a division symbol on computers. Therefore 9/11 is nine divided by eleven, which is .8181818181 . . . etc."

And this means what to the huge percentage of people worldwide that don't have or care about computers?

And how could it even be a uniquely American concept? Do you think the average American would have a clue? It's not exactly self-evident.

Back to the drawing board.
posted by jaustinspace at 11:03 PM on September 15, 2001

I saw this drawing of a plane that looked like a 9 headed towards the WTC 11.
posted by riffola at 12:02 AM on September 16, 2001

To feed my curiosity i used the figures in the story to calculate the net worth of the worlds gold. Now, i'm not the religious type, but all these 6's are a little eerie ---> $36666666666.6666666666666666666667
posted by Kino at 12:44 AM on September 16, 2001

That's the sorta thing i was thinking when my TV spat out that they claim to have found a hijackers passport in the rubble. I mean, c'mon. Half a million tons of the stuff. Not to mention disintegration factor. Either someone's tripping or i need to switch my brand of mushroom soup.
posted by Kino at 1:19 AM on September 16, 2001

This Washington posts report seems to indicate it was outside of the rubble mass, but still. It's fair to say i'm gonna be in need some convincing on this one.
posted by Kino at 1:31 AM on September 16, 2001

Why would a hijacker on a domestic flight carry a passport?
posted by riffola at 1:52 AM on September 16, 2001

All that vaporized wallboard powder probably snuffed some of the fires. Did you notice all the 1000s of pieces of paper that floated out of the clouds of rubble?
posted by bjgeiger at 1:56 AM on September 16, 2001

Yeah - confetti from hell, Bjgeiger. Thing is though, that paper wasn't in a geezas pocket right at the heart of a fully fueled jet explosion. Millions upon millions of sq. ft of prime skyscraper office buildings crashing down would be liable to send the spreadsheets flying. The heart of the economic universe is sure to have unimaginable amounts of dead tree inside it. But would a frazzled guys passport from within the core of the actual explosion itself stand much of a chance? And if it did, with a half million ton weight of dusty crap all around the area what would the chances be of a tiny passport showing up and being identified as suspect within 4 and a half days? I don't question much of this stuff but i just can't quite fit this nugget of far-out sounding data into my caffeine craving head.

I'm English Riffola, so i'm not at all clued up on American domestic flight procedure. Are you saying that the slimey fuck wouldn't have needed the passport to board the flight anyway?

Oh, interesting links before about the Pakistan/China arms proliferation thing btw ^__^
posted by Kino at 3:04 AM on September 16, 2001

I'm English Riffola, so i'm not at all clued up on American domestic flight procedure. Are you saying that the slimey fuck wouldn't have needed the passport to board the flight anyway?

Nope. In fact, right before all of this, you wouldn't have needed to see a person before boarding. United has a system (down now, of course) where you have the credit card you paid for the ticket, swipe it through a machine, key a few things and your boarding pass spits out. No one checks an ID. No one even knows if you are the person who owns the credit card. It's like an ATM to check in. Plus they give you extra frequent flier miles for using it.
posted by thc at 6:08 AM on September 16, 2001

Well I am an international student in the US, and this is probably true for tourists too. Once you enter the country, you do not need to carry your passport on you, especially if you have other forms of ID, like say a drivers license (US or from some other country, it shouldn't matter.) Only time you ought to need a passport is when entering and leaving the country.

Also, it's not as if any of the hijackers were fresh off the boat, so to speak.
posted by riffola at 7:11 AM on September 16, 2001

Absurd isn't it. I wonder how many other catastrophes just waiting to happen exist that we wouldn't normally pay much attention to until it's too late. All that talk of how sophisticated the terrorists must have been in their planning has baffled me from the start. Granted - They must have had good tactics and used careful planning, but it hardly seems like it took a stroke of genius to pull off a stunt like this.
posted by Kino at 7:47 PM on September 16, 2001

ummm, if 9/11 = .818181, then when you want to round it off to two decimal places, it becomes .82, but i kind of like .818 personally
posted by rorycberger at 5:41 PM on September 17, 2001