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I didn’t see anybody panicking as I drove that day. The gas stations had the usual amount of customers.

When I reached my little hometown city, there was panic.

The first three gas stations I went to were out of fuel. The fourth one had somebody at every nozzle including a guy filling a 55 gallon drum. This caused the gas stations to raise their prices. The prices took a few days to drop back down.

There was plenty of fuel the next day.

My little hometown city is in the Rockies. Many of my fellow citizens pride themselves on being tough and resilient. It didn’t take much for them to turn into Chicken Little.

People also forget that there was a real fear that the Stock Market would crash after 9/11. They even shut the market down for awhile.

I invested every spare penny I had when the market reopened.

The broker congratulated me on my money making.

I invested because everyone was going Chicken little and that would hurt my country. I told him I didn’t invest to make a killing.

People panic and that can be way more dangerous than the original cause.

911 was a different experience for me. I was working as a contractor at the startup called "Wingcast". There were foreign hires all over the building. In the lunch room, the Indian and Pakistani employees were cheering as they watched the building crumble on the TV in the first floor kitchen. That made for a near fist fight with the American employees. Many that I knew were muslim were too afraid to return to work. We had to backfill empty chairs with other employees with sufficient knowledge to continue the work.

I have often thought that some real patriots held their positions in the stock market after 9/11 instead of selling.

I am not criticizing those who felt they had to sell. But I appreciated those who held and bought.