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No sense of panic, although it was eerily quiet (except for the jet fighters). I'd expect the same if and when we get nuked.

I was riding my bike uptown on 9-11 up Sixth avenue (this is after I watched the second tower get hit, I saw victims leap to their death, and the eventual collapse of the towers)from Chelsea through the crowds and people were on the edge of panicking. I saw crowds all of a sudden start running when they thought another attack was coming. People were in a daze walking home, but I think they were close to losing it. I stopped and talked to random NYers who agreed with me, people were on the edge. This is not to denegrate my fellow NYers. It was really friggin' scary here that day and the days after. I never suffered nightmares like I had in the following days after 911 in my entire life. One more attack in the city would have done it.

Now do people panic completely and spontaneously if a warning liek that gets out. No. But is builds up gradually as people make a run on food and water, traffic out fo the city becomes impossible and looting begins. Martial law would not help the atmosphere either.

The downtown experience was evidently non pareil. A friend who was on the 40th floor of the South Tower after the North Tower was hit got out before the second attack and never looked back. I pray for all those who witnessed what you did.

I left my midtown office after the South Tower collapsed and cut through the Park. The steady flow of people I saw from the Upper East Side was quiet but orderly. No running or pushing. But there's no way that my midtown/uptown experience can compare to downtown. (One friend who was stuck in the frozen zone because his ID was in his midtown office called me in a panic on 9/12 with a horror story about gunfire in the street -- something that I never heard confirmed in any news report.)

I heard Giuliani this morning weighing in on the question of whether we should have been told of an attack. It would have made no difference to me, but my experience was significantly different than yours. I certainly wouldn't have objected if we had been told, just as I didn't object to the high-alerts of a "possible" attack in the weeks following 9/11. But I can't see that a warning would cause any visible panic. To me, the threat of an attack is a price I pay for living in Manhattan, just as the threat of "the big one" is a price the folks on the Left Coast pay for living in LA and SF.