SAFE ZONE SIREN
November 8th, 2020
Quentin Frady
FERRYMEN'S BAY, NYC SAFE ZONE — With moments of silence and bells tolling, the nation is remembering one of its most sorrowful days: the 11/8 nuclear attack on New York.
It has been 14 years since Peter Petrelli, younger brother of former US President Nathan Petrelli and child of two founders of the criminal conspiracy known as the Company, erupted in nuclear fire at the heart of Kirby Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. Petrelli was a victim of a conspiracy within origins dating back to the early 1960s, one enacted in its final hours by Company conspirators Angela Petrelli and Daniel Linderman, to create an event so powerfully tragic with a narrative they controlled so as to take the reigns of the nation and rule from the shadows.
Over half a million people died on November 8th, 2006. Hundreds of thousands more would die in the years to follow from radiation sickness and violence that would follow the monumental revelation of SLC-Expressive humans, then known as the Evolved, to the world at large several months later. The world at large did not know the true tragedies of the 11/8 nuclear attack until the Albany Trials, where confessions from high-ranking Company agents and testimony from members of the Ferrymen and their allies would draw back a curtain of secrets decades old. Now, with fourteen years behind us, we can look back on that day and see with clear eyes how tragic the event truly was.
But November 8th is so much more than that now. Just nine years ago, On November 8th, 2011, the United States began its final descent into Civil War. It is a date that lives in so much infamy that it has become a national day of mourning. In 2011 America was forced to grapple with the revelation that the President of the United States of America — Nathan Petrelli — had been murdered and replaced by one of the most notorious serial killers of our time. Gabriel Gray, also known as his alias "Sylar."
In 2011 America and the world watched in horror as children were gunned down in a drainage culvert in Cambridge, Massachusetts by government-controlled drones following an attempted exodus from an illegal detention center run in part by the Department of Evolved Affairs. In 2011 the world as we knew it ended, and we have never been able to look back from it.
November 8th is a day of monumental tragedy in the United States. It is a day of national mourning, a day of collective sympathy and frustration, and a perennial reminder of what liberties and life we all have and just how easily it can be taken away by those with a lust for power and a contempt for life. It is no surprise that the New York City Safe Zone effectively shuts down for memorial services on this day, and no surprise that to every American — and especially every New Yorker — November 8th is a day that will live forever in infamy.
Events across the New York City Safe Zone are scheduled to commemorate the tragic day and a live-stream of the events will be shown online. Fourteen minutes of silence will be observed starting at noon local time on the 8th.
Bagpipers and drummers will play during the ceremony and the names of the victims of the 2006 explosion, including those who perished in the Cambridge Massacre in 2011, will be read aloud. A flag was unfurled at the gates of the Manhattan Exclusion Zone yesterday and Secretary of Defense Vanessa Latch will speak at a private memorial ceremony, according to CNN-Canada.
President Raymond Praeger and First Lady Carol Praeger commemorated the sorrowful day at dawn with a moment of silence on the Capitol Manor's north terrace. He is scheduled to meet with troops at Fort Drum in New York to express his gratitude.