h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a very strange feeling when you here something like this on the news, and suddenly realise that not only your wife but also your brother may be involved. Thankfully both are , but that lurch in the stomach is wrenching.

Once the worry had gone, then came the anger. I'm over that now as well, and just feel defiant.

F*ck you, whoever you are that did this. We saw off the blitz. We will see you off too.

You can imagine how I'm feeling.

My whole family have contacted me and asking me not to go to London next weekend for the meet.

I want to say "you" to the terrorists and come anyway, I haven't been to London for 2½ years and I miss my friends but I don't want my family to worry about me being in London next weekend.

*utterly torn*

Sick. Then phoned my friend who lives in Kent. My wife rang her her sister who lives in London they are both okay.

I can remember very clearly my mother asking me not to go to London in the wake of the IRA bomb in Hyde Park.

I did in the end convince her that me not going would be a victory for the terrorists. But it's a decision only you can make.

For what it's worth, my guess is that London might just be the safest city in the world for the next couple of weeks.

I feel sad for people hurt and sad for anyone who has lost their life and their family and friends

I found when I woke up at 12:00, and I was quite shocked. Luckily my sister and boyfriend, who recently moved to London, are both OK.

Let us just hope that you Brits see past any lust for revenge and instead strive for justice.

I don't want revenge but this kind of thing needs to be stamped out.

Easier said than done.

We could all become Muslims that might do it as its al-Qaeda who have said they carried out the attack. That, of course, will not stop the Basque separatists or any one else carrying out terrorist attacks for whatever cause they are 'fighting' for.

Terrorism will never truly be erradicated until we are all watched 24 hours a day or we all give in to the terrorists or we wipe out all the terrorists or the terrorists decide to live and let live and accept peoples different points of view.

My thoughts: there was always a chance it was going to happen. I always hoped it wouldn't happen but there is nothing we can, realistically, do to stop it in the short term (give it 10 years until we are under 24 hour survelliance).

Ands lets hope the death toll doesn't rise much more. I have a feeling they are waiting to get a definitive number before making a statement rather than having a rolling count which, to me, always seems a bit un-necessary and gruesome and just gives the media something to feed on.

I was shocked and disappointed after yesterdays good news.

I'm really glad to hear you're okay BS and SLG- SLG being in London was one the first things I thought about- once I knew it wasn't 'power surges' (crap excuse by the way guys, too close the the whole 'wrong sized resistor' thing we had a while back).

There's one person I can't get in touch with, but I'm not panicking as he often has his mobile off.

Have just heard from Universal Granny - shes a London resident normally, but she's on holiday in the West Country and thankfully, is safe and well.

As for immediate feelings of the situation - still numbly disbelieving and becoming slowly angry and more defiant by the word.

Why the hell do people do this to people who seriously wish them no harm?

Man, I understand how they feel to want to strike out but just who are they hurting and how is it going to get them what they want?

It's sad that some of those people hurt have probably been on peace marches trying to stop this sort of thing happening to other people whether through terrorism or state enacted "war".

one love

i woke up at 12 to a text from ged asking if it was ok my end..yeah why?i thought..then got up n put tv on..

i was glad to have heard from him before i found out as hes at an exhibition in islington all week n i wouldve paniced.
so shocked n sad for the injured

.....live on edge of London, remember the IRA attacks, but they normally gave a warning....watched it on news all morning, a very lucky woman tried to get on bomb bus but went on bus behind it as full up....she was shaking with shock.

Most of the time news from London doesn't raise much more than a shrug of the shoulders up here, but this is nasty.

I looked at the photo of the bus (on BBC News' site) and thought: that might have been a packed no 42 in Oxford Road. Who knows, it might still be. If we make the mistake of thinking this kind of thing is only going to happen in London because it's the capital city and a prestige target for terrorists (every bomb they get through the "ring of Steel" is a victory for them), then we get complacent in Manchester and it makes us an easier target.

This explains, I suppose, a sudden feeling of unease I got on my morning bus to work, I couldn't wait to get off it. This would have been around 8:30 this morning, so I'm asking myself what I was picking up on. I didn't hear about the bombs until about noon, then logged onto the BBC to get the report.

today London, this evening Manchester, tomorrow Birmingham?

The thing about being in a city where this sort of thing happens is the randomness of it all. Its just too scary for most of us who live in countries where we thankfully arent used to losing people to war or terrorist violence.

I remember the last bomb here in Birmingham a few years back it was right round the corner from where the main gay part of town is. I wondered who might have planted it, right wing homophobes, IRA, who..., who were they trying to get... and why...??????

Ive never been afraid, law of averages and all that it just upsets me that people have to lose their lives so pointlessly for something they really care about but have done nothing to create themselves.

People who think they have created no enemies and do their best to be friendly having their lives taken away and people losing loved ones.

I am a 57 year old woman sitting in front of my TV in my house in a small town in the US watching in disbelief and sorrow what is unfolding in your country. I just wanted to let Londoners (especially) know that there are a lot of other people in the world that care about what happens to you. I find that every time I hear of an "event" like this, I get angrier and angrier at the lunatics that are responsible. My resolve to "stay the course" becomes even stronger. But, rather than express my political views, I would like to express my sympathy to anyone that lost a relative or friend in this attack. I can't begin to imagine how you are all feeling...

......I remember being shocked by 9/11.
......I also remember IRA campaign, it feels familiar somehow, I live on edge of London.

McJenny,

Thank you for your thoughts. I am also at home and just a little older than you. I lived through the Birmingham bombings in the UK and more recent bomb scares, one when I was doing jury service. The jury turned up, the judges didn't!!

We have been warned for so long that this could happen in London, but I do wonder if yesterday's Olympic Celebrations took someone' s "eye off the ball". The G8 summit was always going to be a target, but the Olympic celebrations must have been a big "bonus" to the perpetrators, especially with so much "security" cencentrating on Gleneagles.

The news all day on the radio has been painful to listen to, and I have resisted putting the TV on till the news can be more accurately assessed.

It is good to know that decent people round the world view these events in the same light. We need to stick together more than ever, and never let them win.

to all affected.
Websailor

The Olympics is pure coincidence. The planning required to get that many bombs to go off at the same time means that this has been in the pipeline for months. Up until 12.30ish yesterday, everybody and his uncle's parakeet *knew8 the Olympics were going to be in paris.

If we took our eye off the ball (and personally I think that's unlikely) then it was because G8 was in the North, not in London.