Sorry to be morbid, but with the anniversary, I wondered. Did the victims feel pain, or were they vaporized instantly? (“Vaporized” isn’t the right word)
Some of them surely did. There were several phone calls from survivors of the initial impact, and they were dealing with heat and smoke until the buildings went down. Some jumped, and one usually doesn’t jump until they have no other choice. Also, some of them knew that they were going to die, which constitutes psychological torture/pain.
The people on the planes probably never felt a thing in the physical sense, though. The impacts were far too heavy and definitively fatal for any of them to have survived the initial impacts.
Are you talking about the ones on the planes? I guess the moment of death would have been quite brief for them (and anyone in the building in the direct path of the planes)
But there were a whole bunch of other victims who were in other places in the building and would have suffered pain from injuries, burns, smoke inhalation etc, before the building collapsed and killed them.
As well, of course, as the terror and anguish of the passengers before the planes crashed, and of those people trapped in the building afterwards.
So yes, it’s unfortunately inevitable that people suffered badly that day.
I was thinking of the plane passengers. Sorry, rereading the OP, I see it’s vague.
The ones on the aircraft probably did not feel any physical pain. It’s likely the victoms of the first WTC impact were not even aware that they were about to crash, and depending on the approach path, the ones on the second plane to hit the WTC may not have seen the smoke plume from the first impact and so they may also not have known that they were about to crash. The passengers aboard the aircraft that struck the Pentagon were probably aware that a crash was imminent, given that they were flying so close to the ground. Likewise with the crash of Flight 93, which was apparently directed at the ground by the terrorist crew piloting it.
Regardless of any foreknowledge, the impacts were very rapid events and certainly resulted in the victims aboard the aircraft being completely torn asunder before they could experience any physical pain. The aircraft approach speeds were reportedly in the neighborhood of 500 MPH, which means that the entire length of the plane impacted in the space of about 1/4-second.
The victims in the buildings of course experienced a spectrum of outcomes. The ones who jumped from the WTC towers probably did not experience any pain on impact; their brains would have suffered instantly fatal damage upon impacting the street at terminal velocity. Others may have suffered from painful burns or blunt-force trauma before succumbing to their injuries.