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Several days after the crash, many people, particularly in the [[United States]], started calling the tragedy a possible warning of things to come, based on the flight's number (990, which people thought was a message from [[God]] to expect tragic things during the changing, on New Year's eve, from 1999 to [[2000]]) and the worrying [[Y2K]] situation. The fact that the crash occurred on October 31, which is [[Halloween]] also did not go un-noticed in this regard. Soon after the new year arrived without incidents, of course, the myth of flight 990 being a sign from God largely disappeared from public scrutiny.
Persons familiar with the so-called [[major system]] for memorizing numbers would recognize that the number 990 can be encoded by words that contain the consonants P,P, and S. One such code word that represents the number 990 would of course be the word [[PEPSI]]. If one were to ask if by analogy [[Coca-Cola|COKE]] might be next, then indeed the words [[Diet Coke|DIET COKE]] and [[tequila|TEQUILA]] using the standard [[phonetic]] alphabet generate the numbers [[11]] and [[77]] and [[175]] which are of course three of the flight numbers from the [[September 11th attack]]. Curiously, using the same phonetic [[cipher]] the word [[Al Qaeda]] encodes the number 571. There is a report that a few days before the September 11th attack, [[Mohammed Atta]] called a friend and posed this riddle "what's two sticks and a cake with a stick down?" If Atta was familiar with the [[major system]], then it would be inferable that the usage of the word [[cake]], like coke, might refer to the number of flight 77 which struck the [[The_Pentagon|Pentagon]].
It remains an open question as to whether this type of [[numerology]] has played a specific role in the planning of major terrorist attacks, or if it is a mere coincidence that such attacks have occurred with such degrees of [[symbolism]]. Indeed, in on [[December 23]], 2003 the United States department of [[Homeland Security]] found in necessary to raise the color coded terrorist alert level to the level [[orange (colour)|orange]], and in the events that thereafter followed reports that persons who were on terrorist suspect [[watch lists]] tried several times to board a flight in [[Paris]] with the flight number 223, with the result that that flight had to be cancelled several times over the next few days. While it may never be known whether a [[terrorist attack]] was in fact prevented by those actions, such incidents might indeed be evidence that the use of [[numerology]] by such groups as [[Al Qaeda]] as part of a [[modus operandi]] is certainly a factor not to be ignored.
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