I don’t normally link to Substack, because it’s the most annoying thing on the internet, but David Aaronovitch on the 7/7 bombings is worth reading
“ON THE fringes of Central London the news of a bombing doesn’t break, it seeps. The first clue is the crowd at a bus stop which, on a normal day, has just a small queue. Then, a few hundred yards away at a different stop, another crowd, and this means that the Tube station is closed. Up the hill, close to another station on another line altogether there are more people at more bus stops, so something bigger is wrong. Two ambulances and a police car chase each other in the direction of town."
I’d left London by the time of 7/7, but that really gets how it was during the IRA bombing campaign.