Funny enough, donating blood in times of tragedy is the most useless time to do it. I read that when there are terrorist attacks and everyone donates blood, there is too much of it and a lot of it goes to waste as it expires quickly. During 911 thousands of gallons were thrown out and it ended up costing the Blood Banks a lot of money and also caused a plateau afterwards.

I f you turned on your television in the immediate aftermath of September 11, you probably sawimages of Americans--tens of thousands of them across the country--lining up to give blood. Thispatriotic offering brought tears to the eyes of many of us. Unfortunately, it created nothing buttrouble for the nation's blood banks. Faced with an unprecedented turnout, the American RedCross and other organizations overcollected so massively that they had to discard thousands ofgallons of the perishable liquid. The donor crush caused a cascade of problems: Money waswasted; sub-par blood was collected; and other components, such as platelets, were neglected.Even worse was the general loss of faith in America's blood-collection system that produced aslump in donations from which we're still trying to recover