facing the fear

With the latest semi-announced terror alerts for July 4th, I ran across a few articles today on preparing for a terrorist act, or better termed, preparing for a disaster.

Anyone who knows me knows that I've been a disaster novel reader for many many years. I even took a course in college on natural disasters, things like earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and the like. So I'm sitting here reading an MSNBC.com article called The Last Safe Place in the World, a guide to home security in post 9-11 America, and I'm thinking I already know all this stuff. You can only read so many novels about asteroids hitting the earth, earthquakes of massive proportions, alien invasions, before you begin to think you are well-versed in how to survive anything.

Then it dawned on me, as I read through the recommended preparations for survival in the article, that I am not, in truth, prepared to meet ANY of these possible disasters, terrorist-induced or not.

I remember that all I did to prepare for Y2K was to store some bottles of water--I finally got around to dumping them out in mid-2001. Why not dump them out? What bad thing could really happen that would possibly affect me? Right. Then came 9-11 and all assumptions should have been thrown out the window.

Of course, I live in a small town, so my chances of being near a terrorist attack are probably small...although some of the anthrax cases would make me think where you live may not matter. But if someone is going to blow something up, it would most likely be in a large city, the better to make their statement, or cause the most fear.

Then again, we have the specter of the "dirty bomb" lurking out there now. Or stolen nuclear weapons. Radiation fallout probably wouldn't stop at the borders of my town just because it was small. (And now that I think of it, just where does the water come from that gushes out of the tap so nicely in my kitchen? What about contamination of the water supply? Is that water reservoir protected???)

But does that mean I should go out and get potassium iodide tablets like thousands of Americans are now doing? In an article from June 23, 2002 the Washington Post mentions that the pills can be obtained at Nukepills.com - something that I couldn't even believe due to the name, until sure enough, I went there and found it was possible to buy them direct and have them shipped to my home. Somehow the idea of doing this just bugs me.

For one thing, the iodide tablets only protect you from one kind of radiation. So even though you might not get thyroid cancer, you'd probably still be facing some major problems. Plus, there is a feeling of having given in to the fear. And that's what's so tricky these days. We all live with heightened anxiety since 9-11, more fear than we are used to having about our personal safety, the safety of country. How we cope with that fear is, to some extent, an indication of just how successful the terrorists have been. To terrorize us is their goal. If I start making all kinds of disaster plans, am I giving in to the terror?

Probably, like the article says, there are some common sense things I should be doing. And boy will I feel like an idiot if something major happens in my region and I'm suddenly in a worse fix because I didn't take basic steps. I guess the reason I haven't taken care of this is that its more comfortable to ignore it, to remain in denial that anything like what happened in NYC could happen in my little town. That there is still safety. We all like to think that if it happens it will happen to somebody else. Ignoring what might happen, however, is as nuts and damaging as becoming obsessed with it. Facing the fear, coming out of denial and dealing with the fear head-on, without succumbing to it, is ultimately the way to defeat the concept of terrorism.

Posted by pam at July 02, 2002 11:01 PM | Comments (1)