A collective gasp and shaking of heads occurs every time we learn of a shooting that occurs on a school or university. The venues changes, but the outcome is nearly always the same... Student, armed, walks onto the school or campus and shoots other students and teachers. People die, then the shooter usually kills himself. Later we find that the shooter had mental illness—sometimes overt, sometimes not. The killings mostly seem random, but always are senseless.
Four years ago this very week, a student shot and killed 32 people before shooting himself at Virginia Tech. From the grief and horror of this terrible act, some good did come out of it. For one, the awareness of dealing with those with severe mental illnesses has been greatly heightened. Schools are now actively engaged in their student populations to gain more information, earlier, when things are going south with one of their own. Also, the way in which we prepare people for such incidents has changed as well. When once we trained to, “hide and shelter,” we now know that sometimes you just can’t wait.
After Columbine and now Virginia Tech, police have learned that it is often best to run away from trouble, as quickly as possible. Barricading can work to protect a person, but only if that barricade is sturdy enough to keep out an intruder and does involve using a person to hold it in place. Through the heroics of one professor at Virginia Tech, Liviu Librescu, who held the door’s barricade, some student managed to escape, while he was shot fatally through the door.
We have learned now that first thing is to run. We know that if have no where to run, but we can lock the door, we can deny entry and avoid deadly fire. However, we now also know that we lose options one and two, that the only hope to survival is to fight back.
A group called “ACT, or Attack Countermeasures Training,” among others, are now offering classes in how to launch an attack on an armed person. These groups teach you how to barricade and how to set up attack groups. You learn how you can use strength in numbers to overcome a person with a gun and ultimately change the situation. See a sample video at http://prepare.fullerton.edu/shelter-in-place.htm
On some level it is downright frightening to think that you need to learn how to do this, but history teaches us we have no choice. When it comes to a situation of an unstable person and a gun and you act passively, you will likely die.
So, listen to history and the cries of those who fell before us. Learn and live.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Nuclear Primordial Soup
Having knowledge is a good thing. Having a little bit of knowledge and applying it liberally to everything around you is, at a minimum, annoying, but could actually be harmful. Take the issue of protecting yourself from radiation. With the damage from the Japanese nuclear power facilities seemingly worse every day, people are really gearing up their fears. Certainly the situation in Japan is sad and concerning, but that does not mean that we should react as though Fukushima were down the street from our house.
As a health physicist for over 18 years, the one thing I strove to do was to education people about radioactivity. Every day it is used beneficially in medicine, research, manufacturing and therapy. But, it also has a “bad side” if unchecked and used inhumanely, as the Japanese can sadly attest. That said, radioactivity is not new on Planet Earth. In fact, Earth was radioactive from the start, and has been gradually “decaying” over four and a half billion years. Everything on earth has evolved from a radioactive atmosphere, although today’s level of radiation is greatly reduced from the days of the original Primordial Soup.
In the April 3, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Chris Woolston wrote an article on the fear of radiation here in the United States and that people are grasping anxiously for anything to protect them from the clouds of radiation undoubtedly wafting over the Pacific. The fact is that if all of the Japanese fuel rods burned up and became airborne, that the amount of radiation received on our coast would still be extraordinarily small and probably add little change to our chance of illness or disease in our lifetimes.
However, people are afraid of things they don’t understand, so they grab onto things which are easy and obtainable. According to Woolston, people believe that taking supplements, especially iodine, and changing to macrobiotic diets [miso soup, brown rice and seaweed] will protect them from radiation. Actually, for healthy individuals, these foods are low fat and could be very good for you. The problem is that many people are sensitive or allergic to iodine. If you are allergic to shellfish, it is probably the iodine that gets you. Additionally, iodine varies in the type of seaweed, some varying by as much as 1000 fold!
There is strong evidence that antioxidants (such as that in soybeans) can help protect DNA from damage, but our DNA has been the subject of damage from those Primordial Soup days and will continue to do so. While some DNA damage is harmful, it is also how we got to where we are today. DNA change is the basis for evolution and all living things on earth are subject to it.
When someone tells me that I need to “eat only,” or “eliminate” a certain thing from my diet, I like to remember what Julia Child once said, which I am sure I am paraphrasing – “Eat a little bit of everything.” Small amounts of most anything are good, but large doses – like iodine supplements or certain seaweed -- could be quite harmful.
So, when protecting yourself, you can do so with what you eat. Just make sure it is full of a variety of nutritional elements and omit the dash of fear. Now that’s a healthy bowl of soup.
As a health physicist for over 18 years, the one thing I strove to do was to education people about radioactivity. Every day it is used beneficially in medicine, research, manufacturing and therapy. But, it also has a “bad side” if unchecked and used inhumanely, as the Japanese can sadly attest. That said, radioactivity is not new on Planet Earth. In fact, Earth was radioactive from the start, and has been gradually “decaying” over four and a half billion years. Everything on earth has evolved from a radioactive atmosphere, although today’s level of radiation is greatly reduced from the days of the original Primordial Soup.
In the April 3, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Chris Woolston wrote an article on the fear of radiation here in the United States and that people are grasping anxiously for anything to protect them from the clouds of radiation undoubtedly wafting over the Pacific. The fact is that if all of the Japanese fuel rods burned up and became airborne, that the amount of radiation received on our coast would still be extraordinarily small and probably add little change to our chance of illness or disease in our lifetimes.
However, people are afraid of things they don’t understand, so they grab onto things which are easy and obtainable. According to Woolston, people believe that taking supplements, especially iodine, and changing to macrobiotic diets [miso soup, brown rice and seaweed] will protect them from radiation. Actually, for healthy individuals, these foods are low fat and could be very good for you. The problem is that many people are sensitive or allergic to iodine. If you are allergic to shellfish, it is probably the iodine that gets you. Additionally, iodine varies in the type of seaweed, some varying by as much as 1000 fold!
There is strong evidence that antioxidants (such as that in soybeans) can help protect DNA from damage, but our DNA has been the subject of damage from those Primordial Soup days and will continue to do so. While some DNA damage is harmful, it is also how we got to where we are today. DNA change is the basis for evolution and all living things on earth are subject to it.
When someone tells me that I need to “eat only,” or “eliminate” a certain thing from my diet, I like to remember what Julia Child once said, which I am sure I am paraphrasing – “Eat a little bit of everything.” Small amounts of most anything are good, but large doses – like iodine supplements or certain seaweed -- could be quite harmful.
So, when protecting yourself, you can do so with what you eat. Just make sure it is full of a variety of nutritional elements and omit the dash of fear. Now that’s a healthy bowl of soup.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Surviving the Triangle of Death
Oh dear, is it that time of year again?
Those of us in Emergency Management groan when we see this horrible email about the “Triangle of Life,” which manages to float through the internet year after year. This is a complete hoax. Its author, known as Doug Copp, is hopefully in jail now for all of this really deadly “advise” that he is spreading. (In fact, he is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice fraud unit...) He is wrong, DEAD wrong.
Let’s think about how this works. He claims that if you are beside something sturdy, rather than under it, a collapsed building will not hurt you? Honestly, if the building pancakes on top of you, you are a goner one way or the other. But this is rarely how buildings actually collapse, nor is it how people are injured or killed during earthquakes. Usually it is stuff flying around or falling over on people that gets them. Which means that getting UNDER something is the SMART thing to do!
For those minor examples Copp claims people survived in the “triangle,” there are thousands more that show the opposite. In fact, there is a photo often shown as one of his examples with the desk in the middle of the picture– if one had been UNDER that desk, one would have survived! NEXT to it (in the triangle) one would have likely not survived, or been severely injured.
Drop, COVER and hold on WILL save your life in an earthquake. Please spread that word instead. DO NOT forward these emails, or refute any sent to you.
For those unwilling to believe me and drop that triangle from their dead, crushed hands, go to Snopes for their take. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/triangle.asp
Those of us in Emergency Management groan when we see this horrible email about the “Triangle of Life,” which manages to float through the internet year after year. This is a complete hoax. Its author, known as Doug Copp, is hopefully in jail now for all of this really deadly “advise” that he is spreading. (In fact, he is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice fraud unit...) He is wrong, DEAD wrong.
Let’s think about how this works. He claims that if you are beside something sturdy, rather than under it, a collapsed building will not hurt you? Honestly, if the building pancakes on top of you, you are a goner one way or the other. But this is rarely how buildings actually collapse, nor is it how people are injured or killed during earthquakes. Usually it is stuff flying around or falling over on people that gets them. Which means that getting UNDER something is the SMART thing to do!
For those minor examples Copp claims people survived in the “triangle,” there are thousands more that show the opposite. In fact, there is a photo often shown as one of his examples with the desk in the middle of the picture– if one had been UNDER that desk, one would have survived! NEXT to it (in the triangle) one would have likely not survived, or been severely injured.
Drop, COVER and hold on WILL save your life in an earthquake. Please spread that word instead. DO NOT forward these emails, or refute any sent to you.
For those unwilling to believe me and drop that triangle from their dead, crushed hands, go to Snopes for their take. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/triangle.asp
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Should We Start Weekly Meetings?
I listened with interest, hope and frustration this week as one person interviewed on the radio noted that this week's events in Japan, followed on the heels of New Zealand's quakes, really made him think about emergency preparedness. OK, maybe it is the fact that I do emergency preparedness for a living, but...REALLY!? Should it take an event of this magnitude to get someone simply to think about getting prepared?
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, our human nature is to disregard, put off, or just flat out deny the possibiity of something unpleasant or sad. Understandable, but it is something that we need to learn to do. And now! We have learned to buy insurance to guard against car accidents or house fires. We have learned that wearing seat belts will save your life if you get in a car crash. We have learned to put rubber mats in showers to prevent slips and falls. So now we need to learn to acquire a new skills set... Prepare for a NATURAL incident.
Preparing for disasters, manmade or natural, should be something we need to weave into our daiy lives. Rather than making it "that thing" so ominous we don't even want to name, we can learn to accept it as a part of our routine, like grocery shopping or cleaning house. Maybe not pleasant activities, but relatively neutral. Once we change the flavor of the label of preparedness, we can start building our cache of tools and supplies to help you survive whatever comes your way.
I doesn't have to be a revolution, but maybe a quiet, but resolute change in ourselves. I doesn't have to be difficult either. At http://prepare.fullerton.edu, you can find a simple 12 step program to get prepared in no time. It doesn't require you to stand, state your name, and tell us that you used to deny that disasters happen.
But it wouldn't hurt. Give it a try and let me know how it works out.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, our human nature is to disregard, put off, or just flat out deny the possibiity of something unpleasant or sad. Understandable, but it is something that we need to learn to do. And now! We have learned to buy insurance to guard against car accidents or house fires. We have learned that wearing seat belts will save your life if you get in a car crash. We have learned to put rubber mats in showers to prevent slips and falls. So now we need to learn to acquire a new skills set... Prepare for a NATURAL incident.
Preparing for disasters, manmade or natural, should be something we need to weave into our daiy lives. Rather than making it "that thing" so ominous we don't even want to name, we can learn to accept it as a part of our routine, like grocery shopping or cleaning house. Maybe not pleasant activities, but relatively neutral. Once we change the flavor of the label of preparedness, we can start building our cache of tools and supplies to help you survive whatever comes your way.
I doesn't have to be a revolution, but maybe a quiet, but resolute change in ourselves. I doesn't have to be difficult either. At http://prepare.fullerton.edu, you can find a simple 12 step program to get prepared in no time. It doesn't require you to stand, state your name, and tell us that you used to deny that disasters happen.
But it wouldn't hurt. Give it a try and let me know how it works out.
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