I have loved reading all of your responses. Made for a very interesting read.
I have noticed a few people mentioning country being safer than city but it was only a few years ago that Anders Breivik let loose in Norway in the country and did so tactfully knowing he had previously distracted the police and army by carrying out attacks in the city first. I know something like that is very unlikely to happen but it does happen then where would that leave potential victims/hostages in the country when the police and military are otherwise deployed to a situation unfolding in the city? The only upside to something like that happening in the country side is there are many, many hiding places unless you're in an open field of course!
I am a parent so to the poster who brought up school attacks, thank you....I had never thought about asking the office staff for building layouts etc or even looking for storage cupboards for my son to hide in should he have to. That is something I will be doing on our next parent's evening
Very good idea. It's a sad state of affairs that our small children aren't even safe from lunacy these days! Around Halloween time we got a text from my sons school saying that an armed man had been detained close to the school grounds and that the building was locked. I ran to the school with another mum to find that only the front gates were locked and children and office staff could still be seen through windows, not very good if the armed man was a shooter with visible targets still available...turns out it was an old man who had been burgled in the next community and was looking for the assailants when he woke up in the morning and realised what had happened, he was armed with a machete...he wasn't actually near our school he was near the next school along and as a precaution our school locked down but the text we received wasn't very clear and caused a lot of panic with the parents. Sadly, schools are targets and as someone else said they are probably seen as easy targets as the attackers would meet very little resistance in them.I am quite good with my surroundings. I have done jujitsu for many years since I was 12 (now 27) and as part of the teenage classes we were taught self defence from bullies/attackers etc and it has never left me. I rarely walk with my hood up, never walk with earphones in and only get my phone out when people aren't around unless it is unavoidable (the latter was purely taught to us as a mugging prevention method, don't display what you have). In a previous post I made elsewhere I mentioned that at our local Christmas light switch on I found a suspicious package left on a bench next to the escalators and lifts...the place was packed and if that had of been an explosive device the whole shopping centre would have gone up. I warned the security guards and the police responded very quickly. Warrington was previously a target for the IRA in the 90's and a bomb was detonated in the high street, killing two children and injuring many more on a busy mother's day weekend. The bomb had been concealed in a public bin. I do remember it being on the news and my dad frantically trying to find my nan who had been shopping (back in the day they had no mobile phones so it was literally looking for her on foot). Just after Christmas this year 5 youths were arrested after setting off smoke bombs in the toilets of the shopping centre I found that suspicious package a month previous, again they did this at the the peak of the shopping/sales season at a busy shopping mall on the weekend. The place was evacuated and locked down. Ok, so nothing bad came of it that time and the police put it down to a stupid prank but the knock on effect of their idiotic actions could mean that people who aren't as switched on as others may put another, real threat down to another stupid prank and not evacuate, or not help others and then that could be the one time it actually did go off and there would be hundreds of casualties if not fatalities.
http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/new ... _suspects/
My friend who implied that he is considering arming himself day-to-day meant with something such as a knife or a screw driver...something small, but as I told him he is more likely to get into trouble if he is caught with any offensive weapon than he is to get caught up in a situation where he would even be able to use such a weapon in an affective manner. It is a scary thought that the only weapon we do have to protect ourselves is the use of our legs and our cardiovascular system to carry us far enough away at a quick enough pace to avoid trouble. With a nation of an increasing elderly population, overweight population and lots of small ones I fear that the only people capable of escaping on foot are young, fit, and with no children in tow lol.
To the person who posted about the boat and only reading the escape hatch details purely down to circumstances at the time, I bet that was a revelation and has stayed with you ever since. I find myself doing the same things, I make sure I sit near the emergency doors at the back of a bus, if I am on a train I sit where I can see and reach the window hammers or as close to the doors as possible if my kids are with me to ensure we get out first and don't get trampled on. The idea that some people don't familiarise themselves with their surroundings sends shivers down my spine. The one thing I do remember vividly about the 7/7 bombings was a lady saying she had no idea how busy her carriage had gotten because she had her head in the newspaper, she put her survival down to being at the bottom of a pile of other injured people unable to flee themselves and only managed to escape once she had moved other people off her. The effectively cushioned her blow so to speak. It always makes me feel uneasy that people who prepare themselves for such events or at least make themselves more aware of their surroundings/personal space will be relied on to save others that just haven't taken the time to even look around them. Of course a lot of people would do all they could to help but in my own opinion this should be something that is a basic feature in our lives in this day and age. Knowing your surroundings.
It takes me back to the Lee Rigby incident, he was unlucky and that's mainly what that boils down to, wrong place, wrong time but next to an army barracks, surely people would be more vigilant around those areas, especially an army barracks in central London! My dad was in the Royal Artillery and was based for a few years in Salisbury in the 90s. At the time the threat was from the IRA but at all times 3 soldiers were positioned at the front gates, armed....as kids we used to take my dad wine gums when he was on guard and even as little ones someone would come out to meet us, we weren't allowed too close to the fences and those on guard duty were not allowed off their posts even to greet their own children. My dad used to say while guard duty was very mundane and boring it was a necessity as they were the first eyes and ears that would recognise a potential threat to the barracks. Last year we went to visit Salisbury and the place where we grew up, naturally we drove past the barracks and stopped outside across the street to have a look from a distance, my brother has a habit of just doing what he likes so he got out of the car and approached the fences not once was he stopped, a soldier simply held his hand up and shook his head to indicate not to touch the gate and that was that. No armed guards at the fence, only one in the cabin where the controls were to unlock the gates and let vehicles through and the solider even let us take photographs of the features of the barracks to show our dad when we returned that nothing much had changed!! Surely that is a breach in all sorts of manners of security? Granted he obviously realised we were no threat but surely in this day and age and heightened security level an army barracks would be a lot more vigilant and much more heavily guarded due to the nature of lone wolf attacks and given that one of their own was killed the previous year on their own doorstep so to speak in London?!
Beggars belief. I just hope that when the time comes, because it will, that there are many more people out there that are prepared, that are watching, that are listening and prepared to action where possible and necessary. They say human nature and the effects of adrenaline causes fight or flight, I think given a situation like that I would be on the flight path very quickly!
