
potential terrorism and how that would affect your choices about where to live and send the kids to school?
I can't get my mind out of this 2002 mentality and don't want to send my kids anywhere that I can't get to them quickly. I checked out Maret's website last spring, and there was an evacuation plan on it. It certainly gave me pause. So how do you all do it? Have you entirely dismissed such fears, and just put your kids where you want them? Am I the only one thinking that Norwood might be an excellent option because the fumes from the dirty bomb won't get to them right away? I'm not a fearful person by nature. But this concerns my kids, and NPR recently aired interviews with people talking about the likelihood of some kind of strike in DC. Someone please talk me down. My husband thinks I'm nuts. |
No, you aren't the only one. Even though I stopped talking about them, I continue to have the same thoughts. |
I worry about this all the time. I actually would move away from DC, but DH's job is here and our friends, etc. |
While those thoughts do sometimes cross my mind, as our DC is in a private school in DC, I also remind myself that I cannot live my life with those fears dictating important education decisions for my child. To me, those thoughts are understandable, but have crossed the line from reasonable to unreasonable. |
I think it is naive not to consider potential future terrorist attacks in terms of how they would impact your daily life and what you would do in response.
The question isn't "if" we will be targeted again, but "when" they will be successful. The reality is that we have been targeted again, and they have not been successful. But that could change at any point. It's just our new reality. |
I agree. My husband does some homeland security-related work and he's amazed nothing has happened yet. But as more time passes, I tend to forget most days.... I think that it's a calculated risk, like so many others that we (as moms) take all the time. |
It's funny. I moved away recently but may move back in a few years. When I think about moving back, I worry a lot about it, to the point where it seems too dangerous. And yet it only bothered me occasionally while i was living there. You get used to it.
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OP here. So almost everyone thinks of it as a "calculated risk," to use the words of one poster. I'm going to try to think in those terms.
But I do wish I could stop remembering that there were 8 years between the two World Trade Center attacks -- and that they went back to finish the job. |
I understand where you're coming from, but honestly, any DC-area child has a much, much, much higher risk of dying in a car crash than a terrorist attack. |
Actually, many experts suggest that there is as high as a 50% chance over the next ten years that a nuclear weapon of some sort will be detonated in DC. |
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I used to love, love, love the metro for commuting and getting around and still do. After 9-11, the government spent a lot of money on some machine that can detect explosive residue in the air. It would take minutes or awhile for someone to set-off an alarm to stop the commuters from entering the metro; I thought it seemed worthless for the people already in the metro.
Anyway, after 9-11, I felt really vulnerable about terrorist attacks happening in the metro. If it happened in London and Madrid, what's to stop it from happening in DC? What's to stop 10, 50, 100 terrorists from getting in the metro with a backpack of explosives and detonate at once during rush hour? My former co-worker said, it's not a matter of if, but when the next attacks will be. |
I think about it and I ride the last car of the train on the metro during morning rush hour. You remind me that I keep meaning to encourage my daughter to do the same -- at least until after the election.
It's like wearing a seatbelt. I don't often think about the possibility of a carwreck when I put on a seatbelt. I just do it because it increases my chances of survival in the event of a wreck. Same with riding the last car during morning rush hour. In the London morning rush hour bombing, the three suicide bombers rode, respectively, the first, second, and third car on a line that has six-car trains. Think about it. If you wanted to do the most damage possible, you wouldn't get on the last car on a train. So that's where I ride. Then I figure, even if there is a bombing on my train (and the chances of that are slight) at least the bomb is not likely to go off in my car. Plus I always get a seat! ![]() |
PP here who rides the last car on the metro: Even though I take precautions, I think this pp has it right. The odds of dying some other way are greater. |
I don't give it a second thought. I don't believe in living in fear. |