So we had quite an interesting day at work yesterday thanks to an unconfirmed bomb threat. Anyone else ever experienced this? Story of my life.

I’ve worked for the State going on 24 years now, as a school teacher and at my current state job, and I can honestly say I’ve been through at least 16 false threats during that time span. Anonymous phone calls, notes left under doors, suspicious objects found in the bushes–the threat itself comes in various packages. What we do with that information afterwards is what really matters.

Obviously, you have to take every threat seriously, because the first time you don’t, well, you know how that goes. My current place of employment does an excellent job of evacuating quickly. We have a plan, and that’s great–except for a few years ago. That was the one time they forgot about my department completely. I was happily working at my desk when another coworker called to ask where we had been evacuated to because she didn’t see me. Good thing that  was a false alarm too, or we might have been fried. At any rate, it caused us to tighten the plan.

When I worked for the schools, they always evacuated us to the gym. We spent 4 grueling hours in there once while the bomb squad did their sweep of the grounds. Four hours trapped in a stuffy gym with 2000 teenagers who have absolutely nothing to do? You can imagine how awful that was. And the thought that kept niggling at the back of my mind: “I sure hope they did a sweep of this gym before they crammed us in here.” Because someone who is serious about planting a bomb and doing some damage would likely do his homework. The gym. That’s the first place I’d rig.

Yesterday, my coworker and I spent the hour at a business across the street roiling over the fact that neither one of us thought to grab our purses or keys so that we could at least make a breakfast run during all the excitement. Between us, we had only my phone with a quickly depleting battery, and I had not had my morning coffee yet. The dragon was growling. Honestly, we thought nothing of the fact that someone had once again threatened to blow us to smithereens. Not cool, I know. But it’s easy to become complacent when threat after threat over the last twenty-four years have all been unfounded.

We survived the ordeal with no burn marks and got to go back to work an hour later. But guaranteed, there will be another bomb threat–probably sometime this year. We will be evacuated. We will grumble about the inconvenience of another false alarm. But today, after it’s said and done, I’m mindful of the fact that not every threat is fake, and one day, I could be faced with the real deal. Any of us could. “That would never happen to us,” is not a cliche too many can cling to anymore. It does happen, and through our shock, we have to pick up pieces we never saw falling and wrap our minds around scenes from a horror movie.

My point? Always have a plan and practice it often. Then, even if the zombies never come, the earthquake never hits, the bullets never fly, and complacency sets in, the plan will be intact and automatic. Like I said, threats come in all shapes and sizes. Be ready even when the zombie turns out to be a homeless man with a dirt-streaked face and missing teeth.