Perhaps it is a sign of the times; when I got the report last night that New York’s Times Square had been shut down due to a suspicious vehicle, I ignored it. Suspicious vehicles and packages shut down public places all the time. It has become an inconvenient routine in New York and here in the D.C. metro area, and it is hardly newsworthy when it happens. When the reports were updated to say that the vehicle had been ‘smoking,’ I immediately thought the worst: maybe they had forgotten to get their oil changed.
It wasn’t until I woke up this morning and learned that the vehicle was loaded with flammable material like propane and gasoline that I finally believed this was an apparent attempt at a terror attack. Judging by the lack of media attention last night, most people had the same or similar thoughts to mine. We assumed it was nothing.
This proves to me that we’ve gone too far. Our supposed preparedness for attacks and disaster has rendered us numb, and thereby less able to deal with them when they really occur. This isn’t unique to terror attacks, though. Think about this: In most office buildings, people ignore fire alarms. Every time the workers have heard the alarm go off, it’s been a pointless drill or a false alarm that just inconveniences them for no reason whatsoever. One day, when the building is really on fire, people will sit at their desks ignoring the alarms until they see smoke or some other indication there’s a real problem—and by then it might be too late. Have regular fire drills made us safer?