The design of current glass-tower skyscrapers encourages glass fragment
blowthrough by the shockwave, which will result in massive injuries
(simulated on pigs in wind tunnels it abraded flesh to the bone in
seconds, it would certainly kill you by blood loss or at least maim
badly).
ARGH! Taking back my previous comment about light injuries by flying
glass. Thought about the typical downtown brick-and-mortar buildings that
have more robust construction with real inner walls. (Don't ask me what I
think about the glass towers.)
I don't think either of you Europeans is familiar with the architecture of the Washington, D.C. inner government core, extending out a few miles. To wit, there are no tall glass boxes.
The nearest major ones may be the Watergate complex to the west, near the river, the Lafayette apartment/shopping complex to the southwest (as I recall the geography), and of course the Crystal City, Pentagon City (or whatever they call it), etc. complexes across the river, in Arlington.
The reason for this is that D.C. has a strict building code, requiring that no buildings overshadow those of the Emperor. (The Official Reason is about heights not being more than some number of floors.)
Also, many of the existing buildings are either museums or brownstone apartments or federal buildings of one sort or another. Or embassies, up near Dupont Circle and Kalorama.
(I'm just going by memory, from living there more than 32 years ago and from a couple of return visits. And from looking at maps over the years. Don't quote me on the exact geography.)
In other words, D.C. is not like downtown New York City, Frankfurt, etc. It's more like Paris.
Think about pictures you have seen of the D.C. skyline and you will know that tall glass boxes are not common. There are glass windows of course in many apartment buildings and homes, and of course in many office buildings, but not the "walls of glass" associated with modern, Bauhaus-type boxes.
If you're paranoid, a small cheap terror kit stored in office/car trunk/home could considerably enhance your survival chances, and minimize subsequent health risk.
Or in each of the places. If it's small and cheap, it can be multiplied.
It's a bit stupid to spend time and effort preparing a terror kit and then
have it in the car when you need it in the office.
Yes, but many offices don't allow handguns inside, even if locked in a case or backpack.
(And many places don't even allow handguns or rifles if locked inside car trunks. Despite the historical intent of laws having people lock up their firearms, in many places but not all places, most of the gun laws now have untested language about how a firearm may only be in a vehicle "when traveling to or from a legal shooting area." In other words, the proles are not supposed to keep guns in their trunks/boots or truck boxes, even if locked up. I say "untested" because I don't know of any cases where someone was charged with "not being in transit to a legal shooting area." Having thought for a few minutes about this, I have figured that if I were asked why I have a handgun or rifle locked in my trunk I would say I was planning to travel to another part of the state and do some shooting there. No way could they ever "disprove" that this was my plan, or that I had planned to go shooting during a trip someplace else but then changed my plans, etc. It helps that my Go Bag has some camping supplies in it. Of course, now that I say here I routinely have a handgun in my Go Bag, I guess the jig is up should some DA spend enough time Googling.)
Carrying a backpack or duffel bag every day to an office gets old real fast. A bag can be kept locked in a drawer in an office.
I suppose if I were working I might have some minimal set of survival supplies with me, but not very much. I would take my chances. The odds of a 911-type building collapse making my car inaccessible would be small. Were I working in a building with up to 4 stories (floors), I might have a rope ladder in my desk drawer. And maybe a Kapton smoke hood. (I heard that some airline passengers were carrying them, until the airlines started treating them as devices which might scare the other passengers.)
And even in a 911-type event, getting out of the building is 99% of the battle. Getting home after such an event should be straightforward. (Hence the rope ladder for small buildings and the Kapton hood.)
The greater threat is that access to one's home is impaired, or a car breakdown occurs, which is why carrying a bag in a vehicle makes so much sense: a shovel for digging out, a few blankets or a sleeping bag, water, a flashlight, flares and other road emergency supplies, maybe a GPS, a transistor radio, spare batteries, simple food rations, a few tools, and some small assortment of extra junk like duct tape, fishing line, wire, etc. And the gun I mentioned.
(If someone says that escape from a building may be difficult AND getting home may be impaired, I would say this is piling unlikelihood on unlikelihood. Not something I am going to carry emergency supplies for. One can plot the 3-space of "risks at work-risks getting home-risks at home" and act accordingly.
--Tim May
"Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and
strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"
