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DEFENSE MECHANISMS
Better than duct tape: One man’s bunker
BY DAVID VALDES GREENWOOD

Bourbon, please. I could use a drink.

I first heard about the feds’ suggestions for protecting one’s home in the event of a terrorist attack from a friend in Washington, who called to ask me if I was sick yet of the " duct-tape speech. " By the time she called me, she said the local news affiliates in the capital had all offered extensive and repeated advice on how to seal oneself into a room with plastic sheeting and duct tape, should terrorists attack.

Boston-area coverage has been a little less insistent as far as I can tell, and the New York Times went so far as to run an entire article pointing out the inefficacy of trying to insta-bunker your pad. It reported that even under controlled conditions, scientific test cases had shown that outside air gets into sealed houses within two hours — and that they did not test for dirty bombs with ingredients that could simply melt the plastic sheeting.

As far as I can tell, the call for sheeting readiness is simply psychological sleight of hand, a technique for focusing our last unpoisoned moments before it’s curtains for us all. Rumor has it that the damn instructions were lifted whole cloth from Red Cross standard-emergency procedures, along with other tips such as stockpiling a three-day supply of canned food and water. (And whatever you do, don’t forget the can opener, or you’ll spend your last hours full of self-loathing.) You’re supposed to crown your preparations with a flashlight, so you can fully enjoy the nightmare of seeing your loved ones huddling around cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew inside a plastic bubble of your own making, while awaiting the first hint of falling particles. Congratulations — you’ve built an apocalyptic snow globe!

Screw it. There are windows in every room on both floors of my condo, a perk that makes it worth its location in a charmless exurb. In the time it would take to seal off 11 windows — there’s even one in the shower, for God’s sake — and two doors, toxic agents could saunter in on the breeze and get to me before I was finished; and something tells me that the likelihood of my hearing about an attack in timely lifesaving fashion is slim anyway. So, despite the Crayola risk-code thing, I’m not in any hurry to hit up Home Depot for duct tape and plastic sheeting.

But that doesn’t mean I am insensible to the dramatic need for worst-case scenario preparations. In fact, I have already started to assemble a disaster kit. (Note that, fatalist that I am, I have not deemed it a survival kit.) First and foremost among its contents is bourbon. Now, I’m not really a hard-liquor drinker, and most of the time I drink a nice genteel blend of Maker’s Mark and ginger ale. But I think the explosion of a chemical-spewing bomb calls for taking one’s liquor neat. And nothing offers a better warm burn than bourbon. As a matter of fact, I get a certain non-radioactive glow just thinking about it.

What else? Chocolate. Not three days’ worth, mind you, just one box. But it has to be killer dark chocolate, the kind that makes my eyes cross with its intensity and costs 40 or 50 bucks a pound. (If my insides are gonna be liquefied, I’m not letting Hershey’s be my last taste sensation.) The goal is to consume stupor-inducing quantities of both disaster-kit items, to forget that I’m on the wrong end of a holy war. (Between the sugar and the alcohol, I know I’d have the makings of a terrible hangover, but that’s beside the point when there’s no morning after.)

Next up, entertainment. Yeah, yeah, I could sit around and recall all the lovely moments of my life, but something tells me I won’t be feeling very Hallmark. I could also slip some porn into the kit for sexual release, but frankly, as long as I have my right hand, I can die without adorning my funeral bier with a copy of Czech Mates. And though it would be tempting to pop in a tape of Six Feet Under or Sex and the City, the idea of watching TV until it kills me is appalling. Besides that, I have trouble believing that I’ll receive uninterrupted power service during a Code Red, considering that the utility employees will want to be home duct-taping their own families.

Music — on, dear God, a battery-operated boom box — is what I’ll need. But what to choose: the angst of my generation as distilled by Nine Inch Nails or Nirvana? The ethereal lullabies of that freaky little swan girl, Björk? Fauré’s Requiem, just for the ultimate good cry? All those will go in the kit — hell, picking a disc could be the last choice I’ll ever make — but I think that Aretha Franklin will rule the day. Hers is a voice that always makes me feel good, especially when she’s singing the blues.

Not to romanticize the horror too much, but I kinda like the surreal imagery: in the dusty light of the End, I will gather with those I love and pass a box of chocolates. We’ll wash them down with bourbon and let Sister Re-Re moan us on our way to extinction.

So, thank you, Department of Homeland Security, for your thoughtful suggestions. But duct tape and plastic? I don’t think so.

Issue Date: February 20 - 27, 2003
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