For obvious reasons I’ve been thinking about disasters this week, and survival following disasters.

It was the post about jump bags at Making Light that really got me thinking though. Because if there is a major disaster, where I live is where people are going to be fleeing to. We’re 180 miles (or less) from Baltimore and DC, so this is where my relatives there should end up. Sure Morgantown has a river, however as anyone whose spent any time here knows, everything is uphill, so even a major flood would affect only a small part of town.

The biggest “natural disaster” threat to this area is mine subsidence, and that’s hardly natural. No hurricanes. Tornadoes are rare. I supposed that a terrorist attack could happen, but I find it highly unlikely. Hitting West (by God) Virginia, known primarily poverty and unemployment, doesn’t seem like much of a political statement.

But that’s not what has upset me and shaken me to the very core.

The biggest threat I’m likely to face is riots. We’ve had an influx of REALLY stupid students in recent years. Ones who think that destruction of private property is fun and amusing. I live just a few blocks from the stadium on the edge of student areas (my neighbors are grandmothers in one direction, and students in the other) I’m not in Sunnyside but close enough. I’d like to think that people are smarter and better than my worst fears imagine them to be, but I’m not that naïve.

The more I’ve contemplated this, the more I wonder if my thoughts of purchasing a gun should become more than a consideration. For years I’ve wanted to get a gun and to find a place where I can take up target shooting. Why? I like guns. They’re loud and there’s something deeply satisfying about firing them that feeds my destructive impulses.

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that I’m a professed pacifist. Have been for years. (We’ll pretend that the fact that I’m a huge weakling had nothing to do with it.) And if I’m completely honest with myself, part of the reason I’m a pacifist is because I can have a really vicious temper. If someone angers me, part of my mind takes great delight in imagining really awful things to do to them, while another part of my mind screeches in horror and sings tunelessly in an attempt to drown out the vindictive part.

The easiest way to control that viciousness is to tell myself that I am never justified in taking action. If someone wants to start a fight, I walk away. The impulse to punch annoying twits in the face is taken out back and drowned in a bucket.

And for the most part I’m really good burying these impulses and–excluding a few minor lapses–can pretty easily avoid such thoughts.

Until now.

Now I have to consider what steps I would take to protect me and mine. Would I take the cats and my husband and run to safety? Or would I stay and try to protect my home and my neighbors?

And what happens to me if I do that?

How do I continue to suppress these impulses once I’ve let the genie out of the bottle?