Duck. And Cover.

Today this FBI video turned up on social media. It's what's called a PSA (Public Service Announcement). This one offers tips on how to survive an 'active shooter' event in a public place, such as a bar. People are expressing horror that the FBI, a law enforcement agency, finds it necessary to suggest that the public be responsible for their own personal safety. People outside the US, of course, are making pointed remarks about the fact that mass shootings in random public places are common enough in the US for this sort of thinking to be necessary.

By 'people outside the US', of course, I mean 'people in wealthy countries other than the US.' There are plenty of places on this planet where people are accustomed to random acts of violence in public. I know this: I used to teach English to speakers of other languages. I've also lived in other countries, which means I've also hung around with people from a lot of different places. I've even missed moving to what later turned out to be a violent hotspot by a hair, twice. Not everybody takes it for granted that there won't be a bomb in your supermarket when you go shopping. At least, that's what my students from Medellin told me in the 1990s.

Even wealthier countries can have their problems. A lot has been said, and can be said, about the reasons for all these random shootings in the US these days. I have no intention of saying any of them. If reasoned argument were a way to solve this, we'd have done it a long time ago. It's going to take something else – some seismic shift in the spacetime continuum. It certainly isn't going to depend on anything I say about people, or society, or mental health, or gun laws, or the spiritual state of society.

What I'm trying to point out here is that we've been here before. As humans, I mean. This continent has been a dangerous place for as long as it's had humans on it. Dangerous for humans, I mean. Before that, it was dangerous to the rest of the wildlife. Humans showed up 20-30,000 years ago. Shortly after that, the megafauna all disappeared. They didn't evaporate. It was humans, that invasive species. The not-so-mega-fauna were probably relieved. At least for a while.

Humans were dangerous to each other back in pre-Columbian times. They fought wars with each other. According to historians, sometimes some of them ate their enemies. This happened all over the world, so don't anybody get superior about it. Go back far enough, all our ancestors were cannibals. Anyway, people in the pre-Columbian past were as mean and ornery and politically incorrect as everybody else.

Wait a second: I didn't say that excused Columbus and his friends. That wasn't a reason to go spreading disease, claiming what wasn't yours, and enslaving people. I'm just saying they didn't invent the practice. Colonialism is just another brand of obnoxious human behaviour.

Humans in North America must have been used to running and hiding: from the other bunch's war parties, from those marauding pirates on the beach, oh, yeah, and from bears and mountain lions, because both of them were a menace. I wonder how many generations learned in drills to 'duck and cover' from foes both human and furry?

According to a film about the Appalachians made by some musicologists, the mountain people told the songcatchers that if they were being stalked by a 'painter', they should run as fast as they could. Now, a painter can outrun you and outlast you. But it's a cat. So if you shed clothing as you run, and throw the clothing behind you, the cat will stop to sniff and play with the garment before continuing the pursuit. You have a chance to get to shelter.

At least, that's the theory.

I ran this by my dad, who grew up in the mountains where there actually were mountain lions that would stalk people. He said he'd never heard that, but it might just work. Then he told me about a family back when he was a kid. The farmer came to my grandfather, wanting to sell him his land. My grandfather replied that he couldn't afford it, and asked him why.

'A family of painters has found us,' was the answer. 'They sit out there and stare at the house. I can't leave my wife and children to go out to the field. We're going to have to move.'

So yeah, there's that.

When I was a kid, the most ferocious thing in Memphis were the mosquitoes. Aside from the peacocks in Overton Park, there wasn't a lot of wildlife in town. But we had drills in school, yes, we did. We had to go out in the hallway and hunker down and wait for our teachers to tell us to get up again. We also had to wear ID bracelets with our names, addresses, and religions.

It was all Fidel Castro's fault, apparently. Although I wouldn't hold Dr Oppenheimer completely blameless. We weren't too upset by the drills, although I do remember having some very weird dreams during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I also remember asking my mom if we were going to build a fallout shelter, and being told we were going to 'trust in the Lord', which I thought was a reasonable response.

Years later, when I realised what those ID bracelets had been for, I was unhappy about it.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that in the part of the world with which I am most familiar, and whose history I know best, there have always been reasons to worry about violence. Generations upon generations, back to the early Stone Age, have had these issues to deal with.

I'm not saying, 'Look, we survived all that. We'll survive this.' That's nonsense. We didn't survive anything. Other people did – or didn't. Anybody who pretends it was always the 'good people' surviving is a jackass, too.

We're not worrying about megafauna these days. The giant beaver does not roam the land. We're not being stalked by painters or shot at by hunter-warriors. This time it's usually strange men with automatic rifles. It makes no sense to us. At least, the bears and the painters were looking for dinner. Heck, even the cannibals were shopping for a meal.

We need to do something about this soon. Before the next thing comes along. Or truly, it will come to pass, as Tom Lehrer wrote long ago during my childhood, 'What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.'

Dmitri Gheorgheni

22.05.23 Front Page

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