Waking up in a Different World

Its not the time of day you get out of bed.

Today, September 12, 2011, we are waking up in a different world.

We awoke to September 12, 2001 to the images of the day before ingrained in reality. Ingrained forever in history. The world woke up a different place. It wasn't the first time, either.

In 1993 the World Trade Center was the target of an attack. Albeit far less devastating, the '93 WTC event showed us a glimpse of what could be. We were in a different world.

We again woke to a different world on April 19, 1995. A day when we woke up to the reality of Domestic Terrorism when the Murrah Federal Building was destroyed. Ammonium nitrate/fuel oil and a truck. 163 dead...including the kids in a day care.

On April 20, 1999 our alarm clock went off again. This time in a high school. Semi-automatic weapons and secondary devices. Random Domestic Terrorism.

A few years after September 11, 2001 Mother Nature voiced her opinion. And she did so over and over in the past few years. In 2003 we woke up to the reality that a naturally occurring biological event could make a terrorist attack look like a cake walk. Hurricane Katrina forced the evacuation of a major metropolitan area...for the fist time. Katrina also showed us the gaps in our response ability. We were in a different world. Not to be outdone, biological events made a comeback in 2009 with the sudden appearance of H1N1. And we realized that we couldn't make vaccine as quickly as we need...and misinformation information on how to handle a predictable event was not readily available.

Today, September 12, 2011, we are waking up in a different world.What will it look like? Will it be explosions and gunfire? If it is, what will you do?

I think the next event will be a bit more subtle. We'll wake up in a different world when we flip the little switch on the wall and no lights come on. What will we do?