Making Your Office a Designated Safe Room

Three days before the United States began bombing Iraq, I attended a safety briefing in my building. They handed out survival kits and masks, and they briefed us on emergency procedures to use in case disaster strikes. These procedures can be used for many types of disasters — at least those lasting up to three days, when the food in our survival kits will run out, or 20 minutes, when the carbon filters on our masks will stop working.

The procedures are called "sheltering in place," or, for short, "sheltering in." They involve hiding out in "safe rooms" within our building: offices deemed to be, apparently, safe, or at least safer than other offices. (Not to brag, but my own office has been designated such a room.) Three to four people will assemble in each safe room, and hole up until the all-clear sounds, or until the occupants of the room start to attack one another under the strains of confinement. At the briefing, they warned us that the safe-room groups have been assembled by location rather than compatibility, bringing on thoughts of "The Real World: Safe Room."

For up-to-but-no-more-than three days in the safe room, we can live on the provisions contained in our survival kits. The kits look sort of like backpacks, but smaller, or the bags that tourists buckle to their waists, but bigger. The food within amounts to a 12x12 freeze-dried bar of unknown composition and some boxes of water — although one coworker found what seemed to be a silver envelope of meatballs in his kit. No doubt those will come in handy when it's day 3 and people are trading their beach houses for an extra Ho-Ho.

Not surprisingly, we've been encouraged to augment this crisis version of the Zone diet with snacks of our own. Inspired, I went to the market and loaded up on my favorite shelf-stable comfort foods. I grabbed a mad array of energy bars, sweeping the shelves clear of Pria, Powerbar, Clif and Genisoy delights.

The trouble is, I keep eating them. They're so handy, right there in my desk, nestled next to my survival kit, that they make convenient snacks. I don't have to walk down to the cafeteria or out to the deli to pick up a Powerbar when I have 30 in my office. Of course, I don't have 30 any more. My supplies are already depleted and disaster has not yet struck. But when and if it does, I will face it with a well-fed belly.

There's more to preparing for catastrophe than saving up the snacks, though. After the security briefing, talk filled the halls about constructing the nicest and best-stocked safe room — forget the energy bars; bring on the music, pop the Dom Perignon, pass the Courvoisier. Some friendly competition has begun. My own tastes are simple; I think I'll bring in the books and magazines I never have time to finish. Three days of camping out in my office would be a great opportunity to finish Anna Karenina or the past year's issues of Vogue.

While mentally converting our offices to luxury bunkers, we compare lists. Who would comprise the ideal safe-room group? (Cute, eligible coworkers of the opposite sex.) Or the nightmare safe room? (Those that panic when the printer jams.) What would I want with me if I had to stay in place for three days? (My Gipsy Kings CD and someone to dance with.) What would I want with me if this were the end? What nonperishable item would I want to be the last thing I taste? What sound would I want to be the last thing I hear?

We haven't gotten to those last, deeper questions yet. Maybe after we figure out how to use the protective masks. In the meantime, we're just hoping that if we go down, it'll be on our own terms, with our own Powerbars, and in our own, very safe, rooms.

— Liz Khalil (thegreatlizby@yahoo.com)

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)