It seems a long time ago that I stocked my pantry (pantry is a concept in Manhattan, not a reality) with two weeks' worth of emergency food (including powdered milk, an oddly comforting substance when faced with the potential collapse of infrastructure) and other items like duct tape and three five-gallon bottles of water. Now I discover that a good friend and an expert on terrorist threats has three 125-gallon drums of bleach-processed water in his children's bedroom, as well as military-grade surgical masks, potassium iodide (against radiation poisoning) and Cipro--the anthrax antibiotic--as well as rolls of plastic sheeting to cover the windows.

What does one make of all this? My personal response has been to flee to a place in the country, and hope that the attack comes on the weekend.

My kids' room doesn't have space for both them and the water drums. Maybe if I could do something about clutter, as the shelter magazines call life's detritus, I could find a floor area for adequate emergency supplies; but I just can't bring myself to buy Real Simple, nice as it is.

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