My first response to the bombings in Boston was, "are these really bombs?" Initially, the reports are terribly inaccurate. The "fog of war" and all that. Turns out I was wrong in someways and right in others. Just like everyone else, except I knew my reactions would likely be wrong. I'm currently living in NYC and there was some hype about danger here, its easy to forget I basically live in Harlem and my risk is actually higher from taxis and apparently getting pushed onto subway tracks than terrorism. No offense to Harlem, but there's not a whole lot to bomb around here. That said, I did look through my kit to reevaluate it. Conclusion: not much I can really do about a mass casually event. I carry a trauma bandage and a wash cloth, and I'm not adding more weight. My thermos and ipad make my bag heavy enough already.

REDACTED

For everything else, I have taken up knitting. My current goal is to make socks. I hear its difficult. Should keep me occupied.

Keep calm and carry on.

Cutting back on the web, including here and ZS. Turning off the tube. Turning off the radio in the truck, and making sure the disk changer is loaded with a good mix of stuff. Look at the bottle on the shelf and ask myself if I really, really need it- and feel pretty spiffy when I pour myself of a shot of jelly beans instead.

As talked about before, we can’t prepare for everything. We can only improve our odds.

As for how I deal, let’s just say we can’t discuss religion.

Edit: It helps to listen to “Scarborough Fair.”

Jeanette Isabelle

I feel overwhelmed too. I'm out of here, best wishes.

Deleted.

Security is illusory. At any moment we can be struck down with accident, illness, crime, disaster, or misfortune. From that perspective, most of us are actually doing not too badly. We're still alive and kicking. Life just has remained the gauntlet that it ever was. It's OK to be human, but we can overcome the grief we feel on behalf of the victims with compassion for them.

In the great Indian epic called the Mahabharata, the god Dharma decided to test his son and find out whether he has the quality of a king. Dharma asked his son many questions, and the final one was the hardest. What is the greatest miracle of all? Without pause, the son answered, "Every day, we face disease, disaster, and death. Yet we walk on as if though we are immortal. That is the greatest miracle of all."

So let's participate in the miracle of life. Now, I'm aware that we're drawn to emergency preparation because we are more sensitive to risks, and we want to optimize our chances of survival by managing the risks. So we walk on knowing that S might just HTF one day. But in the mean time, let's remember our enormous ability to put things in perspective, and accept that insecurity is the condition of human existence.

It does seem there's a "perfect storm" of troubles right now, but I have to agree with another poster- it registers in my mind but it doesn't really affect me. The media does all it can to whip people into a frenzy, and horrible events are the lifeblood of the 24 hour news industry. Certainly events like the bombing are terrible, but there's not much I can do about them.

I do what I can about the few things I can affect. That's all I can manage.

I just don't see how any of these events are relevant to me or mine. Like 9-11 - my overwhelming feeling was one of disconnect from the events of that day. Thousands died, many of them international or non-US citizens (look it up), but apart from one Amex person I knew personally, the victims of that day were no more known to me than the victims on the Titanic. My response was to secure the bit of critical infrastructure I was associated with, and that done, I moved on to 'combatting terrorist al Qaeda', which I have a very minor role on. I had a more direct involvement with the Nisqually quake where I drove to my kids' elementary school to make sure they were okay.

Now explosions at the Boston Marathon, and while I have a huge amount of empathy for the victims, I have no connection there either. With the fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, I am feeling a huge amount of loss for the volunteer fire fighters who lost their lives - I'm not a fire fighter, but I know a fair number of them locally, and I find their loss tragic, and depressing.

I am not so overwhelmed as I am reflecting on losses, which is hard. But direct empathy, I must confess, no - which some will say is unpatriotic or unfeeling, but in my personal damage assessment, just isn't there. Severe apologies for that to anyone who suffered a more direct or personal loss from these events. I am not overwhelmed.

I'm curious -- what about the firefighters and policemen who perished in the World Trade Center? What about the fact that a good number of the firefighters came from an ethnic neighborhood? Since Chinatown is next to the twin towers, and that area's fire department took a heavy hit.

On one level, why do we care much if the victim lived five miles away or five thousand? Nationalism and political boundaries aside, human beings are human beings. Why should the suffering of a fellow human in Africa concern me less than one in Boston?

I don't mean to imply we shouldn't care, I'm just puzzled at how we decide which things to fret over.