Where's your towel?

Fans of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy may recall the importance of always having your towel with you. In an interview, counterterrorism expert Joval Aviv was asked for advice for people caught in a terrorist attack. One of the things he says you should always have with you is a towel.

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[Q] What advice do you have for individuals that have the misfortune of finding themselves in the middle of a terror attack? [A] Since mass transportation is the next attack, when you travel to work have with you, a bottle of water, a small towel and a flashlight. What happened in London is exactly a point to look at. Those people who were close to the bombs died, then others were injured or died from inhaling the toxic fumes or getting trampled. The reason you take a bottle of water and a towel is that if you wet the towel and put it over your face, you can protect yourself against the fumes and get yourself out of there.

Other advice includes:

Trust your gut instinct.

If your gut feeling tells you when you walk onto a bus there is something unusual or suspicious, get out and walk away. You may do it 10 times for no reason, but there will be one time that saves your life.

Change your routine.

If you travel during rush hour every day, try to get up a little earlier and drive to work or take the train when it’s still not full. Don’t find yourself every day in the midst of rush hour. Terrorists are not going to waste a bomb on a half-empty train.

How likely are we to need this information?

I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.

I suspect we'll at least see an attempt. Back in October of 2001, who would have thought we'd go four years without another big attack on our soil? I doubt the terrorists have ceased to want to attack, they have simply not had the means to do so. But what else is there to do?

[Q] What more do you think the government can do to protect the public? [A] Number one, and this is the beef I’ve had with Homeland Security for the last four years, is educating the public on how to deal with those types of events. There’s no education. We’re raising the color code alert and that means nothing to anyone. Whether it’s green, yellow, pink, no one ever educated the public how to identify suspicious items or people. In Israel, so many of them [terrorists] have been apprehended just because people have phoned in. We don’t have that training on campuses, schools or kindergarten. In Israel, it’s very popular right now [amongst terrorists] to put one device to explode and time another one for five minutes later when it’s all calm, people are getting up and the rescue teams have responded. You need to know all those things and think about those things. The government must pursue that. Law enforcement will never have enough people on the street to detect things. We don’t have that kind of manpower. That’s why the government must enlist the public.