What to do when an alert siren sounds

An alert siren gives you no time to decide anything. That is the whole point: the system is designed to warn with the minimum notice technology allows, not with a comfortable amount. Everything you are going to do when it sounds has to be decided beforehand.

The first ten seconds

This is not a list to read at the time: it is a sequence to have rehearsed.

1. Drop whatever is in your hands. Nothing gets tidied, the oven does not get switched off, the charger does not get found.
2. Take whoever cannot move alone. Small children, elderly people, anyone with reduced mobility. Each person knows who they are responsible for.
3. Go to the agreed place. Without discussion. The discussion happened the day it was chosen.
4. Sit on the floor, against an interior wall, away from windows.
5. Turn on the radio. Not the television: the battery radio.

How to choose the place, beforehand

The criteria are the number of walls between you and the outside, and the distance to any glass.

• A marked public shelter, if you can reach it within the warning time.
• The basement, if it has more than one way out.
• An interior hallway or a windowless room on the lowest practical floor.
• Never the attic, the top floor, a stairwell with a skylight or a room with a large window.

The four mistakes that keep repeating

Going out to look. The most common and the most lethal. Curiosity beats fear with surprising ease, and the street is exactly where fragments land.

Filming from the window or balcony. It adds the worst possible place — next to the glass — to the worst possible moment.

Calling everyone. The network saturates in seconds and cuts off people who need an ambulance. A text message takes a fraction of the capacity and gets through when a call will not.

Going out the moment the siren stops. Stopping is not the same as giving the all-clear. Second impacts happen, and they tend to find people already outside.

If you are away from home

• In the street: the nearest masonry building, towards the centre or the basement.
• No building in sight: on the ground, face down, face towards the floor, hands under your body, in any dip in the terrain. Away from vehicles, poles and shopfronts.
• In the car: the car does not protect you. Stop off the road, get out and find a building. Only if there is nothing at all, stay crouched below window level.
• In the metro or a tunnel: one of the best places there is. Stay put.

After the all-clear

When the official all-clear arrives — and only then:

1. Check people before things.
2. Check gas, water and electricity before switching anything on. If you smell gas, do not touch any switch.
3. Do not walk on rubble or enter damaged buildings.
4. Send a short message to the agreed family-plan contact saying you are fine and where you are. One message, not ten calls.

All of this works far better if a written family plan already exists, with a meeting point and an out-of-area contact. That is what turns four frightened people into four people who know where to go: how to build the family plan.