I don't know if schools across America are all like this, but Virginia Beach City Public Schools seem to be hell-bent on conditioning us to respond to certain situations in a very specific manner. The training began with fire drills as soon as you started school.

Firemen would come in and explain escape routes, how to determine if the fire is right outside the door, and that smoke rises so you should stay low to the ground. You would then practice going down the stairs (never the elevator) and heading out the nearest door. Sometimes it was awesome to get interrupted during a never-ending lecture; sometimes it was a pain in the ass to go out in the rain or cold. The most annoying part would definitely be the announcement afterward, telling us how slow we were to get out of the (not) burning building.

In middle school, we had tornado drills in addition to the usual fire drills. We would all go into a hallway and curl up fetal-style, head toward the wall. God forbid you start giggling about the fact that your ass was facing out, or else you'd be forced to run laps. Or maybe that was just how they rolled, KLMS-style.


Of course, the ultimate drill came in high school, when we began running terrorist drills. Okay, fine, so at first they were really more like school shooter drills, but you know what I mean. The alarm would go off, the teacher would turn off the lights and lock the door, and we'd huddle under our desks, wondering if a shooter would believe there would be an empty classroom in the middle of the day.


I'm not gonna lie - if I saw terrorists like this, I'd straight up jump out the window.

(photos via Danville, VA and Xinhua News Agency)