Axe Murderers and Other Disasters

In our flat of 4 childless and mostly-single girls, we had our Safety Priorities down pat.

Being organised and motivated to survive, we knew that no survival plan was complete without, well, a plan.

It was important to be realistic and to discuss safety procedures as a team. Possibly even to run a few drills. Like the earthquake drills we had all throughout school; except this wasn't about earthquakes - we were not naive schoolgirls anymore. We knew all about the big bad world of psycho killers and axe murderers; looking out your bedroom window and seeing a Mangled Face; being followed around your home by a posessed living doll... that sort of thing.

We assembled a few hallway-meetings and fine-tuned our surivival techniques.

Firstly, a plan of all our most likely pre-attack positions:



Then, the actions each person should take, utilising either safe-spots or escape-spots:

Spot 1. I will call this the "Safety Pod".
Because that makes it sound a lot better than what it actually is - the escape which isn't really an escape at all. Instead it's a tiny triangle cupboard with just enough space for the smallest of small people to squash in, if they can arrange their limbs with the flexibility of... a squid?

We figured this would be one of the smartest ways to avoid death. What kind of axe murderer would be tempted to open a tiny triangular linen cupboard?

I will controversially select Tasha for this "Safety Pod" as she was the smallest flatmate available at the time.





We decided that whoever gets this spot waits for the axe murderer to pass, then runs down the stairs to freedom. Which brings me to the remaining 3 escape routes.
They were actually much more straightforward...

I literally did tie a length of guy-rope to my balcony railing on the 4th floor.

It was a pity that it only reached to 4 metres above the hard concrete driveway, but I planned to brave the extreme rope-burn. When an axe murderer is in your house, the adrenalin will stop you feeling pain, right?



At least I would still feel more relief than Emmi, who didn't have a balcony outside her bedroom, also on the 4th floor. Luckily she had all the stealth of a Katy-Perry-Lookalike wild cat, and with a little coaching from Tasha (who is also a ninja) she would probably land on all fours just fine.



Also, she had been known to carry a gun, which is always useful when you are running for your life from someone who only has an axe.

Take a page out of our book and get yourself a disaster survival plan. Beating your local pyscho killer or the next zombie virus may depend on it.