Here's how to tell, in the Washington, D.C., area, the difference between an orange terror alert and a winter storm warning: Instead of TV crews staking out the grocery stores to film people hoarding milk, they're staking out the hardware stores to film people hoarding duct tape.
There's a hardware store across the street from my office, and this afternoon I saw the telltale microwave mast of a live TV crew jutting from the roof of a van in the parking lot. Sure enough, there was the requsite reporter, pacing the sidewalk in front of the store in hopes of finding someone racing out with reams of plastic sheeting and duct tape in time to kick off the 5 o'clock newscast. I almost walked over, in hopes of being interviewed and getting to say, "It's duct tape. I need it... for taping something." Of course, that would be Wrong during these Trying Times.
I shouldn't joke, considering that I work and live in one of the two most likely target cities. And while telling people to stock up on duct tape is disconcertingly akin to the Reagan-era advice about digging a hole and hiding under a piece of wood should the Rooskies decide to go all Strangelove on us, at least they're saying something now. Last week, when we moved up to orange from Mellow Yellow, this was the verbatim quote from Homeland Security Uberlord Tom Ridge about what people should do. Parse it at your own risk:
"There are so many available sources of information that you could refer to that will give you and your family and your businesses and your schools some comfort to know that in the eventuality, with the possibility that something might happen, you have taken some precautionary measures or taken some steps to minimize the damage or perhaps to avoid it altogether."
In other words, do what you need to do to feel like you've done something. Which, come to think of it, is exactly why people mob the Safeway the instant the season's first snowflake falls.