What Drills Cannot Rehearse
Active shooter drills teach people what to do when the plan fits. Almost nothing about a real event fits the plan.
Drills are not useless. They build familiarity, and familiarity lowers panic. But a drill rehearses one scenario, in daylight, with warning, while everyone is where they are supposed to be. That is not the day anyone actually gets.
What Active Shooter Drills Cannot Rehearse
| The drill assumes | Reality frequently delivers |
|---|---|
| You are in your assigned room | You are in a corridor, a bathroom, a stairwell, outside |
| An adult is present and in charge | The adult is elsewhere, injured, or is the person you are avoiding |
| The announcement is clear and believed | People assume it is a drill, or do not hear it at all |
| Doors lock and stay locked | A door is propped, a lock is broken, a key is in a drawer |
| Everyone moves at once | Some freeze, some run toward the noise, some record it |
Why Survivors Say This Differently Than Experts Do
I have spent decades on the professional side of this. But there is a category of understanding I do not have and cannot manufacture, and it belongs to the people who were in the building.
On DESTINATION #NEVERHERE™™ I spoke with Hannah Betz, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, about survival, recovery and prevention. I would rather you heard it from her than summarized by me. Watch the conversation →
“Hannah is one of the strongest people I have ever met. She is not just a survivor. She is an advocate.”
Chris Grollnek
Hannah Betz, M.S., Survivor of Marjory Stoneman Douglas; Executive Intern for Domestic Terrorism, ASPP™™; BS + MS, Criminal Justice & Homeland Security
What To Change This Month
- Drill somewhere other than the classroom. Run one where people are deliberately displaced, because displacement is the normal condition.
- Test the doors, physically, today. Not the policy about the doors. The doors.
- Stop announcing every drill in advance. Announced-only drills train people to wait for an announcement.
- Ask what people would actually do rather than telling them what they should do. The gap between those two answers is your real plan.
The Larger Point
Every item above sits inside the response third of the problem. It is worth doing, and it is still the smallest part. The reason I keep returning to prevention is that the day described here is a day that did not have to arrive.
Understanding how these events unfold is what makes prevention possible. → The P.R.O. Model™
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November 6, 2026
November 6, 2026
November 6, 2026
