A freak of Nurture

Skull of a two-faced bottlenose dolphin prepared by Enault & Auclair-Kraniata osteology.

And then I went to the USAmerican Midwest

Rains frequently, but the worst is like standing under a bathroom shower. Genuinely inhospitable rainstorms are uncommon.

Along the coast, it's pretty easy in most areas to walk to at least one store, or else there's usually a bus or shuttle available. There are sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere.

It's a temperate boreal rainforest, so while there are many freshwater lakes and rivers, they're usually pretty cold. The biggest danger is typically getting caught in a strong current, and the most dangerous animals in swimming distance are on land.

Earthquakes happen almost every day, but the vast majority go unnoticed. Buildings are designed to withstand bigger seismic activity, so unless it's a 5 or higher it just kind of feels like having low blood sugar for a second. There are no tornados

Rural Illinois, USA:

One minute it's sunny, then ten minutes later that distant smudge on the horizon has swallowed the entire sky in black clouds and the water is coming down like waterfall and you literally CANNOT SEE. Then there's a crash like cymbals and you need to get indoors because the thunder and lightening are on TOP of you

No sidewalks until you are in the smack dab center of town, which is a three hour walk or twenty minute drive from wherever you are.

There aren't many natural bodies of water other than small ponds and creeks, and because the environment is so much warmer, those are filled with snapping turtles that can grow bigger than a nine year old child and water snakes that are incredibly venomous. These are paired with leeches and mosquitos for that sweet umami flavor.

There's worse to come, folks. Strap in and stay strapped.

UPDATE! They found the original photo!

Let’s talk about fire code!!

So, the big thing about having a building is there are a lot of laws requiring you to be allowed to get out of them. There are a few exceptions, jails and institutional facilities mostly, but essentially fire code says that a door must have one-touch egress. What that means is that you have to be able to get out of a door in an emergency. Exterior doors must be out-swinging, for instance. Even sliding doors like these:

Must swing out like this:

And legally cannot be locked when the building is occupied. So, yknow, push em! Run!

Now let’s get to the juicy part: have you ever seen a sign like this?

As a security professional who does put alarms on doors, signs like this are almost always bullshit. Here’s how to tell, with a handy little checklist:

1. Is the sign on the door itself, or on a device of some kind?

If the device has something written on it saying this, it probably will be loud as fuck when you open it.

We’ll get back to those in a second, but let’s assume it’s just a sign on the door.

2. Does it have a door position sensor along the edge?

The most common type of DPS is this guy that you’ve probably seen before:

These are commonly tied into bigger alarm systems, think burglar alarms. They CAN be hidden inside of the door as well, so this is NOT surefire, but these are super common. This is the wired variety, but there are also wireless ones.

3. Is there a siren present?

Exactly as it sounds. Things that make a lot of noise have to be of a certain size, and are almost always very clear in their intention. Think a big siren horn, but this guy is also really common:

That’s how you determine whether the sign is bullshit or not, but remember those crash bars i mentioned, with the big red label? That is a DETEX crash bar, and here are some other detex alarmed exit devices: