Threat-Level #FF9900
By:
November 24, 2010
The system’s demise would not be the end of terror alerts; instead the alerts would become more descriptive and not as colorful.
Threat-levels might be losing their protective coloration soon. The five-color restricted terror palette is slated for possible retirement, as its informational and prescriptive effectiveness is re-evaluated.
But actually the descriptions will become more colorful, as the colors themselves step down.
Threat-level: orange. Threat-level: yellow. This always had a pleasingly military sound, like an order. Or a button on a control panel. But real-world events rarely correspond so well to bullet points, and in any case the colors were never specific enough. We’ve now been at threat-level orange for some years. After the first day or two, we all went back to personal standby, and then forgot about it unless periodically reminded by an obligatory airport announcement. Certainly orange is terrible, as is life. But although orange means that certain procedures and not others (blue ones, for example, or red ones) are followed by various government and security agencies; as far as the behavior of the general population is concerned, I doubt you have been acting orange, in a way that might usefully distinguish you from your yellow state. Or even your blue.
But as the various authorities consider greater transparency, maybe jettisoning the colors altogether is too abupt? After all, we’ve had safe colors on the web now for some time. We could share.
