Terrorist Attacks: How They’re Affecting People All Around the World

by Leanna Tabora, staff reporter

At a school in Potiskum, Nigeria on November 10th, at least 47 people were killed and 79 were wounded during a suicide bombing attack. These constant terrorist attacks across the globe are affecting people physically and emotionally.

“We suspect Boko Haram behind the attack,” police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said.

The alleged suspect was said to be disguised as a student, and triggered an explosion in the Potiskumian government boarding school.

Constant violence among people won’t seem to end. As a result, people all over the world fear that they will be involved of being harmed in a terrorism attack. Studies show that 15% of students surveyed at the University of Maryland fear and think about terrorism happening in the following week more than 10% of students who thought about being hospitalized and 10% who thought about typical violent crime (i.e. domestic violence, robbery, battery, etc). This is because of one perspective that “terrorists will always find a way to carry out major attacks no matter what the U.S. does.”

The Guardian states that global terrorism has increased 43% in 2013, meaning that terrorist attacks are constantly happening across the world. Between the 9/11 attack, the Virginia Tech school shooting, and many more previous violent attacks, the people that have been personally victimized during those attacks aren’t the only ones being affected. There are people all across the world are emotionally affected through worry and fear.

“It could be scary to think that something can happen, especially since I live in New York. It’s common for terrorism attacks to happen in this environment because it’s happened before,” junior Gabriella Martini said.

Preparation and taking action for when a terrorist attack might occur are taking place, especially in schools. The suicide bombing attack on the Potiskumian government boarding school is an example of a tragic school shooting.

Devastating events such as this are why fire drills, soft/hard lockdowns, and shelter-ins are emergency drills that need to be taken place. Public areas are direct targets for terrorism, and holding emergency drills are appropriate for preparing in the event of a scary and fearful situation. Without them, the deaths for terrorism attacks have a slight chance of being higher than they are now.

“It all depends on the emergency, [on how the safety procedures are taken during an emergency] and there are different types of emergencies. Sometimes, one of the procedures is when the danger’s outside [of the school] and the school’s in a shelter in and there are lockdown drills when there is a threat inside of the building. There are procedures for a bomb threat, and the standard fire drill that we are all familiar with,” assistant principal Nicholas Jurman said.

Terrorism all around the world is constantly happening, whether it’s being broadcasted on the news or not. Jewish Virtual Library displays complete statistics of the top ten countries with the most terrorism attacks, and Pakistan is ranked #1 with 1,920 total attacks in 2013. It may not be directly affecting to people such as NYC students, but they’re still emotionally affected even though they aren’t being personally affected. Just the way lyrics in a song can affect people all around the world, terrorism can too.

“Practicing these emergency drills helps make me feel safer because if we didn’t practice and we were in a real situation like that, no one would know what to do. It would be crazy trying to get everything together, so practicing them makes us feel a lot more safe than we would in the actual situation,” senior Alyssa Schwind said.