My campus went through an active shooter situation, without the active shooter.

Alarms went off around campus and over the intercom a message said there was an active threat - run, hide, fight. The message kept repeating.I was on campus studying for finals, as most were - the parking lots were packed and everyone was taking advantage of the time. I was personally in a busy floor of the library when the emergency notice went out, and in this post I just want to make note of some reactions I saw others have, and some things I noticed about myself.I want to state now so I don't build up the hype only to let you down, that there was no active shooter. There was a technical failure with the alarm system that still remains unknown. Despite this, it was not known by the students until 15+ minutes after the alert was sent out.Loud sirens came over the intercom, and instantly I recognized the noise, expected a fire and to have to get out. The most interesting thing I noticed about all of this is that students seemed to assume as soon as they heard the sirens that it was a drill. Automated voices came after sirens stating there was an active threat to life - run, hide, fight - and people still remained where they were - sitting, standing, looking at each other. It's almost as if because no one else was panicking they didn't feel they had to, and it's not the first time I've seen this response to a warning alert - it interests me - a sort of mob mentality.I didn't stick around much longer to see how people continued to react but it surprises me that I was the first of everyone to run out of there. I grabbed my phone, my wallet, left everything else and ran.Here's the thing: I ran blindly. I thought that if I reacted quick that I could beat the active shooter, that I could get out fast enough. I didn't hear gunshots so I took the fastest path to my car so I could reunite with my Beretta 92 and get far away. All I wanted was my gun and I didn't care much about how I got there. In these types of situations you just feel lost without it.I didn't consider two things - that the shooter could be in my path, or that they could be outside waiting for students to flow out the doors. There was no checking corners, no strategy, just speed.I really like to think I'm good in tense situations. I perform in front of crowds of hundreds once - sometimes twice, almost every weekend. I just killed two deer on my motorcycle at pretty high speed and I felt I was able to ignore fear, get up and think logically enough to get myself to a nearby house and get help.However when it came to this I have to say that the adrenaline is real. There was hardly any think, just do. Obviously being carriers of weapons this is a situation that we run through our heads in different ways multiple times each day. I think it's very important that we do and that it helps us - I think it drove me to get out of there as quickly as I did - but I also think that same train of thought creates a stronger fear when it finally happens.I was able to catch some people around me that were walking into campus and yelled to run and that there was an active shooter. Something I've noticed that's good to note here, it seems cops implement this - the louder you say something and the more authority you put into saying it the more likely people are to listen to you. These people walking into campus through the outside doors were in my way, preventing me and another student from getting out. I yelled this to them and they didn't think twice, like the people who heard the alarm - they instantly bolted.15 minutes later we got an announcement sent to our phones saying it was a technical issue. Students were obviously poured out all over the streets and I showed it to them if I saw them coming my way and assured them they should still give it some time. IMO you never know who is operating those things. It could have been a student that hacked it to get everyone outside at once and then he changed his mind. It could be that someone activated it and somehow the shooter deactivated it to get people back inside. Either way after making my phone calls to loved ones I gave it 15 or so more minutes, called campus police to get a real person to tell me it was okay to go back in, went in, got my shit, and went home.I'm still almost shell-shocked even though everything turned out fine. I was already worried about school shootings and now I don't want to go back. Honestly I want further training in these situations now that I've seen how I reacted, I'm just unsure where to find it. I'll be buying the Kimber pepper spray gun even though it's bogus, as well as a good can of Fox OC spray, - both to keep in my bag, but I just wish I was able to have better weapons on campus. I'm new to this campus this semester as a transfer student, but I've noticed that classrooms have an emergency door lock-out mechanism in a glass container next to most doors. I'll be asking professors how to operate these.Thanks for reading, I hope it was enjoyable, maybe any bit educational. Ask questions if anyone feels like it, I'll respond when I wake up. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2IhT5wZ