In the middle of an attack, I realized that we were living in the midst of a war zone. Too late I recognized that the fire in the building was in fact a gas attack. We always thought the next attack would be a dirty nuclear bomb.
The concentration of smoke and gas was a problem we had not considered. Once again all of our work continuity and disaster recovery (DR) plans seemed ridiculous. In this situation having large groups of people moving to a dedicated area in and around the target area was a recipe for death.
Too late (?) I realized that everyone's DR plans would get lots of people killed. I recalled the puzzled expression on the soldiers face when confronted with the methods used in the attack. He could only say "you're living in the middle of a war zone..."
People were fleeing now, running full tilt in an effort to get away. Some however were waiting near the buildings in designated congregation areas. In this case a deadly mistake. I saw my wife and yelled at her to come along.
The ingestion of chemicals in that fateful yell is what did me in. I ran for it anyways. I could see her running in my direction as I fell. Someone was hovering over me as I found myself drifting into a peaceful sleep.
The next thing I knew was that I had awaken from that world into this world. I thought I must be in Iraq. Then I realized that no, I was in New York. In the middle of a war zone.
Next I realized that I would need to revise all of my DR plans. The only network that could possibly survive the traffic from an attack would be the world wide web. I had better make our DR site a virtual one so that people could follow the rule "get to safety, then communicate your status".
I also now understand that we need to build virtual offices so that people can work together from any location. We are in a war zone and its time we took it seriously. Thank goodness I woke up in time.