A Simple Equation to Survive Living Next to an ISIS Target

As simple as Area=πr².

Last week, my 22-year-old daughter, with whom my wife and I and our one-year old daughter live in Washington D.C., mentioned something that reminded me of the new normal in which we're now living: "My friends have been asking me if I am scared," she said.

I guess they would. Terrorists attacked Parisians on Friday, and on Sunday there was the threat that terrorists explicitly planned to attack here. And not just "here" meaning the greater metropolitan region of D.C., which by some definitions covers roughly 664 square miles and has more than 6,000,000 inhabitants. No, it is a little more personal than that.


We live less than 800 meters from the rotunda of the Capitol itself, less than 400 meters from the Supreme Court. My youngest daughter attends nursery roughly 75 meters from the latter. When you see one of those long helicopter shots of the dome, one of those Capital Hill houses in the background is ours.

The area of a circle, if you remember from grade school, is simple to calculate: A=πr². With the U.S. Congress sitting at the center, and "r" meaning "radius," the math is so simple even a historian like me can solve the equation. Our home, where I write and we all live, is inside an area roughly ¾ of a square mile from one of the original targets on 9/11 and an implied target last week. I have been living with the idea of threats abroad and at home for so long I forgot what it must seem like to people who do not.

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