Run on Red

by Noelle W. Ihli

In a survival situation, everything is inconvenient. Stay focused on your top priority. Resist panic.

I realized that my armchair fascination with psychopaths like Gary Ridgway had always hinged on distance. They were all just stories.

I’d always thought of myself as a true-crime junkie. But it turned out, that was only when it happened to other people.

Men like this said things like that to girls like us, knowing we’d been told our whole lives that if we listened carefully and followed the rules, we’d stay safe.

Don’t let them take you to a second location. Your chances of surviving an assault at any given location are 97%. Your chances of survival, if you are taken to a second location, drop to 30%.

What it came down to was this: We were all targets. Even if you made the right choice, followed the right rules, took the right risks, kept your cool, made the right friends, didn’t walk alone home after dark, kept a rape whistle in your pocket, and guarded your drink at bars.