I’ll tell you the truth, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting stumped me for a bit.  It was so absolutely out of left field.  A shooter, a 64 year old man up on the 32nd floor of a hotel in Las Vegas.  Overlooking the strip.  Overlooking the concert happening below.  And with a room full of guns in his penthouse suite.  Opening fire.  411 people shot—more than in any shooting in history.  And more killed.  60 killed.  Just blood curdling, blood-boiling.

How do we stop it?  How do we stop this sort of evil from taking place?  I couldn’t figure it out.  Concerts happen all the time—in Las Vegas, in New York—all over the world.  With high-rises, high hotels—balconies and glass windows.  How do you protect the people on the ground?  Do you cancel all future concerts?  Do you close down all surrounding buildings—just board up the windows for 4 hours straight?  That’s not feasible.  So how do we do it?  How do we build a safer world—but a world that’s reasonable to live in?  A world that’s not devoid of a little bit of music, for God’s sake?

Well, the first thing we can do—how about this?  Let’s make the asking of this question—of all of these questions around mass shootings—let’s formalize it.  Planes crash and it’s not the local police who investigate.  It’s not even the FBI.  It’s the NTSB.  National Transportation and Safety Board.  An agency that specializes in plane crashes.  One that can not only put together the story of what happened—of what went wrong—but that can make recommendations to stop it from going wrong again.  When hijackers took down Flight 93 and flew jumbo jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the NTSB said it was access to the flight cabin—and now we have closing, locking doors on every commercial flight in America.  We need an NTSB for mass shootings—an agency that doesn’t just find out the WHY—but demands change.  This could be a government agency—but it could also be a non-profit or academic research group.  Like the National Academy of Sciences.   If it’s government, of course, they can force change.  But a non-government organization can make the case for change, explain the costs and the benefits, and work with players like the hotel and concert industries in this case—to turn recommendations into reality.

What might those recommendations be, in this case?  Let’s start at the start—when the shooter first set foot in that hotel.  Bags full of guns.  What could we do, here?

Well, if there’s a concert about to happen, let’s beef up security in that hotel 2 weeks prior.  Imagine for the 2 weeks leading up to the event, the hotel runs itself like an airport.  Step through a simple metal detector to get in.  And if you have bags, drop them at the front, where they can be run through an X-Ray machine before being sent up to your room.  And if you do have firearms—if you’re visiting on a hunting trip, the hotel can lock your guns up for safe keeping in the basement.

This shouldn’t be too hard—but there will be a cost, for sure.  A cost in dollars and a cost in convenience.  What’s another option?

Let’s move the story forwards—let’s say this shooter has the guns in his penthouse suite.  X guns in there.  For X days/weeks.  First thing that came to my mind was—didn’t housekeeping see this arsenal all set up?  Now, that’s a bit unfair—he could have kept the guns in their gun cases until the day he used them.  And we can’t expect people to know what the signs are of something like this.

But—But what if the hotel was equipped to detect it?  Guns have gunpowder—and gunpowder smells.  What if there were detectors in the vents?  Or, what if there was a bomb-sniffing dog that made the rounds with the housekeeping staff—or was just walked up and down the halls every night?  Or—what if a chemical reading detector was placed on the housekeeping cart and took readings continuously—mapped to every room and connected to a system that was ready to sound the alarm?

We’ll assume, though, that this, too, doesn’t happen.  That the guns made it to the room and the room made it through two weeks without detection.  What else could be done?  Let’s move out of the hotel and drift down to the concert venue itself.  It’s the day of the concert—the audience is just arriving.  And here’s what it looks like:

A parking lot.  A stage—elevated a few feet above the ground.  Lights hang above, a few big screens for projectors.  And surrounding it all, some makeshift walls—all wood—defining the edge of the venue.  Barricades are positioned—to help herd the people through the space.  Some booths for tickets, for drinks and concessions.  And that’s it.

A concert space.  Exposed.  Buildings loom around the stage—at least three hotels—and the airport tower, too.  Between them, we’re talking hundreds of windows looking down on the people in that concert.  Looking down, maybe, the barrel of a gun.  Or 24 guns.

We know what happened at Las Vegas—the guns started firing, and it took time for everyone to realize what was happening.  Chaos on the ground.  And authorities searched for the gunfire—for the echo of gunfire off every building—searched for the shooter.  All in all, the shooter fired for 10 minutes.  1,000 rounds.  While people scrambled below.

But what if we redesigned this concert space and the security around it?  What types of things would we have to do to stop the shooting in its tracks?

I think there are four things we need to look at:

• Detection - so we can know the instant the threat gets there.

• Communication - so the audience can know what’s going on and what to do.

• Defense - so that even before the shooter is taken down, there’s something done to reduce the threat

• Offense - so that the shooter is neutralized quickly.

Detection

When the guns at Las Vegas fired, it wasn’t easy to find where it was coming from.  With three hotels and as we said—hundreds of windows—how could you locate it?  The ideal situation?  Have eyes on each and every one of those windows—so the minute something happens—the minute a gun pokes out and starts flashing, you can sound the alarm and point: there it is!  That one!

Hundreds of windows is a lot—but that’s where technology comes in.  What if we set up cameras—high-resolution cameras all around the venue, and maybe even beyond the walls of the venue.  Each one trained on a section of windows—each window in view and each camera capturing a live shot of it.  Feeding in real time to a bank of monitors somewhere.  A monitoring station with a person behind it.  But also with an algorithm behind it—a computer program that works like facial recognition works.  So that when it sees what looks like a gun, or detects the muzzle-flash of it firing, alarm bells sound.  The system pinpoints it: there it is!  That one!  Seventh floor, tenth window from the left.   

A system like this might sound the alarm before the first shot is fired.

But—but once that alarm sounds—what happens?  Where does this information go?  What happens next?

Well, I think we need more than information like seventh floor, 10th window from the left.  Because if you have security personnel in each hotel—how do you know which room to go to?  Which door to break down?  Is it room 708 or 712?  710?  So—before this system of cameras is even set up, you have to map each window to a room number, so we’re going to have to work with the hotels here and the office buildings on that one.  It’s gonna take time, but that time will pay off.  And anyway—organizations have to submit that info to fire departments, already.

Okay, we have the information—the where—down to the room number—and that information needs to go to a lot of places. Which takes us to the need for communication.

Communication

We have to let the audience know what’s happening.  So an alarm sounds.  A literal alarm—and it sounds on the speakers used onstage.  Yes, we need to patch it in—override the music of the band, cut into the show and say loud and clear: this is happening.  But “this is happening” isn’t enough.  The message needs to say two things more: where it is happening—so people can run away from it.  And what to do—so people can run towards safety.  SAFELY.

We need a loud alarm—but we also need a calm voice.  The voice could be pre-recorded, or it could be someone calm and collected on the security team.  Like the voice of a pilot announcing turbulence—clear and confident.  “There is a shooter with a gun firing from a high window from the Pierson Hotel.”  That’s the calmness, that’s the message about the shooter.  But what about the message of where it’s happening?  Directions are notoriously hard to communicate in words.  If you say it’s happening to the left of the stage, does that mean on the left side of the building that is behind the stage, or does it mean the building that you’d run into if you walked off the stage to the left?  Direction is way easier to point at by…well, actually pointing.

So let’s do that.  Let’s do it the same way airplanes do it—with lights that illuminate.  On planes they put the lights on the floor in the aisle.  But the floor of a busy concert is hard to see—so let’s hang the lights high.  Set them up around the perimeter of the concert space.  And let’s use color smartly.  We’ll light it red in the area where the shooting is taking place, and green in the area where it’s safe to go.  And maybe in all the places in between—let’s light it like an airplane does, blinking white lights on and off, on and off—like carnival lights, moving you away from the red and towards the green of safe exits.

The message would add, then: “The shooter is in the direction of the red lights.  Move away from the red lights and towards the green.”

That would be clear.  But…but would it be right?  I mean, running away makes sense if the shooter is actually on the ground, but if he’s 10 stories up and firing continuously, it might not matter all that much if you’re 250 feet away or 290 feet away.  He could still see you—still get a shot off.  (NOTE: Show shooter’s view here).  You’re still in his line of sight.

Instead, if we’re talking about shooters up high—maybe shooters above a certain floor, the red light may be all you need.  Point out where the gun is firing from, and then instruct people to take cover.  “Drop to the ground and hide.  So that you can’t be seen from any windows in the direction of the red strip of lights.”

We need places to hide, then.  The venue needs to have built-in cover.  Now, lots of concert spaces already use some form of plastic barricade or divider to funnel people this way and that when they’re watching the show.  So, we could make these barricades more prevalent—build enough of them and place them strategically so there’s always enough space for people to drop behind and disappear from the shooter’s sights.  But there’s a difference between taking cover behind plastic and taking cover behind concrete.  That could be another option, then—see if it’s possible to build in more hardened barriers that can be used for taking cover.  Or wrap those plastic barricades in light kevlar, the bullet-proof fabric.  If you’re in the audience, then, it would go like this: you hear the alarm, the red light shows you what to hide from, and you duck behind a barricade, invisible to the shooter and now, suddenly, bullet-proof.

What do you do while you’re waiting there, though, behind that barricade?  You check your phone.  You Google to see what’s going on—is this on the news?  What are tips for staying safe in a shooting like this?  Well—we could make this better, too.  What if, while you waited there behind that barricade you received text messages from concert security in real time—telling you all of this:

There was a shooting.

Take cover away from the direction of the red lights.  Take cover so that someone standing at a high window in that direction couldn’t see you.

These text messages could even be sent with a diagram of what this means—to duck behind a barricade away from the red lights.  A diagram or—better yet—an animated GIF.  It could send you five safety tips.  It could reassure you that the barricades are bullet-proof.  It could tell you how to care for the wounded—if you yourself were shot or trampled—or someone nearby.  And it could send out automated security updates on progress.  Like information that the police are on their way.  And when it’s safe to come out.

Defense

Communication of the shooter’s location doesn’t just go to the audience—it should also trigger something defensive.  Here’s what I’m thinking: there’s a shooter at a high window, shooting at people in the crowd far below.  I want to put a wall between the people and those guns.  And if not a real wall—which seems impossible at a moment’s notice—then at least a barrier that makes it impossible to see.

But how do you do that?  Instantly?  Well, maybe you don’t.  Not instantly.  There are such things as big tents—we’ve all seen them.  At the carnival or farmer’s market.  Now, I know they can be pricey.  A tent for 300 people costs something like $10,000 to $15,000.  But if all outdoor concerts simply took place under big tents, this wouldn’t be an issue.  The shooter wouldn’t know an empty corner from a full one.

All right—but there will still be plenty of outdoor events without tents, I’m sure.  So the question remains—how do you block the shooter’s view the instant you know he’s shooting?  My first thought?  balloons.  Something like balloons—you know the kind: the ones they use at big political rallies or weddings.  Balloons all braided together.  But of course, balloons like that would be stupid—you could shoot right through them and they’d deflate.  Second thought: what about those big fan-blown installations they use at car dealerships?  Launch a whole phalanx of those things at the perimeter of the concert.  But that—too—would be complicated and probably wouldn’t obstruct the view enough.  So how about this:

Smoke.  Fog.  Mist.  These things can be launched in an instant and hide a whole concert in a—well, a smoke-screen.  Smoke can be deployed with what are called smoke bombs. Yes, “bomb” isn’t the word you want to hear when you’re talking security.  But smoke bombs are really not much different from the fireworks you can get on the 4th of July.  We’ll set them all around the perimeter of the venue—and we’ll set them all off if firing begins.  We have to set off the smoke on all sides, because we don’t know what way the wind is blowing.  The smoke that does the job may come from the other side of the venue for all we know. So, let’s imagine it this way:

The cameras spot and confirm a gun from a high window at the hotel behind the stage.  Twelfth floor, four windows from the left—Room 1214.  Just as the first shots ring out, smoke bombs ignite.  All around the perimeter, smoke billows and keeps billowing.  Within seconds, the whole concert venue is obscured—the shooter can’t see anything but smoke.  No targets at all—he’s firing blindly.  And we can do even more than this—what if there was a system to direct high-powered spotlight beams straight at the shooter?  To put him in the direct spotlight, to make it easier for people on the ground to identify his actions—and to make it even more impossible to shoot through?   

Fewer people will be shot, for sure.  But the shooter’s still firing.  And we have to stop him.  We have to do a better job at stopping him.  The Las Vegas shooter fired for 10 minutes—an eternity—and nobody stopped him.  How can we stop a shooting in an instant?

The fastest thing isn’t to break down the shooter’s door.  It is to fire back.  At some parades, it’s common to have security and it’s becoming even more common for that security to include snipers on rooftops.  Why is this expected at parades but not expected when you have hundreds of people out in the open at a concert?  If you had two or three snipers, they could be directed to target the correct window and fire within seconds.  Done.   

But let’s say that’s not possible.  What about the hotels?  We need to have security stationed there.  Yes, in each of these buildings with the high windows, we need security stationed for the duration of the concert.  Ideally you’d have two or three per building, on different floors.  Maybe a different person every 10 floors.  Ready the moment they got the word: twelfth floor, room 1214.  The security guard on floor 10 would leap into action, rush the two floors up to 12—dash down the hall and smash into room 1214.  How long would that take?  Hardly 2 minutes, I’d guess.

There is a problem here, though.  And that’s the very real possibility that the shooter booby-trapped the door to his room.  So maybe, we need to think about this a little more.  Maybe the security team needs to come in through the wall of the adjacent room—rather than the front door.  So they’d need to be able to get into that adjacent room—quickly identify a wall that wasn’t load-bearing, and tear through it.  Fully ready to face a real firefight.  To do all of this—and it could be done: they could have a keycard that got them quietly into the neighboring room, and they could have those architectural plans at the ready.  But to do all of it would take more than two minutes.  You’d probably need more than one person to get through the wall fast enough, so you’d have to wait for security from another floor to get there.  That would increase response time by another minute or two.

I wonder if there’s another way to get into that room—and that’s through the window.  Could it be possible to have a SWAT-like team on the roof of each of these buildings—ready to quickly rappel down the side of it and attack from there?  Rappelling is pretty straightforward, there’s no breathless running up or down stairs—no need to break down the door, break through a wall, or risk a trap.  And, a small team on each roof could effectively get to any window or room in short order.  Because remember—you don’t have to catch the guy or even take him out in the first minute or two. We just have to disrupt his firing at the people below.  If it takes a bit longer to catch or incapacitate him—if doing that really does require coming through the front door—that’s fine.  The number one priority is to end the mass shooting.  And stop it we will.

Offense

When it comes to offense—about a drone?  One that could be used for aerial footage of the event, but if there’s a shooting from a high window the drone could simply fly straight into the window.  The moment firing begins—pilot it straight into that twelfth story window.  That would be pretty disruptive to the shooter, I think.  Or, the drone could be dedicated to just this purpose and equipped with flash and smoke grenades.  So the moment it struck the window, those grenades were set off.  Disrupting the shooting.  It could get there pretty fast.  We’d just have to make sure it didn’t get in the way of security personnel who might already be on the scene.

All right—we’ve arrived finally, I think—at the full picture.  All of this may seem excessive.  Kevlar-wrapped barriers.  Lights and algorithmic real-time monitoring, window mapping, smoke-screens…But you know what’s excessive?  The number of bullets fired into that concert.  The number of dollars made on that concert.  And not put toward smart security.  This is a real threat—we can hope it doesn’t happen again—but that’s like hoping it doesn’t rain.  Or worse, deciding not to go outside because you’re afraid you’ll get rained on.  Just take an umbrella.  Security isn’t about changing our lives to avoid bad things—it’s about the opposite.  About securing our lives so we don’t have to change the things we love to do.  Because despite all of the threats and all of the fear, all of the death and all of the pain, we fill our lives with more than that: ours is a world of music.