Spinoff.... safest where?

[~PQ]

Where do you feel safest?

It is funny, I actually feel VERY VERY VERY safe here in general, this is a town where people leave their cars running while they grocery shop, house doors unlocked, expensive snowboards leaned against shops when they go in to get a snack. I think its the fact we're so isolated and small (so if there is a crime, then it's not going to be too hard to solve) combined with the fact everyone here has loud dogs, big guns, and huge cans of bear spray. Just last week though they found an overturned skiff and a local couple is missing. We lost our vice-mayor 3 weeks ago to an avalanche right here in town. We lost a beloved member of the community in a life flight helicopter crash over the sound. We've only been here since August so statistically the number of people who have died that we know or knew someone who knew has been really high... and none of them from crime!

In SC I often felt unsafe at night. There was always this lingering apprehension about home invasion (a problem in the area) This was in my nice suburb. Ironically I never felt unsafe walking around downtown. I associate downtown with lots of eyes and ears, and therefor I felt more safe than in our quiet neighborhood.

How about you?

[indigo]

Where do you feel safest?

It is funny, I actually feel VERY VERY VERY safe here in general, this is a town where people leave their cars running while they grocery shop, house doors unlocked, expensive snowboards leaned against shops when they go in to get a snack. I think its the fact we're so isolated and small (so if there is a crime, then it's not going to be too hard to solve) combined with the fact everyone here has loud dogs, big guns, and huge cans of bear spray. Just last week though they found an overturned skiff and a local couple is missing. We lost our vice-mayor 3 weeks ago to an avalanche right here in town. We lost a beloved member of the community in a life flight helicopter crash over the sound. We've only been here since August so statistically the number of people who have died that we know or knew someone who knew has been really high... and none of them from crime!

In SC I often felt unsafe at night. There was always this lingering apprehension about home invasion (a problem in the area) This was in my nice suburb. Ironically I never felt unsafe walking around downtown. I associate downtown with lots of eyes and ears, and therefor I felt more safe than in our quiet neighborhood.

How about you?

I do feel pretty safe on my suburban street but not so safe that I don't take precautions. I lock the doors and I use an alarm system at night.

I feel very, very safe in a city as long as it's a "safe" part of the city and as long as there are a lot of people around. I feel very unsafe in a city when it's empty, especially at night. That's a position I do not put myself in.

I feel unsafe in the country because nobody would hear my screams. LOL.

[Bonny]

we lock our doors at night, too ... even though I'm not so sure that, statistically that is when the most breakins occur.

I think I would feel the least safe in a downtown urban setting .... although that would depend on what was going on around me at the time.

[Ali]

Safe is a state of mind, IMO. Bad things can happen to anyone at anytime. I don't dwell on what *might* happen, I have enought here and now problems to keep me busy.

That said, I have never really felt unsafe anywhere. I do believe in listening to that little voice, and avoid situations that make it louder than the others ;) But overall being safe or unsafe isn't something I focus on.

[Jill]

I feel unsafe in the country because nobody would hear my screams. LOL.

OK, LOL cause that is exactly how I used to feel. I'm not "that far out" but it's a few acres in any direction to another house, through woods, and that was totally SCARY for me when we first moved here. For me though it's not fear of intruders, it's more like the slasher movie kind of heebie jeebies yk?

Now, though, I feel very safe and secure here. The way I rationalize it in my head is that if someone were to break into my house here, they CHOSE me/my house, and they were going to do it no matter where I lived. You can't just "stumble upon" my neighborhood, it's just not near anything - even people IN my town don't always know we're here! That said, I often sit in my family room at night looking out into the woods and panic when I hear the "Jason" music in my head. Or when I hear the words "Have you checked the children?" in my head...I freeze and make a run for upstairs faster than you'd ever imagine I could move LMAO!

I don't like walking among crowds of people so I don't like the feeling of being in busy cities very much but it's not fear based. I feel safety in numbers really. There aren't very many real life situations that scare me, it's all stupid stuff in my head.

[Jill]

Safe is a state of mind, IMO. Bad things can happen to anyone at anytime. I don't dwell on what *might* happen, I have enought here and now problems to keep me busy.

That said, I have never really felt unsafe anywhere. I do believe in listening to that little voice, and avoid situations that make it louder than the others ;) But overall being safe or unsafe isn't something I focus on.

That's exactly my thinking!

[mirage1]

I voted for the burbs just to keep things even, LOL. Seriously, I feel as safe there as I do in any of the other options. About the only place I DON'T feel that great about just, you know, wandering around in, is industrial areas when there's just no one around.

[jump4joy]

I haven't noticed that I've felt particuarly less safe in one type of area than another. There are specific situations where I've felt less safe, but they weren't necessarily related to where I was. I felt very threatened once in a Safeway parking lot in a very high-end suburb, yet I've walked through shitty downtown areas in big cities in the middle of the night and not felt that scared. Fear to me is not a place, but a specific situation that makes my hairs stand up, and in that sense I think it can happen anywhere, but of course it usually doesn't.

[Gargoyle]

I don't know how to answer this, in regards to a certain type of town or what not. I know I feel really safe at my parents house. Doors open, keys in the car, you name it. I have never felt that safe about anywhere else we've ever lived. In all the places we've been in, in the last year, I've felt the least safe, in this place.

I woke up the other night, totally freaking out from a bad dream and loud noise to discover the front window was open. I walked around the house, heart pounding out of my chest, on the verge of hysteria, checking the whole appartment. Once I did and knew no one was here, I called dh at work (he slept at the boat that night) to help me calm down. I went back to bed, turning on all the lights as I went, and still had a racing heart when I got in bed. I'm so ready to leave this apartment complex.

[elizabeth]

I am, however, amazed at the number of suburban women who leave their handbags in unlocked cars on the street and then are amazed at the fact that they disappear overnight.

[Mumbly]

I can't say a certain type of place makes me feel safer. Driving down a dark, lonely country road can make me fearful, but so can sitting at a stoplight in the middle of the day next to someone holding a sign.

My cousin lived for years in a not nice part of town. There were regularly prostitutes walking past her house, shootings just houses away, drug deals all around, but I never felt scared going to her house. I had no problem letting my kids and hers walk the two or three blocks to the little neighborhood store. Dd goes to college two nights a week at a campus that a lot of people I know won't go to at night. I feel that the campus is safe even though the area surrounding the campus is not a very desirable area.

I feel safe on my street. My neighbors are very aware of unusual activity and we try to be the same way.

A few years ago, we went to D.C. and Philadelphia on vacation. I never felt any fear in D.C. and we used public transportation and walked the entire time we were there. Dh's uncle and cousin were living in there at the time and were able to show us around a little, but even when his uncle wasn't with us I wasn't afraid. Philly was a little different. We were downtown, in unfamiliar territory and his uncle was back in D.C. I won't say I was ever afraid, but I was on high alert because the sidewalks seemed narrower and more crowded than the streets in D.C. We had to walk much closer to people we passed and I just felt it would have been fairly easy for someone to grab a purse or wallet just from being so close. Of course being in unfamiliar territory puts me on high alert so it probably didn't have as much to do with where we were, but rather it was a place I didn't know.

[aleutsi]

I voted other. There isn't a certain type of place that makes me feel safe or less safe. It's all about what is going on and the conditions.

For instance, I feel perfectly safe walking through a parking lot to my car.. until the sun goes down, then I'm on high alert. Or.. until some crazy man with a ipod on his head comes really close to me shouting at the top of his lungs along to some angry rap song. And it's not the rap. I felt that same fear in DC when a crazy man came really close to me shouting angrily about how Jesus saves.

I've felt fear and safe in the country. I've felt safe after dark in the industrial part of downtown by the river walking with my mother. And I've felt fear while standing in line at the grocery with the man directly behind me breathing heavy down my neck.

So I don't know.. it all just depends on what is going on around me.

[tumblewieds]

We live in the Burbs, and our town is small and heavily patrolled. I don't worry about my safety at all, and I honestly probably need to do a better job of being aware and alert.

[AmericanMomma]

I think here (next to rural East Texas) is the safest I've ever felt. We've gone to bed w/the doors unlocked and the garage door open, not on purpose but.... in East Texas I just knew some escaped loons were going to get us because there were NO neighbors.

The least safe I ever felt was in downtown Portsmouth, Virginia. We lived in Olde towne and it was absolutely deserted after 6:00 PM. DH was on a ship and I've never felt so alone, lonely and scared in all of my days.