Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy.

Fallout shelters are like bell-bottoms. They've gone in and out of favor.

There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event.

The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.

Police officers and firemen are so visible in their daily work, there's no mistaking they're there - and that presence makes people feel secure.

The reality is that it's harder to recruit pediatric subspecialists if you're not recruiting them for a children's hospital.

There has been a transition from a nuclear-annihilation scenario to an isolated-terrorist-nuclear-bomb scenario. But we're still locked into a mind-set that nuclear war would be so overwhelming that any kind of preparedness would be futile.