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Re: Threats
Unfortunately for us all, the knowledge that every threat will cause such a broad reaction is in itself a strong weapon in the hands of someone bent on causing havoc.
For example, it would only take one mischievous individual to make a series of such threats from widely-dispersed public phones, over a sustained period. Assuming that they weren't stupid criminals, and didn't tell their friends, and nobody witnessed it, it's pretty much untraceable. But everyone's on edge, everyone's paranoid, and everyone's utterly impotent—it's terrorism, in a truer sense of the word than the one to which we've lately become accustomed.
The accepted standard of due diligence demands that these threats be dealt with on an individual basis, and that precautions be taken, but as Andrew pointed out, there's really no evidence to support a correlation between threats and actual acts of violence. This uncertainty underscores the brutal fact that no matter the level of precaution (short of a police state), there's always the chance that someone is going to try to kill you for no good reason at all. And unless you want to go down the path of being perpetually consumed by fear, at some point, you're forced to just go about life, and hope nobody chooses you as a target.
You never know if the next threat is going to be the real thing, and you never can know. As long as there are idiots and malfeasants who would wish harm upon you, you're at risk. In this instance, the authorities seem to have done their part; your part is just to understand that the best you can do is to maintain as great a state of normalcy as possible. Panic only satiates their desire for wanton chaos, so your best bet is to brave the 0° weather and the evacuation, and hope that the entire event is as boring as can be imagined—after all, what thrill is to be gained by knowing that a group of people calmly filed out of a building, and found something else to do for the rest of the day?
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