Packer keeps an EMP alarm in her master bedroom, so even if she's sleeping she'll know that there's been an attack. During the day she keeps her radios tuned to a station not "hardened" to EMP. If her radio suddenly goes blank when she's driving, here's what she'll do: remove the cables from the car battery and hope the computerized ignition resets. If she can't restart her car she will open her trunk and get out her 72-hour kit, then head for a place with a lot of dirt or concrete between herself and the effects of the thermal blast. She will have already scouted out the best place, because wherever she's driving she's always on the lookout for a culvert or an overpass or a basement she could crawl into.

She will "duck and cover," because it's possible that the EMP is precursor to a full-scale attack from a country such as Russia. She knows that's not very likely (in the first place, if an enemy launches a full-scale nuclear war, it will probably be at night when we're most vulnerable, she says) but, just in case, she will take precautions. She will wait in the culvert for several hours, just to be sure.

If there has been a thermal blast, she'll stay there for two days or until the fallout — which she will measure with the dosimeter that she always carries in her purse — has dropped below 10 rads per hour. If she's not too far from home she'll try to get back there. She will wear a shower cap and raincoat, also from her 72-hour kit, to protect her from whatever fallout is left.

She has her own "multihazard" shelter that she can live in, with as many as 49 other people, for months, if necessary.

You can't count on the government to protect you, says Packer. If we could count on the government, she says, there would be bomb shelters under every school and church and public building in the United States.

We should mention here that Packer, in a separate job, sells shelters. This could be construed as a conflict of interest for the director of an organization that encourages people to be prepared, but Packer has a different way of looking at it: "I would love for the government to put me out of business — and I'd be happy to teach them how to do it."

People should be angry, she says, that she has a bomb shelter and they don't. They should be angry that Vice President Dick Cheney has a safe place and they don't. Why doesn't the government provide shelters for all of us? "Because we don't ask," she says.

She and her business partner, Paul Seyfried, sell most of their Utah Shelter Systems in New York, Florida, California and Oregon (with fire and earthquake the prime motivation for some buyers). About three-quarters of her customers are attorneys or physicians.

Technically, when there's no fallout — after an EMP attack or a massive earthquake, for example — you wouldn't need an underground shelter. But there's something else to be afraid about, she says: all the unprepared people who will want to get at your water purifier and your year's supply of beans and your insulated blankets. Mobs of people you will have to keep out.

Emphasis began early