Panic button...idea #34/100...

Last night I watched the film Hostage, starring Bruce Willis. I enjoyed it! Perhaps its theme entered my sub-conscious. Today, I started thinking about panic buttons.

I think the other prompt was thinking about the word community, which got stuck in my head after reading lots of seemingly pedantic debate about what the word means. My first instinct about community is always to think of neighbours. A lot of what passes for community in the online world is actually just networks. Whoops! I'm digressing....

My thoughts were travelling down the line of mutual support in real communities, an example of which is the neighbourhood watch schemes.

I thought about the potential importance of being able to call a neighbour in case of an emergency. It would be useful to call everyone at the same time. All the phones ring and I get connected to the first to pick up. That's one possibility.

Alternatively, dialling the "panic number" causes a notification to be sent to all the neighbours in my support network. They probably would get a recorded message. Perhaps something like: "Paul, at number 1, is in trouble...please assist immediately."

Thinking about it, this could also be a service that the emergency services offer. For example, the trigger for the neighbourhood panic alert is dialling the emergency services number.


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