The flyer included a picture showing how many seconds you have to take cover once you hear the sirens:
For the pale green area directly surrounding the Gaza Strip, including Sderot: 15 seconds.Zvi adds:
For the pale blue area after that, including Ashkelon: 30 seconds.
For the purple zone, including Ashdod: 45 seconds.
For the darker green area after that, which includes Be’er Sheva: 60 seconds.
The darker orange region which includes Dimona and Jerusalem: 3 minutes.
The paler orange region including Tel Aviv and Netanya: 2 minutes.
The beige area including Hadera and Haifa: 60 seconds.
The yellow area which includes Haifa, Nazareth and Tzfat: 30 seconds.
And finally my region – the red one – which doesn’t have a time-frame; it just says ‘immediate entry to refuge’.
So next time some Hamas or Hizbollah apologist tells you about the ‘home-made rockets’ or ‘firecrackers’, ask them to close their eyes and count to 15, imagining that this is the maximum time available to them to gather up their children, pets or ageing relatives and get them to relative safety.
Which child would they grab first? How would they negotiate the stairs if they lived in a top-storey apartment? How would they cope with disabled, blind or deaf members of the family? What if they were at work and their children home alone?
To them it will still remain a theoretical exercise, but for millions of Israelis these are just some of the real questions which have to be answered; real decisions which have to be made – in a matter of seconds.
If you live outside of Israel, then I also recommend doing something else. On your phone or in your house, have a friend or family member set your alarm for a random time during the day or night. Don't look at it. Go about your normal daily business. When you hear the alarm go off, try to figure out what you would do if you had to get to a bomb shelter or secure room within 15 seconds. If you can do it SAFELY, actually try to make your way to such a place within 15 seconds.
What would you do if you were taking a shower when the alert went off?
What would you do if you were taking a sick child to the hospital?
What would you do if you were walking your dog?
What would you do if you were sleeping?
What would you do if you were desperate to use the restroom?
What would you do if you were playing with your young children at the park? (Sderot parks do have bomb shelters)
What would you do if you were helping an elderly or injured relative?
What would you do if the person standing next to you did not speak the language and did not understand what was going on?
What would you do if you were out in the middle of a field, weeding?
What would you do if you were davening - and among 200 other people in the shul, many of whom are kids and some of whom are seniors who can't move quickly?
What would you do if you were trying to change a flat tire by the side of the road?
What would you do if you were giving birth?
What would you do, in 15 seconds, to save your life or the lives of your loved ones?
If you do this, why not add in the comments section a report about what happened?
I'd like to add that if a Palestinian Arab state would be established on or near the 1949 armistice lines, even if it is supposedly "demilitarized," even if the PA promises on the lives of their mothers that they will never use weapons against their Israeli peace partners, all of Jerusalem and surround areas would turn red and Tel Aviv and Netanya would probably go from a "two minute" zone to a 30-second zone - as "Palestine" would only be nine kilometers away.
Because there is nothing that Israel could do in that scenario to stop Palestinian Arab terror groups from building or smuggling in rockets anyway.
Keep in in mind also that there are still a few rockets being fired every week, even during this "calm."