Walk Softly

A friend who moved to the South End from the suburbs has found her comfort zone. "When I walk home at night, I go by the dog park, because it makes me feel safer," she says. Her homespun security plan sounds like a practical strategy in these bruising times of overamped government security bulletins and color-coded alerts. Isn't a simple solution the best way to cope when all the dire safety warnings make you feel wilted, fearful, and more helpless than helped?

A recent advertising blitz for the US Department of Homeland Security's website, www.ready.gov, came disguised as a chic fashion campaign. Posters displayed this fall in MBTA stations showed slick images of lipsticks on a glass shelf and neckties on a wooden hanger. "But do you have a transistor radio?" was the question imposed over the lipsticks. "But do you have a whistle?" was written over the neckties.

The message from the same people who brought us duct tape was as gauzy as the ad's photography. During an attack, will men bring the whistles? Will women carry the portable radios? The trendy tone of the www.ready.gov campaign was creepy because protecting ourselves isn't pretty. Anyway, when I am captive in a subway station, I have no time to ponder sketchy fashionista advice from Homeland Security. It's quite enough to eye the shifty character clutching a mystery bundle while I wonder whether to call the T's "See Something? Say Something" hotline.

When you are "scaring people without giving them tools to empower themselves, you run the risk of having them ignore future warnings," says Deputy Superintendent Margot Hill, commander of the Boston Police Family Justice Division. "If you warn me to go buy duct tape, then tell me what the duct tape is for."

Last month, Hill issued a scary advisory of her own. After the unsolved rapes of two young women followed a serial pattern, police cautioned women not to walk alone anywhere at any time in the city until suspects were in custody. Such an ominous alert can't help but send chills through every woman. Yet, Hill describes how one listener didn't get it: "A woman said to me, 'You told every woman in Boston to stay inside.' And I said, 'You didn't hear me.'"

In the blare of cautionary bulletins, we can scramble the reception to feel better about ignoring the advice. I think of the transistor radio hidden in the lipsticks. Actually, Hill suggests a handier tool: "Make a 'C' with your hand." She tells me I have 4 pounds of jabbing pressure in my cupped hand, enough to disable an attacker. "You could go for the eyes, the solar plexus, groin, throat especially if you have a good manicure." What if there's a gun? "Do everything you can to survive and, while enduring the robbery or assault, memorize the features of the person doing this to you."

Have a plan, Hill advises. Not a duct tape/whistle/radio stunt, but a mundane maneuver to avert danger such as my friend's detour by the dog park. Don't worry about manners. "Our survival instincts have been tamped down amazingly enough by political correctness and our desire not to offend," she says. Cross the street if somebody looks menacing.

Hill tells the story of a woman in her 50s with a bad knee. "If something happened to her, she wasn't running anywhere." One day, while waiting at a bus stop, the woman saw trouble in a kid approaching her. "When he was about 5 feet away," Hill says, "she looked right at him and challenged him. 'Hey! Don't I know your mother?' And he kept walking. He didn't say anything back."

Collins writes biweekly. E-mail her at mcollins@globe.com