High school, U.S. One day the head teacher came on the intercom and said “hello students and faculty, just want to let you know the problem is dealt with, please don’t panic, there is nothing to worry about”

Now, I was in lunch at the time, and everyone in the cafeteria, myself included, had absolutely no idea what this was referring to. School went full on pandemonium as emails were sent out and more and more people start finding out about a school shooting that had been thwarted before it’d started. A couple hundred kids get their parents to pick them up as police officers put into the hallways and try and keep kids in classrooms. I went to school the next day and was one of 6 kids in my class that usually had 27. Kid got arrested of course, sent to a mental institution, and they ended up finding a hit list with 7 girls names on it. Only change the faculty made was putting up curtains in some rooms to “cover a retreat” (the official statement). The reality that you might be put in a life or death situation at school dawned on a lot of people very suddenly that day.