When I was at a small company that worked with radioactive material, we had to register and secure all radiation sources, even the extremely weak ones that anyone can order online with no restrictions. Before the state inspector came, we deliberately left one of those weak sources out where it wasn’t supposed to be so that the inspector would find something wrong, tell us to fix it, and leave feeling like she did her job. It would be the smallest possible violation and it wouldn’t actually get us in trouble. We did that because we figured that if there was nothing obviously wrong, the inspector would look for problems a lot more carefully.

(Nuclear physicists are rather more nonchalant about radiation than the average person is, for obvious reasons. By nuclear physicist standards, we didn’t actually have any dangerous sources at all. Thus we felt like we weren’t doing anything morally wrong, but I suppose that the average person might have disagreed.)

I don’t see why I would be in any more danger than a native-born American citizen.

1. I don’t expect anything catastrophic to happen so suddenly that I won’t have time to flee.

2. Everyone I know is here, including people who depend on me.

3. I don’t want to learn another language.

4. I feel a lot less connected to the USA than I did before, but I don’t feel more connected to any other country than I do to the USA. The one my family and I came from is a huge mess and I certainly don’t want to return to it.

I’m taking the idea of leaving the country much more seriously than I had before, but it still seems unlikely.