“For years, the common teaching was ‘Be passive, be static, hold tight, and wait for police to rescue you,’” Crane tells Daily Intelligencer. But after Columbine, Lisa Crane was frustrated with the idea that in the event of a gun-wielding misfit marauding murderously through the halls of her school, she and her students would have to sit passively and wait for help to arrive.

So Crane created a set of strategies meant to guide staff and students to be more, as he puts it, “proactive.” Crane says more than 2,000 school districts nationwide have incorporated the ALICE program into their curriculum, and more than 1,900 police officers are certified ALICE instructors.

ALICE has even come out with a branded line of children’s books. In I’m Not Scared … I’m Prepared!, a school-age ant at the Ant Hill School learns what to do if he encounters an ant-hungry wolf (maybe an anteater seemed too sympathetic to be the villain?), and learns anti-wolf procedures – including throwing something at the wolf, making strange ant noises, and running zigzag to distract him. It also quotes Theodore Roosevelt, saying, “The worst thing you can do is nothing.”