You know how whenever there's a hurricane, the TV news people always find somebody who's not afraid and who plans to wait it out like it's a summer shower? Remember the guy who lived on Mount St. Helens and wouldn't leave, even though the earty beneath his house was getting ready to explode? Not to mention the TV people themselves, who think they're invulnerable.

Some Visitors Unfazed By India Alert

I would think pretty much anyone would be fazed by a possible nuclear war, but not these folks, nosir.

``It's hard to believe anything would really happen,'' said Barbara Richard, who acknowledged war worries prompted her to push up her travel plans by two weeks out of concern for her children, aged 12, 10 and 4.

Richard, a Washington native, said that without the kids, she'd be fine staying here with her husband, who works in India for a multinational corporation.

``Maybe that's stupid,'' she said. ``Maybe that's naive. I've never been in a war. I don't see anything coming, but what about the Jews in Germany in the 1930s? Some of them said they saw something coming and they didn't get out."

I'm tempted to say that Mrs. Richard deserves to get blown up or irradiated or flattened by a shock wave. But that would be mean. Anyway, her kids don't.