The lockdown drill is familiar. Lights off, door locked, students in the corner, silence. That was the standard response for decades.
ALICE Training is a different approach. It came out of the recognition that “hide and wait” does not always work — and that giving people options improves outcomes. Here is what ALICE actually means and whether it belongs in your school or organization.
What ALICE Stands For
ALICE is an acronym for five options, not a sequence you follow in order. Each one applies depending on where the threat is and what options you have.
- Alert: Notify people of the threat immediately and with specific information. “Lockdown” tells people to hide. “Active shooter near the gym, moving toward the main hallway” gives them something to act on.
- Lockdown: Barricade the room, make it hard to enter, and prepare to take other action if needed. This is still an option. ALICE does not eliminate lockdown — it adds to it.
- Inform: Keep communicating as the situation develops. Where is the threat now? Which direction is it moving? Real-time information changes decisions.
- Counter: If the threat enters your space and there is no other option, you fight back. Throw objects, make noise, swarm the attacker. This is the most debated piece of ALICE.
- Evacuate: Run if you have a clear path. Get out of the building and keep moving. Do not wait for permission.
These are a menu, not a checklist. The framework trains people to read the situation and choose the best available option rather than defaulting to one response regardless of circumstances.
Why It Exists
The traditional lockdown-only approach was developed after Columbine. It made sense at the time — get everyone hidden and wait for law enforcement. The problem is that it treats every situation identically.
If a threat is in the building and moving toward your classroom, staying locked in and waiting may not be your best option. ALICE gives staff and students a framework for making that call in real time instead of following one default response.
Greg Crane, a police officer in North Richland Hills, Texas, developed ALICE after studying the Columbine response. His argument: people who understand their options and have trained on them survive at higher rates than those with only one response available.
The Counter Debate
Counter is the component that creates the most discomfort, and that reaction is understandable.
Teaching school staff to physically engage an attacker — to throw books, use improvised weapons, swarm — runs against what most people expect from a school environment. Some districts have adopted ALICE in full. Others have removed Counter and use a modified framework. Both are defensible decisions depending on your population and administration.
What the research shows: when the threat is inside the room and there is no escape route, physical resistance has changed outcomes in real incidents. The FBI’s data on active shooter events documents cases where unarmed civilians intervened and stopped an attack before law enforcement arrived. Counter is not a first resort. It is a last resort that people should know exists.
One critical point: a one-time ALICE presentation is not ALICE training. Awareness is not the same as preparation. The framework requires repetition, scenario practice, and honest conversation about what it actually means to counter a threat.
ALICE vs. Run-Hide-Fight
You may be more familiar with Run-Hide-Fight, the framework from DHS used in most federal guidance. The concepts overlap significantly. Run maps to Evacuate. Hide maps to Lockdown. Fight maps to Counter.
The main difference is in how they are taught and how much the framework addresses communication. ALICE includes Alert and Inform, which focus on real-time information sharing during an event. Run-Hide-Fight does not address that piece directly.
Neither framework is a guarantee. Both require training, practice, and integration into your emergency operations plan. The framework you pick matters less than whether your people have actually trained on it.
Does It Apply to Your Organization?
For schools, options-based active threat response is increasingly standard. Texas law under SB 11 requires that school safety plans address active shooter response, and ALICE-style training aligns with that requirement.
For churches and other organizations, the same logic applies. A congregation that has only been told to stay seated has not been prepared. That is not a plan.
Risk Strategy Group provides active threat response training for schools, churches, and organizations. We work within your existing emergency operations framework, train staff and volunteers on options-based response, and make sure what you teach holds up in a real scenario — not just in a conference room.
Contact us to talk through what fits your facility and population.
