Consequences have been defined in a number of ways. For example, in the development of doctrine for response to terrorism incidents in the United States in the late 1990s, law enforcement response was designated crisis management, and emergency services response was designated consequence management, a separation that was driven by cultural factors in law enforcement agencies, not by the reality of the event. In other cases, consequence has been used synonymously with impact. I believe that it is more accurate to view consequences as outcome of the interaction of the impact with how humans perceive and react to the event. Ineffective or dysfunctional interaction may allow more events of a similar nature to occur; effective courses of action may result in mitigation and preparedness programs that reduce vulnerability to future events.