Should you be worried about bird flu? Yes. No. And maybe; it depends. Like the creatures who might bring the plague, it's all up in the air. What matters is how you respond today. Should you:

-- Study the scenarios, lay in supplies, then get on with your life. If we panic, the birds have won!

-- Content yourself with the comforting certainty that FEMA is on the case! Men in hazmat suits will jump out of helicopters and impose order while dramatic music swells in the background, just like in the movies. (Note: For this scenario to work, Harrison Ford must be president.)

Option No. 1 may be your best choice.

Of course, the bird flu will not cause a breakdown in civil order; we will not someday speak of the DayQuil Riots of '06, when the National Guard mowed down desperate, congested looters. But if millions of Americans suddenly sit in the corner all huffed and snuffling like sick parakeets, and hospitals are overwhelmed by desperately ill people just looking for a bright clean place to die, everything's going to change for a while.

You're going to want face masks, for example, for those times when you have to leave the house. You won't find any. They'll have been bought up by the people who cleaned out the store the day Patient Zero kicked the cuttlebone. By the time you realize you'd better get ready, it might be too late.

So stock up on tuna and powdered milk; that's the advice of Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt. This suggestion will mutate into a form transmissible from official to comedian, and in the days to come we'll hear hardy-har remarks about buying "Duck tape" and other forms of inefficacious protection.

The foodies will remark that a life sustained by Chicken of the Sea and reconstituted cow lactations is not worth living. Democrats will insist that Iraq was a distraction from the real search for WMDs in the guts of wild fowl, and conservatives will want to build a wall extending to the troposphere.

Actually, this last reaction was anticipated by the Bush administration: "There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns. To the relief of many, he did not propose a "Guest Infector" program under which alien birds can migrate for a specified period, as long as they register with the local zoo.

Then again, we might not need a cage. Or a secret tuna cache. All the disaster scenarios are predicated on something that has not happened. (See also Katrina, levees, breaching of.)

ABC News noted, "The bird flu virus, to date, is still not easily transmitted to humans. There have been lots of dead birds on three continents, but so far fewer than 100 reported human deaths. But should that change, the spread could be rapid."

Well, yes. And if oxygen suddenly became toxic to human beings, the mortality rate would be horrifying.

But the virus is mutating; it can attack cats now. Surely theater majors are next. The fatal mutation of some sort of flu is like the acquisition of nukes by Iran: a matter of when, not if.

And then what? Don't count on the Israelis to knock down the infected flocks. They're good, but not that good. No, there's nothing wrong with setting aside some canned goods and cling peaches and a bushel of cereal. (Note to men: This may be the crisis that forces science to invent powdered beer.)

Of course, some will insist this is just more fearmongering from an administration that requires a population to vibrate 24-7 in a state of tremulous dread, so they can cover up the REAL issues, such as whether a White House official had an evil twin who was a discount-store kleptomaniac.

Perhaps. But when the government implies it won't be driving the Free Tuna Van down your street, you might want to take heed.