6 secret code systems that help prevent mass panic

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If you need to keep people safe in a time of crisis or emergency, the best thing to do might be to keep them in the dark about what's going on.

When police, hospital staff, and other institutions or organizations have to communicate with each other without sending the public into a panic, they use secret codes to tell each other what's happening.

Here are a few of them.

Hospitals use colors to signal various kinds of emergencies.

In 2008, the Washington State Hospital Association and the Oregon Association of Hospitals & Health Systems standardized color codes for emergencies in all of their hospitals. "Red" means there's a fire, and "black" indicates a bomb threat. "Code Silver" refers to weapons or hostage situations, and "Code Gray" means there are combative or violent persons on the premises.

For medical emergencies involving people in need of resuscitation, emergency staff call "Code Blue."

Some malls and convention centers use the word 'Nora' when calling for help.

If you're dealing with a violent or otherwise belligerent person and don't want to further aggravate them by calling law enforcement, one way to deal with that is to ask for Nora.

The name is actually an acronym that stands for "Need Officer Right Away." While it's not always the standard, places like the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu and the Montgomery Mall in Alabama use the code to discreetly call law enforcement.

Ship crew members use a variety of phrases to indicate men have gone overboard.

Members of a ship crew have a vocabulary of emergency phrases to signal scenarios like a person overboard or parts in need of emergency repair.

The phrase "Mr. Mob" refers to a man overboard. "Code blue," which was brought over from hospital codes, is used to refer to a medical emergency. "Bravo bravo bravo" can indicate that there's a fire on the boat, without causing panic among passengers.

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