This book is dedicated to the innocent employees of Discovery Channel's Headquarters Building, whose fate might have been different but for an effective Alarm/Access Control System.

On September 1, 2010, a 43-year-old gunman identified as James Jay Lee took the Lobby Security Guard and two other employees into the office area. He rolled into the first floor of the building where there was an employees' nursery with dozens of employees' babies. Going into the employee space, he held 3 of the over 1,000 employees in the building as hostages at gunpoint for many hours. The gunman held his hostages in protest of Discovery Channel's environmental programming. Lee burst into the suburban Washington Headquarters building at about 1:00 p.m. waving two handguns and displaying canisters, which appeared to be explosives, strapped to his body.

Police had the suspect within view and Swat Teams shot the suspect when he raised his gun at a hostage at which time the explosive device on his body went off. Before that, Lee had terrified many employees by firing his weapon around the building. Bomb Squad technicians searched the building for additional explosives.

Lee was a man with a long and very quirky history of protests against the Discovery network. In an anti-corporate protest in 2008, where Lee had paid many homeless people to carry signs outside the building, Lee was reportedly arrested while throwing cash outside Discovery's offices saying money was “just trash” and was the root of evil against the planet. He said that he had been moved to save the planet by an eco-documentary by a former U.S. Vice President.

Lee's Web site, SaveThePlanet.com, was reportedly a hodgepodge of anti-immigration, anti-war, and anti-population rants where he expressed views against increasing human population. He was opposed to the Discovery Channel because he felt they were serving the interests of corporations and not the planet.

This book includes descriptions of Alarm/Access Control System designs that can reduce such incidents from occurring.