Ah yes, daily active shooter situation...

In the same sentence as performance and a restaurant, not less.

That absurd association was the only way he could make a phone going off at a restaurant seem like an offensively irresponsible event.

If you consider the situations that would lead to the husband needing the wife so badly so as to need to override the wife's choice to not have the ringer already on, the subset of such situations which are life-threatening for the husband are probably situations in which the wife either can't assist in time or isn't the only person who can assist, so overriding the silence isn't required for life.

In contrast (and yes, my intention was contrast), if the wife was hiding from a shooter then her ability to maintain silence is required for life. Airplane mode isn't great, because she should be texting/tweeting/etc.

Thus, best to not let your silence be overridden.

For non-life-safety reasons that the husband might be trying to reach the wife, that could be solved via agreement ("keep your ringer on except in emergencies") instead of brute force.

I guess the key is "know your wife".

For instance, my wife has her phone ALWAYS set to silent. I like all the suggestions here.

I think the "active shooter" situation is a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

You must not have kids. They drastically increase the frequency with which one must contact a partner at random unexpected times. People mess up ringer settings all the time.

"the kid is vomiting and school needs us to come get them asap, which one of us is more available?" is not a life-threatening emergency, but it's a family emergency and needs attention. It also happens a lot. An awful lot more than your "unlikely to happen to most people in their lifetime" contrived scenario.

Oh yes. My wife is the worst offender. The amount of times I have had to cancel important things to get a taxi to our kindergarten because she had our car (and thus the agreed upon responsibility to pick up the phone) can't be counted on 2 hands, and he has only been 2 years in kindergarten.

True, it's a risk worth taking in that scenario.

I recently had a training course on it. Makes you think differently. Point is, being in control of your silence is extremely important.

This is a thing? It seems to be solving the wrong problem. I think my sheltered world is quite nice.

The right problem isn't solvable so immediately as what is achieved with tactical self defense.