The main goal of this work is three-fold. First, to establish whether models of schooling fish can generate realistic flash waves that propagate across the school in response to an attack. Second, to explore the possibility that school members are using this source of information themselves, and test how that can, in principle, affect the attack-response behavior. Third, to demonstrate that flash patterns indeed contain accessible information relating to the dynamics of the school, the behavior of individuals within it (in particular, their response to threats) and to the nature of the attack.