Causes panic when nearly everybody has weapons (6)
I believe the answer is:
alarms
'causes panic' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with communicating as well as being verbs in their -s form.
Maybe they are linked in a way I don't understand?
'nearly everybody has weapons' is the wordplay.
'nearly' means to remove the last letter.
'everybody' becomes 'all' (I've seen this before).
'has' says to put letters next to each other.
'weapons' becomes 'arms' ('arm' can be a synonym of 'weapon').
'all' with its last letter taken away is 'al'.
'al'+'arms'='ALARMS'
'when' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for alarms that I've seen before include "Flaps" , "Warning signals" , "Scares or startles" , "Danger signals" , "Frightens and startles" .)