The question was "Do you think it's a great danger to you, personally?"
I imagine, if the folks in London and Glasgow can do any kind of risk assessment, they know their prime dangers are health related. The adjective was "GREAT" danger, and to "you" personally, not to others you might know. While all of us are in some tiny danger from terrorism, my post was aimed at your risk assessment, for you, personally.
I "knew" someone in 9/11, but with the number of people one knows, it was almost impossible not to have known someone, or at the very least know people who knew people. But that really doesn't make it a great danger to me personally. I don't consider it a danger to me personally when someone I know is killed in a train crash or a car crash. That doesn't mean one doesn't care, but one knows these things statistically happen, and one's likelihood of being involved, and the involvement of people one knows in certain kinds of death, have no connection.
The British people went through the Blitz, JLA, unless they've turned in to babies, which they did not seem to have done when last I checked, they will be unfazed. That, imo, is the way to meet terrorism. It's not ignoring it, and it's not giving in to it, but you fight it, and you don't let it change your way of life, and you especially don't imagine you are in great danger when statistically you are not.
I bet you know many many people who have died of heart attacks and strokes and car accidents since 9/11, but do you rank those fears above terrorism? My point is only about risk assessment and how it affects people's actions, illogically. If people's fear did not affect their planning, I wouldn't care, and I wouldn't mention it, but fear does affect our planning, and our actions. |
