Terrorism as Hazard: A New Species of Trouble

In several insightful papers written around 1990, sociologist Kai Erikson sought to understand why people held particular dread for accidents involving chemicals and radiation. Erikson characterized such accidents as ‘‘a new species of trouble’’ (Erikson, 1990, 1994). He concluded that whereas ‘‘conventional disasters’’ such as floods or earthquakes proceed in an orderly way from beginning, to middle, to end, chemical and radiation accidents and other toxic emergencies provoke great concern because ‘‘they are not bounded’’ (Erikson, 1994:147). These emergencies contaminate in ways that never seem to end. ‘‘An all clear is never sounded. The book of accounts is never closed’’ (Erikson, 1994:148). The terrorist acts of September 11 represent an even more disturbing form of this new species. Not that terrorism is entirely new, but this form of it certainly is—the use of commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction, followed by the threat of chemical and biological assaults on our air, water, and bodies. We might characterize this as ‘‘mind as hazard’’ and recognize that this new species of trouble strains the capacity of quantitative risk analysis. Our models of the hazard-generating process, terrorists’ minds, are too crude to permit precise predictions of where, when, and how the next attacks might unfold. What is the role of risk analysis when the stakes are high and the uncertainties are enormous? Modern theories of risk perception and cognition inform us that, besides risk analysis, we have another mode of thinking that is essential for rational decisions in the face of danger. This is the experiential mode (Epstein, 1994; Slovic et al., in press), which enabled us to survive during the long period of human evolution and remains the most natural and most common way to respond to threat, even in the modern world. Experiential thinking is intuitive, automatic, and fast. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotions and affect (feelings that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a gut feeling, telling us whether it is safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange-smelling water. Proponents of formal analysis, the newcomer on the risk management scene, tend to view ‘‘risk as feeling’’ as irrational. It is not. Sophisticated studies by neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and others have demonstrated that logical argument and analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless guided by emotion and affect (Damasio, 1994). Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. However, both systems have their biases and limitations. The challenge before us is to figure out how to minimize these limitations when we assess risks. Thus, when our feelings of fear move us to consider purchasing a handgun to protect against terrorists, our analytic selves should also heed the evidence showing that a gun fired in the home is 22 times more likely to harm oneself or a friend or family member than to harm an unknown, hostile intruder (Kellermann et al., 1998). Risk as feeling tends to overweight frightening consequences (Rottenstreich and Hsee, 2001). Risk as analysis can give us perspective on the likelihood of such consequences. Another line of thought: a startling feature of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax exposures and deaths is the degree to which a handful of determined individuals, in a very short time, so greatly disrupted the world’s most powerful nation. I suggest that risk analysis should be supplemented by ‘‘vulnerability analysis,’’ which characterizes the forms of physical, social, political, economic, cultural, and psychological harms to which individuals and modern societies are susceptible. What conditions foster extreme vulnerability (e.g., large, densely populated cities, jumbo jetliners, skyscraper buildings, modern communications * Address correspondence to Paul Slovic; pslovic@oregon. uoregon.edu. Risk Analysis, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2002