Quote Originally Posted by Hoosier View Post
This. People are really really bad at judging what's a threat. Things that are very common (car accidents & heart attacks) are so common they're seen as ordinary and thus not as much of a threat as something that's widely seen on the news, like a school shooting or terrorist incident. You are more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. Statistically. You're two orders of magnitude more likely to be killed or injured in a car accident. Buckle up every time you drive. Like people who are afraid of flying, you should be afraid of your drive the the airport and back. It's much more dangerous.

Second point Ogen correctly makes is the terrorists aren't really capable of doing that much damage to us. Our over-reaction to the events of 9/11 caused far, far more damage than four hijacked airliners. Their goal is to use our fear and stupidity as a "force multiplier" -- to get us to give us our liberties ("PATRIOT Act"), to give up on our rights ("Freedom of/from religion", "Taking pictures from public property", etc)

H.
Have you read Risk by Dan Gardner? I just started it and in the first chapter it talks about how for a year after 9/11 people drove a lot more because they were afraid to fly, and as a result there were 1500 extra (above the norm) deaths from car accidents in that year.