Why Americans Exaggerate the Terrorist Threat

This article is centered around the idea that people fear the unknown.  People are afraid of alot of things they don’t understand or know about.  Every student fears Freshman year of college beause they dont know what to expect. I think this same logic comes into play as far as people’s fear of a terrorist attack.  It is because of the fact that they are so random, you never know when it might happen.  This scares us.  When it comes down to it, it is simple psychology; we do not fear things we think we can control such as looking both ways before crossing the street to avoid a car.  It almost gives us a false sense of security.  And of course the media does not help the issue.  It gives us the false impression that everybody is at equal risk when in fact we are not.  As the article points out, in some cases, there is “nobody to blame”.  We cannot accept the role of chance and the fact that some things just happen and are beyond our control.  As stated, the only thing we can do to get rid of the fear is make the unknown, known.  We do this by educating ourselves about the actual probability of certain events happening and the trend of those events.