To be worried that these random terrorist attacks are our new way of life?

[Cguk81]

Having just seen the news about another horrific attack at a shopping mall in Munich I can't help but feel that this is becoming a way of life from now on. Will it ever come to an end or is it just going to get worse and worse and something we are all going to have to live with. I find it so terrifying.
And as I'm typing this I can hear Donald Trump's acceptance speech for the presidential nomination on the news which makes the future seem even more terrifying. How can I stop living in fear of the future? I feel like taking my family and heading for the hills.

People are very poor at risk perception

It's human nature to want to protect ourselves. A very primal part of the brain, which means we assess threats based on what we see and hear. It doesn't make it a poor assessment of risk, it makes it irrational as it cannot be easily measured.

As for things like car crashes etc, we do what we can to be as safe as possible. Eg seat belts and driving safely.

So wanting to run for the hills is not dissimilar.

Well they were rare Garden but are becoming less so.

It's just the ordinariness of it, people going about their every day business, but now having to look over their shoulder.

Sadly, I think it'll get many many times worse.

They do my anxiety no good at all. I've just cancelled a trip to London with DD next month. I can't risk it, even though I know I'm being completely and utterly irrational.

Lived through 70s PLO Red Brigade Baader Meinhoff IRA. Same shit different decade.

Whilst I try to be rational and not get over anxious I do worry about my dd who travels via Istanbul for her job. She missed the Attaturk suicide bombers by a couple of hours and flew back out there hours after the coup.
I worked in London during the IRA bombing campaigns and know just how much more my awareness was heightened but life had to go on.

I think that the Nice and Munich attacks show that it may be a second or third city that gets attacked next. Everyone is hyper vigilant in the number one cities like London, Paris and Berlin and they are very protected. However, there are also large concentrations of people in places like Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow etc.

Its pointless avoiding certain places as you have no idea where and when another attack will take place. That's one of the points of this type of terrorism.

I'm from Northern Ireland, lived here all my life.

IRA were/are murderous shitheads, but they were also cowards. They left bombs in places, detonated from elsewhere. Occasions of bodily harm at close range with guns and beatings, but bombs with a few mins of warning were more common.

In my view, the big difference with these current terrorists is their desire to die too. To maim and kill indiscriminately as many people as possible.

For some reason that seems more scary? Not sure if I'm just more worried about 'other' terrorist plots from far away.

The British security services are shit hot (lots of practice with the IRA) and apparently so good at preventing this sort of thing that nothing is getting through and they've practically given up. Plus our island status means availability of

We're probably one of the safest major countries in Europe at the moment.

It's scary and I am minimising mine and my family's trips to central London. But I don't think our situation here is in any way comparable to mainland Europe's.

blink
You are trying to blame us for religious madness.
We don't breed terrorism, it's already there.
Nye is a supposedly mechanical engineer, why doesn't he propose some solutions?

They do my anxiety no good at all. I've just cancelled a trip to London with DD next month.

This sort of thing makes me so sad. As a Londoner, the general view is that London is safer than many other UK cities, with the levels of policing and emergency response teams.

Life is short, fragile and so so precious - live it to the full with the ones you love.

Can I just add all paramilitary organisations in N.I were/ are murderous shitheads- just for balance

I think the world's always been a dangerous place. History shows us that. I think right now we lack strong decent political leaders/movements/will to bring solutions.
But I don't think YABU to worry- it's normal

Blink dont excuse those who choose to carry out terror attacks and blame innocent people. We havent brought this on ourselves at all. Terrorists have their own agenda and radical muslims seek to wipe out all non-believers. Climate change has nowt to do with their mindset.

I know abit, I hate that I'm like it. I just can't bring myself to do it. Wouldn't care if it was just me, but with DD I just can't take the almost non existent, I know risk.

Sky news have reported an exchange with a gun man and it looks like far right attack so far.

I agree Afro.

It is just a WOL now. Sad but true.

It's desperately sad and worrying. We need to remember that the chances of being involved in an attack are minimal, but obviously that doesn't negate the pain and impact of those attacks.

hope I cared about Ireland. As now, my care and worry is not necessarily reported in the media who are reporting the immediate effects.

And same to you fuckyou attacks in Northern Ireland were and are horrific, every attack is horrific. It's really not a competition.

"You are trying to blame us for religious madness."

No, I am trying to understand our place in the world, where terrorism comes from and what we might do to make the future a safer place.

I'm not saying it'a ALL our fault, far from it (climate change is a worldwide phenomenon of course, for example).

But throwing our hands in the air and saying "isn't it terrible" or blaming it all on religion is not only extremely short sighted, crucially it doesn't give us avenues to change things - other than to exterminate all the terrorists and we've been spectacularly bad at that so far.

In fact that's the point really. The more we wage a war on terrorism when that war includes killing innocent civilians, the terrorists we create. How could it be any other way?

Have you seen the disturbing pictures of dead parents and children including babies and toddlers coming out of Allepo? How could growing up somewhere like that fail to radicalise people?

Only if we accept our part in this can we make positive change.

While we still collude in raining death on innocent civilians - and that is what we and our allies are condoning and doing right now - the world will be an unstable and dangerous place.

Blaming terrorism on religion is like blaming Northern Ireland on religion. It played it's part that's undeniable, but it was about so much more than that. And they didn't have bombs raining down on then from abroad - don't you think if the British government had bombed NI or Ireland that would have radicalised angry young men / women? How could it not?

Blink, so what is the answer? Coz no one else seems to know.

Oh for a secular world. As an atheist it just astounds me, it's been said many times before, Christianity, Islam, Catholicism, whatever. Hopefully somewhere down the line our descendants will figure it out

"Climate change has nowt to do with their mindset."

Riiight. Are you a military expert?

Or just because you've thought about if for 0.5 seconds and can't see a direct connection you're dismissing it?

What are the experts saying?

"many academics and national security experts agree that climate change contributes to an uncertain world where terrorism can thrive."

" U.S. military officials refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” that takes issues like terrorism that would pose a threat to national security and exacerbates the damage they can cause."

"A 2014 Department of Defense report identifies climate change as the root of government instability that leads to widespread migration, damages infrastructure and leads to the spread of disease. “These gaps in governance can create an avenue for extremist ideologies and conditions that foster terrorism,” the report says"

And there's more here

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As a child there were always IRA attacks in the news...I was also terrified of my clear attack, a feat my DC don't have.

And don't blame religion for these atrocities. No religion condones murdering innocent people.

If it wasn't for religion these people would find an alternative reason for being a terrorist IMO.
I live just outside a major city and it does worry me but so do a hundred and one other things.
It horrifies me that all the innocent lives are being lost though.

The IRA attacks were bad but they were never this bad. The one massively important difference is that Islamist's are happy to kill themselves to cause terror.

We have to accept that multiculturalism has failed and we need to have people with different beliefs living in different countries. Until Islam reforms we will never be able to integrate peacefully.