Ed Marks: That’s an interesting comment. Maybe there is a third kind of suicide, that’s very interesting one. Apocalyptic suicide those who, in the Abrahamic religions not in the others, there is a concept of the apocalypse which is in the sense God determined and God desired. So if you believe that then bringing around the apocalypse is something you should do. So I’m going to add the third type of suicide and I think you’re right. The only consoling thing about it is – I’m not a scientist but the one I can gather, there is almost no chance of pulling off apocalyptic with chemical or biological [IB] really, you really can’t do that despite with science fiction people write. The only one that could possibly be apocalyptic is nuclear and nuclear is really very, very difficult to get and deploy. It’s not the sort of thing in which 5 guys in the basement can do. It just isn’t, it takes enormous resources to be able to pull it off and get it together so while there’s a possibility of it and it’s something that we should be concerned about and take efforts to watch about. It is not a high order type of concern.
Audience 1: Living in Washington at that time there was 9/11 in the Pentagon and very shortly after there was the Anthrax.
Ed Marks: Right which killed five or six people? That’s a tragedy, that’s not apocalyptic.
Audience 1: No, no…I understand the rational of what you are saying, but what I’m talking about is the emotional affect in the experience of being in Washington [IB] what if someone has brought a vial or something and releases it in the subway. What if there is a nuclear suitcase? Now on 9/10 or 9/12 rather, the question mark was you couldn’t really do an adequate risk assessment I mean in retrospect, we can’t but in the moment of that time there were all these different effects happening. So, a general kind of panic.
Ed Marks: I suppose what I’m saying and it’s easy to say is “Guess what? Life is dangerous and were all going to die. Suck it up!” There is no such thing as life without risk and threat and maybe we’ve gotten – so somehow in this country come to believe that there should be no threat, that there’s no danger. Well, guess what? There is. And we have to learn to live with it because dealing with the problem. It’s not gonna go away. Were not gonna conquer terrorism, were not gonna solve or we will the day we get rid of crime. About the same in the morning, and the afternoon or the day we eliminate crime, we eliminate terrorism. These things are permanent, it’s not a question of solving, it’s a question of managing it better. So the risk of the threat is a slow and as inconvenient as we can make it and that’s the way it’s got to be and we’ve got to learn to accept that. And support government policies and understand that. Easier said than done I admit.