Time to turn off the terror-vision

Since the 9/11 attacks, the world has been accustomed to living with the prospect of something even worse waiting round the corner. Thwarted terrorist catastrophes flit constantly through the media with names like thriller titles, from the 'ricin plot' to the 'gas-limo project'.

Terrorologists provide graphic descriptions of a hypothetical 'terrorist nuclear strike' on American cities and imagine ever more maniacal ways in which terrorists will bring about catastrophic destruction, from 'cyber-terrorism' to smallpox epidemics.

Many of these dark futures have become staples of popular culture, from Hollywood disaster movies to TV shows like 24. The recent sci-fi series Heroes described an attempt by a 400-year-old nihilist to unleash a virus with the ability to 'kill everybody'.

Why does the prospect of a terrorist-borne catastrophe inspire such peculiar dread? The phenomenon is not as new as it appears. In the late 19th century, governments and the media depicted violent anarchism as a deadly threat to civilisation and interspersed real anarchist bombings and assassinations with hypothetical plots to blow up reservoirs or poison the water supply.

The fascination with anarchist violence was due partly to the belief that anarchists were uniquely evil, insane and destructive. But it also reflected a new sense of the fragility of industrial civilisation and the destructive potential of modern science. In effect, the anarchist 'mad dog' was the rogue agent in the international system, whose diabolical intentions were matched by an array of devastating potential weaponry.

Such fears have continued to accrue to 'the terrorist' as a consequence of the vast arsenal of destruction that so many modern states have acquired, from nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry to germs with a capacity to target particular genetic groups. But conventional wisdom continues to assume that terrorists and 'rogue states' are more naturally inclined to use such weapons, turning the imagined terrorist into a kind of Godzilla, with an unrivalled capacity to tear whole cities to shreds.

If these powers are terrifying, they are also useful. In the post 9/11 world, catastrophic scenarios generate a sense of unbearable urgency, in which, like Kiefer Sutherland's torturing hero, the world has only 24 hours - or 45 minutes - to stave off disaster. Such urgency tends to generate draconian anti-terror legislation, states of emergency and war, rather than sober analysis.

The 9/11 atrocities - and the still unsolved anthrax attacks that accompanied them - were used with jaw-dropping cynicism to mobilise support for the Iraq war. Today the clock is ticking once again, as hawkish politicians warn of the horrors awaiting the world if a 'terrorist-sponsoring state' like Iran gets the bomb and openly express an unhealthy yearning for 'another calamity' to galvanise support for a new war.

No one can deny the possibility of a future atrocity on the scale of 9/11 or even greater, but such fears need to be put in perspective. It is worth remembering that the 'anarchist terror' was largely eclipsed by the carnage of World War I - a catastrophe from within civilisation, not from the 'mad dogs' outside it.

In today's perfect storm of rampant militarism, resource wars, rising food prices and ecological degradation, there are many potential disasters looming on the horizon apart from the terrorist with the dirty bomb in the suitcase, from the prospect of a major conflict in the Middle East to mass starvation. To prevent these catastrophes will require a similar level of urgency.

Instead of imagining a future of endless murder and mayhem like the junkie painter in Heroes, we might do better to look for ways to bring more hope and less fear into this beleaguered planet. And instead of cowering under the covers from the terrorists in the cupboard, we might take consolation from Gertrude Stein's observation that "everything is so dangerous that nothing is really very frightening". ·