The day after. The day after September 11, 2001, the question that will forever be elicited in everyone’s mind is, ‘what now?’ With air traffic ground to a halt, stock markets closed and tens of thousands from Vancouver to Vladivostok trying to piece back together their lives, perhaps The Economist said it best on its cover nine years ago: ‘The day the world changed’. The day after — September 12, 2010 — has perhaps trumped whatever was worrying those in the wake of that infamous day, now almost a decade ago. The present day is formulated out of several theses: A Samuel P. Huntington paper, stating that Armageddon will be launched in waves like the Battle of Karbala and occurring at places such as the fortress of the Old City in Jerusalem. Thomas L. Friedman elicited a mass media opinion of ‘hot, flat, and crowded’, where globalization takes centre stage. Philip Merilees stated, “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Ahmed Rashid, the pre-eminent expert on Pakistan and Afghanistan, has authored three generation-defining titles, aptly named, Jihad, Taliban, and simply, Descent into Chaos. Q.E.D. It is not just the change in degree of severity in the minds of those authoring political commentary, it is truly that the world has unlocked the key to Pandora’s Box. On that fateful day, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 19 hijackers literally took out an axe and with one fell swoop, cut down the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Genesis 2 is pretty straightforward on this one: “For on the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” What now? While continuing with the biblical theme, there is no day of rest anymore. There is never a ‘slow news day’. Just one glance at the headlines leading up to and following the 9/11 anniversary had the pope, the leader of the Free World, a defense secretary with nuclear launch codes at the ready, a crazed religious leader, an Islamophobe politician and scores of angry Muslims the world over, all weighing in. Weighing in on an event that was an indirect cause of the 9/11 remembrance. Not on 9/11 – the event, 9/11 as a secondary or tertiary mention. Yes. What has this world come to? Traversing the subway system on the author’s route to work in Shanghai, the thought of a terrorist attack the likes of Aum Shinrikyo’s plot in 1995 began to surface. As millions utilize mass transportation every day in a city of nearly 20 million, the potential for disaster is possible. One need only to look at the 2005 Tube bombings in London. For those keeping score, the two events killed a total of 68 people. The incidents were considered failures, a catastrophic death toll in some of the busiest underground routes in the world potential topping 20,000. Readers including train attacks in Mumbai and Madrid in the subset of their terrorism list, must realize that both could have been much worse. As mentioned earlier, these are events that actually reach the headlines. Often times, occurrences in China, India, Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Kashmir will go with scant mention on a ‘slow news day’. The underlying theme is that bad things are happening to good people. The politics of fear has certainly entered the vernacular of those living and breathing in the 21st century. In Dan Gardner’s 2008 book, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, the author has ingeniously described what happens to the human brain when those two facets of fear enter our consciousness. It is not just that fear and the resulting actions are occurring, it is how fear is being packaged, sold and gift wrapped in a colour-coded Threat Level System. It is how we are reacting to stories in the press on 9/12. It is why our blood pressure rises when we enter a crowded place or heaven forbid, an airport. Ultimately, it is the Cassandras of the world that are screaming venom into our ears, and we are listening. These very important and influential politicians and/or jihadists are making a lot of money and exhibiting an incredible and landmark guerrilla following in the way that they brandish their credentials and AK-47s. As faithful devotees to the art of fear mongering, we, as a human race, can’t get enough of it. And so what now? September 12 is upon us and the next day will soon be too. Tomorrow we will wake up and our own Twin Towers will be attacked. We will be paralyzed by a single iota of unfortunate news. It has now been forever engrained in our psyche. God help us all.