ABSTRACT
It is by now well established that contemporary security strategy is heavily structured around the unknown, the uncertain and the unexpected. Donald Rumsfeld’s famous comment about there being known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns was the source of more than a little mirth at the time, but it was based on a much wider concern within the national security state that new thinking was required to imagine possible future attacks and the kinds of forces and capabilities that would be required to deal with these. What has therefore taken place is a massive restructuring of the security state based on a new paradigm of national preparedness and centred on emergency planning. Hence, a large number of commentators in terrorism studies, but also in related fields such as cultural studies, have talked about the rise to prominence of the “worst-case scenario”, the “security-disaster state”, the “politics of catastrophe” and the “culture of calamity”.
