ABSTRACT
What actually happens among the public during a terrorist attack? This chapter opens with a close ethnographic reading of the failed Glasgow Airport attack in 2007. It is possible, we show, to reconstruct such an attack, or any number of other such incidents. If we do so, we learn about the body’s responses during intensely stressful moments, about cultural responses, and about the resilience of some individuals. This chapter also includes first-hand accounts of the failed terrorist attack on the Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris in 2015, accounts that speak to the fragility of memory and the conditioning that comes from exposure to violence. We conclude by imagining “resilience” as part of security-by-design in critical infrastructure sites. But our emphasis on the public also asks questions about “training” the public in the form of “lockdown” drills. This in turn raises a broad question about the nature of political power today.
