James Seng points out Bruce Schneier’s essay, “How Long Can the Country Stay Scared?”, in which Bruce remarks,

“There are two basic ways to terrorize people. The first is to do something spectacularly horrible, like flying airplanes into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. The second is to keep people living in fear.”

In a previous post I noted that the ancient Anasazi tried to deal with a terrible enemy by retreating to fortified residences on increasingly hard to reach cliffs.

Who was this enemy that attacked the Anasazi, killing them and eating them? Apparently there was no large external invading force; it would have left traces
that would have been found by now. The best theory as to who the attackers were appears to be: the Anasazi themselves. The Anasazi society apparently fragmented and warred with itself, producing a state of fear that continued for decades if not centuries.

That society with a chronic state of fear and fortification failed. It eventually abandoned the cliff dwellings.

The survivors mutated into a society of mesa-dwellers who protected themselves via superior observation and cooperation. They apparently kept watchers on the mesa tops who could real perils approaching and alert people on the same and neighboring mesas in time to do something specific, rather than keeping everyone in fear all the time.

Hm, sounds like a holistic and synoptic view of the surrounding territory.

-jsq