Beck,From Industrial Society to Risk Society 101 Risk and Threat:On the Overlapping of Normal and Exceptional Conditions My decisive idea,and the one that leads us further,is that this is precisely what has happened in a series of technological challenges with which we are concerned today -nuclear power,many types of chemical and bio-technological production as well as the continu- ing and threatening ecological destruction.The foundations of the established risk logic are being subverted or suspended.3 Put another way,since the middle of this century the social institutions of industrial society have been confronted with the historically unprecedented possibility of the destruction through decision-making of all life on this planet.This distinguishes our epoch not only from the early phase of the industrial revolution,but also from all other cultures and social forms,no matter how diverse and contradictory these may have been in detail.If a fire breaks out, the fire brigade comes;if a traffic accident occurs,the insurance pays.This interplay between beforehand and afterwards,between the future and security in the here and now,because precautions have been taken'even for the worst imaginable case,has been revoked in the age of nuclear,chemical and genetic technology.In all the brilliance of their perfection,nuclear power plants have suspended the principle of insurance not only in the economic,but also in the medical,psychological,cultural and religious sense.The residual risk society has become an uninsured society,with protec- tion paradoxically diminishing as the danger grows. There is no institution,neither concrete nor probably even con- ceivable,that would be prepared for the 'WIA',the 'worst imagin- able accident',and there is no social order that could guarantee its social and political constitution in this worst possible case.4 There are many,however,which are specialized in the only remaining possibility:denying the dangers.For after-care,which guarantees security even against hazards,is replaced by the dogma of techno- logical infallibility,which will be refuted by the next accident.The queen of error,science,becomes the guardian of this taboo.Only communist'reactors,but not those in West Germany,are empirical creations of the human hand which can toss all their theories onto the scrap-heap.Even the simple question 'What if it does happen after all?'ends up in the void of unpreparedness for after-care. Correspondingly,political stability in risk societies is the stability of not thinking about things. Put more precisely,nuclear,chemical,genetic and ecological Downloaded from lcs.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on June 17,2012Downloaded from tcs.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on June 17, 2012