It is very similar to the emotions stirred up by a plane crash vs. the ongoing car accidents. I believe in both cases it comes down to not feeling in control.

It is very similar to the emotions stirred up by a plane crash vs. the ongoing car accidents. I believe in both cases it comes down to not feeling in control. As a population, we over-estimate our ability to safely drive cars. Yet because we are in control, we FEEL safer than being in a plane where, should anything go wrong, we'd be totally powerless as we descend to our doom. Most of us have a general grasp on how a fire is put out, or how a dam is repaired, or how an oil well is fixed. But this invisible thing called radiation, which is used in the most powerful bombs ever made and which appears to be near incontrollable because it deals with the very structure of matter, this radiation ends up associated with a very powerful fear.