We encounter dangerous things and seek to get rid of them, often for good reason. But what about when doing so makes the world more dangerous?

Consider, for example:

• Parents who refuse to vaccinate create disease epidemics that harm children, including their own;
• School programs that teach children to “just say no” to alcohol and drugs backfire by undermining the distinction between use and abuse;
• Universities that encourage “trigger warnings” to protect supposedly fragile students may make them more fragile and vulnerable to anxiety and depression;
• Nations fearing the dangers of nuclear power turn to energy sources that result in premature deaths from air pollution;
• Efforts to prevent nations like North Korea and Iran from getting nuclear weapons have given those nations greater motivation to acquire one.

While these behaviors are very different from one another, they stem from a view of danger as something to be eliminated rather than utilized. This is a problem because what makes things dangerous can also give them their power to save lives.

Why do we struggle to see the positive potential in frightfully dangerous things? And what can be done to inculcate a more mature view? To answer these questions we must first take a closer look at what we mean by danger.

I.

The current meaning of danger — “exposure or liability to injury, pain, harm, or loss” — replaced an older meaning of danger, which was of a jurisdiction or property, e.g., “You stand within his danger, do you not?” a range, e.g., “out of the shot and danger of desire,” and harm, e.g., “a sting in him that at his will he may do danger with.” (All quotes are from Shakespeare.)

In Shakespeare’s day, danger referred to both a place controlled by a powerful person, a lord, as well as to generic sense of harm. The word danger comes from the Latin dominium, or ownership. To be “in danger” was to be in a place of power — on the land of the lord. Whether power was negative (if, say, you were trespassing) or positive (you were the lord’s guest) depended on your perspective, status, and what you were doing.

The power to harm and to protect were thus often one and the same, or at least closely related. The 19th Century German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, observed that, “Where there is danger, so too grows salvation.” The German word for salvation, Das Rettende, can also be translated as “the saving power,” or “the rescuing.”

And isn’t that what vaccines were — humankind’s salvation? Before we had them disease epidemics would periodically wipe out large swaths of the population. The Black Death (1347–51) wiped out 60 percent of Europe. As a weakened form of a deadly virus, vaccines train the body how to fight more dangerous versions of itself. They are thus a powerful metaphor for the approach I am advocating toward danger in general.

As a society we have largely forgotten how terrible measles, mumps, smallpox, and polio epidemics were and still are, thanks to the efficacy of vaccines. As a result, many parents refuse to vaccinate their children, believing popular myths about their danger. This has resulted in deadly outbreaks, such as the 2015 measles outbreak from exposures at Disneyland.

‘It works! It works! It works!’: Jonas Salk and the Vaccine that Conquered Polio

Sydney. London. Toronto.

QuillettePaul A. Offit

The upside of disease outbreaks is that they remind us of the importance of vaccines. In response to recent outbreaks, vaccination rates soared, and the California legislature required all students attending public schools to be vaccinated.

Some parents embrace the exposure of their children to sickness. Indeed, the same “helicopter parent” who hovers over her son playing on the monkey bars might the next minute wave away concerns that he is kissing another boy with a runny nose by saying, “It’s okay — it will strengthen his immune system.”

Now, having successfully wiped out smallpox virus from societies, governments are debating whether to eliminate the disease for good. Smallpox killed an astonishing 500 million people in the 20th Century — three times more than died in every war in that century combined. Understandably, then, experts want the U.S. and Russia to destroy the last remaining smallpox stocks.

Why, then, have we still not destroyed the last remaining vials of smallpox? Because, for 25 years, a small but increasingly influential group of scientists has argued that we might one day find a beneficial use to the virus. Their case has been helped by the fact that a modified form of polio is currently being used to treat cancer, and dozens of other viruses are candidates for immunotherapy.

II.

Unfortunately, many parents today do not extrapolate their healthy view of their children’s immune systems to other aspects of their lives. Just a few decades ago, parents and teachers used to let children roam freely, without supervision; experience the pain of losing in sports without the salve of a “participation trophy”; and discuss emotionally charged material without trigger warnings. What changed?

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education partly attribute over-protection and coddling to rising crime in the 30 years after 1960. But many of the students demanding that colleges be “safe spaces,” and trigger warnings be issued, were raised after violent crime peaked in 1990, and started its steady decline. True, parents who kept their children home rather than allowing them to roam freely may have believed crime was rampant. But, if that is indeed the case, why are parents so confused? Perhaps fault lies with the media. Both Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud made the case that rising civilization and pacification of societies would result in ever-more violent and frightening fantasies. Any look at the evolution of Hollywood films and television programming over the last century confirms this.

How should we deal with widespread overprotection of children from moderate levels of danger? Lukianoff and Haidt argue that universities should discourage trigger warnings, encourage exposure therapy, and teach cognitive behavioral therapy. Exposure therapy is a way for highly fearful people, including those who have suffered trauma, to overcome their fears through gradual, low-level exposure to the fearful thing in question — sort of like a vaccine. Exposure therapy helps people overcome fears of everything from heights, spiders, public places, and emotionally charged discussions. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) teaches people to talk back to our inner voices that lead us to “catastrophize” — exaggerate potential dangers.

Challenging young people incrementally, and exposing them to dangers, can make them stronger and more resilient, or as Nassim Taleb says: anti-fragile. Sports — without the participation trophies — offers modest hardship, both physical and emotional (when losing). Nations like Spain, Italy, and France, where drinking wine with meals is standard, were ranked as the least risky by the World Health Organization. And “resilience [drug and alcohol] education” trains young adults to make their own decisions than do inanely authoritarian “just say no” type efforts.

Does this mean we should subject kids to cruelty, or encourage alcohol and drug use? Of course not. Allowing very young children, as opposed to older teens, to sip alcohol may, in fact, create drinking problems later. And while experiencing some amount of hardship as a teenager and young adult makes us resilient, too much hardship too early can be severely damaging. Recall that vaccines are a weakened form of the virus.

III.

Even the most dangerous things hold enormous potential to save lives. Nuclear energy is a dramatic example. It is one of the most dangerous things in the world, if not the most dangerous. But the same mechanism (splitting uranium atoms) can be used to either destroy cities or power them with cheap, clean energy.

Just as vaccines are a controlled and weaker form of the virus, a nuclear plant is a controlled and weaker form of a nuclear chain reaction. In a bomb, it’s the uncontrolled splitting of uranium atoms that results in a massive explosion. In a nuclear plant, it’s the controlled splitting of uranium atoms that results in functionally unlimited quantities of heat that can be used to create electricity, clean water, and hydrogen (for transportation) without air or water pollution.

Intriguingly, the same thing that makes nuclear weapons so dangerous is what makes nuclear power so safe: energy density. Only tiny quantities of uranium fuel are required in a bomb or a power plant. As such, even when something goes dreadfully wrong, such as at Chernobyl and Fukushima, only very small amounts of pollution escape into the environment. Nobody has died from exposure to the radiation from the Fukushima accident, and scientists estimate fewer than 200 people in total will die prematurely (over a period of decades) from the radiant pollution that escaped from the Chernobyl reactors.

By contrast, the burning of gigantic quantities of wood and coal end up caking cities like Delhi and Beijing in particulate matter, and shorten the lives of seven million people every year. As a result, scientists estimate that nuclear power has already prevented the premature deaths of 1.8 million people by avoiding the combustion of biomass and fossil fuels.

What about nuclear weapons? Progressives tend to fear them in general while conservatives fear them in the hands of our enemies. In 2002, President George W. Bush declared Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” and proceeded to invade Iraq with the express purpose of preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The result was 450,000 dead — four times more than were killed in Hiroshima — and worsening terrorist violence across the Middle East. North Korea responded by, quite understandably, obtaining the bomb. Now, Iran may do the same. The saving power in nuclear weapons is in preventing similarly horrendous invasions in the future.