Commodified Security to Collective Threat

An economically based theory called “inverted quarantine” regards the response of individualized protection to collective threat.  While traditionally quarantine means an isolation of the sick from the “well” society, inverted quarantine points out the world we live in now, where the world is contaminated i.e. polluted water and air, and the ability of some to evade these “dangers” through consumerism.  Essentially, inverted quarantine is pointing out these “commodified response to risk” and the fact that there is a limited amount of our population which has the mobility to respond in this way. 

            In the context of our class, a book titled “Shopping our Way to Safety” written by Andrew Szaz, addresses nuclear warfare directly in the chapter “Fallout Panic of 1961.”  At the time of the 1960’s in America, before any atomic bombing had occurred, it was unclear what might happen if said bomb would be dropped, and most speculative ideas at the time pointed to national destruction.  In response, the widespread building of personal family bomb shelters allowed some individuals the security to survive this pseudo-apocalypse. 

Szaz most deeply identifies the implications that this class division has on the war in general.  For example, when the “survivor shelter dwellers” came out from the chaos, they enter a world in which only the most privileged have survived the complete dismantling of our society.  What would this mean for a post-atomic world?  Additionally, Szaz points out how this “false security” implies that atomic warfare is acceptable.  The quick conformism through commodification might say something about the state we are in a pre-atomic world. The building of bomb shelters brings out both a greater social divide in times of crisis and simultaneously implies that atomic warfare is acceptable and avoidable, for some.