The plane flight from Atlanta to San Francisco yesterday was very bumpy. I’ve never been a nervous flier and I’ve flown so much that coach is like a second office. But, as the plane seemed to jounce down a dirt road yesterday afternoon, I sat there wondering if I could scare myself into some kind of irrational state, if I could truly grok the dark side of my situation.

When you think about it, flying in airplanes is scary. Here I was, 35,000 feet in the air in a 100-ton metal bus suspended only by invisible whorls of vacuum above each wing. And I’d stay there only if the plane kept moving forward at an adequate speed, only if the pilot kept doing his job competently, and only if the Delta maintenance personnel were thorough. Come to think of it, I was also relying on the FAA and the TSA to ensure I made it to San Fran safely. If that doesn’t initiate a panic response, I don’t know what will.

On top of all that, the plane was bouncing back and forth badly enough that I could scarcely type. The seatbelt light dinged on, the flight attendants strapped in, and the other passengers began to mutter nervously and clutch their drinks so tightly that condensation trickled slowly down the backs of their hands. The turbulence grew steadily worse and the bumps got harder. It felt like we were hitting rocks. I began to wonder if something really was wrong with the plane.

I thought about how long it would take to hit the ground once the plane lost power. Would we start to nosedive as we slowed or would we spin out of control? I thought about whether it would hurt once we hit the ground or whether the long fall and the certainty of my own death would be worse than any physical pain I might feel. I thought of my family and how they’d get along without me. I thought about how my wife would find out - would it be a midnight phone call or a CNN news report.

Nothing.

It’s gruesome, I know. But, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t really get worked up. Despite all the evidence available to me, I just didn’t perceive any personal and imminent threat. After all, I have been flying for a very long time and I’ve seen turbulence before and it’s never been a big deal. Statistically, flying is still safer than driving (and much safer than riding in a San Francisco cab).

Information security’s like that for users, I think. It’s not personal or imminent - just sort of a distant threat that's baked into our daily lives and always seems to happen to someone else. It’s hard to get too emotional about it. No real personal contemplation of what "the worst" really means. Information security involves forces many users don’t really understand and actions that are handled by someone else in their organization.

Of course, users can take more responsibility for their own information security than I can take for the safety of my cross-continental plane flight. But they tend not to. Do you think they would if the personal consequences were as dire?