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well, some say, whatdo we expect except our comeuppance? Better to go by a lightning strike than a downed power line, as one piece of research put it. 12 Maybe these unnatural risks feel worse because this is what happens when humans get above themselves, or maybe they feel worse because someone else imposed them on us. In contrast, we might call the death of a very small child more like supreme bad luck, an act of God or nature, primitive or given, especially when illness is the cause.
    ‘Natural’ risks are often more tolerated. But it’s an awkward attitude, and this chapter tests it to the limit. For what greater fear is there than that of seeing your child die? The narrative is so disturbing that even TV uses it sparingly, while portraying adult death on an industrial scale.
    Disease is natural and slaughters people in the millions. Should we tolerate it because it’s always been around? And yet ‘unnatural’ remains a potent criticism, even though humans brought a dramatic decline to the natural rate of infant mortality, sometimes with nothing more unnatural than germ theory and soap. Few people think we should not have messed with it.
    Although the anti-nature argument can be taken too far: does it mean technology is always good? Obviously not, even for children’s health. Neither side wins every time. The natural/unnatural risk argument rumbles on around home birth (and vaccination – see Chapter 6 ).
    Is this odd preference for natural risks irrational, when natural risks can be the most devastating of all? Strangely, maybe not. ‘Unnatural’ can be a way of saying that you don’t like a risk for other reasons. Maybe what you mean is that an unnatural risk is when people or big business get up to no good. Maybe you think someone is making too much money or seeking too much power. ‘Natural’ and ‘unnatural’ might be bound up with tricky ethical or moral feelings about the way a whole society behaves, nothing to do with hard and fast distinctions in nature itself. This doesn’t make these feelings irrational, but it does make them complicated. Risk is often like that: ostensibly about danger, but really packing a whole lot of attitude about a whole lot more.
    From thinking of one child, our own, and trying to imagine the loss, to thinking about the same loss multiplied more than 5 million times every year, then of another 3 million who now survive thanks toeconomic development, technological progress and the medical control of disease, seems to leave little room for sentiment about risk and nature. But the sentiment persists. What does that say about us?
    That risk, even a risk like this, is a small part of a sprawling human calculation about what’s right and how to make progress, a calculation that’s sometimes political, sometimes moral and sometimes, possibly, simple vanity.

3
VIOLENCE
    H ARRY THE HAWK’S gimlet eyes policed the city’s criss-cross streets on behalf of pest control division – ‘Rat-Swat’ – of the municipal department of environmental health. High above, he twitched his feathered wings and rode the air, watching.
    People, about their business. Vehicles, moving and stopping. Trees in the breeze. Children in danger.
    There by the park, for instance, walked nerdy Phil, now in long trousers, not far from the older lads hanging out in the park. Phil stopped to stare at a puddle. The puddle fizzed. From beneath the broken words ‘Central Electricity Board’ on a half-sunk and vandalised iron cover came pops and flashes.
    ‘Idiots,’ said Phil, a tad too loud as he stepped around the water. ‘They’ve actually electrified the pavement!’ Harry saw the lads walk over. There was shouting, a scuffle, a knife. Phil fell – with a splash.
    Across the street, Harry could see Mikey leaning on the railings. Mikey had been there a good 15 minutes, had made the call on his Blackberry to report the puddle shortly before a stranger’s hand scooped up the small rucksack with his