Last month, our resident image-breaker addressed the vulnerability of the national infrastructure to both lack of maintenance and threats of terrorism. Our experts say that terrorist attacks are not a question of whether, but one of when. What, therefore, should the insurance industry and the American public do to prepare?

Those of us who sit in ivory towers (mine is an upstairs former bedroom that gets hot as blazes on a sunny summer afternoon) thinking up problems and solutions need to address the terrorism issues that are anticipated to create national chaos on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001 -- or maybe worse. Last month we looked at potential targets. This month we will address potential ways to address the threat.

Terrorism is not new. It is one of the oldest means of bringing about change. It includes economic terrorism, such as boycotts of nations with whom we disagree in order to bring about political change. Cuba, for example, has suffered economic terrorism -- what else could you call it? -- because the United States wants rid of Fidel Castro. If the change is seen as being for "our side," we are not critical of it; if it is against "our side," we abhor the process and try to defeat the terrorists. Consider that, to an 18th century British government, those revolutionary rascals in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia were nothing short of a bunch of terrorists. One man's terrorist may turn out to be another man's patriot. That is the thinking of many of our domestic variety terrorists. They will save the world, in the name of race, flag, or God.