The theory of world risk society maintains, however, that modern societies are shaped by new kinds of risks, that their foundations are shaken by the global anticipation of global catastrophes. Such perceptions of global risk are characterized by three features:
1. De-localization : its causes and consequences are not limited to one geographical location or space, they are in principle omnipresent.
2. Incalculableness : its consequences are in principle incalculable; at bottom it is a matter of ‘hypothetical’ risks, which, not least, are based on scienceinduced not-knowing and normative dissent.
3. Non-compensatibility : the security dream of first modernity was based on the scientific utopia of making the unsafe consequences and dangers of decisions ever more controllable; accidents could occur, as long as and because they were considered compensatible. If the climate has changed irreversibly, if progress in human genetics makes irreversible interventions in human existence possible, if terrorist groups already have weapons of mass destruction available to them, then it is too late. Given this new quality of ‘threats to humanity’ - argues Francois Ewald - the logic of compensation breaks down and is replaced by the principle of precaution through prevention . Not only is prevention taking precedence over compensation, we are also trying to anticipate and prevent risks whose existence has not been proven.