Ontological security and technological hazards and disasters

Ontological security is the complex interaction of expectation (toward the present/future) and confirmation (past and present experience) that affirms a priori expectation (i.e., trust or technical knowledge). "To be ontologically secure is to possess, on the level of the unconscious and practical consciousness, 'answers' to fundamental existential questions which all human life in some ways addresses" (Giddens 1992:47). It hinges primarily on the perception and apprehension of trust in one's own competence as well as the more or less predictable behavior of other social actors and the object-world.