Governing through time: preparing for future threats to health and security Limor Samimian-Darash Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford CA, United States Abstract During preparations for the Second Gulf War, Israel considered universal smallpox vaccination. In doing so, it faced a problem: how to legitimise carrying out a security action against an uncertain future danger (smallpox pandemic), when this action carried specific, known risks (vaccine complications). To solve this problem, the Israeli preparedness system created a new domain through which the security action could reach its goal with minimum risk: first responders (a group of medical personnel and security forces). First-responder vaccination represents a shift in the form of ‘securing health’ and in the governmental technology applied to this goal, in which past, present, and future occurrences are governed to enable the execution of a security action. Through this practice, risks are not located in the present or in the future but in a ‘shared’ temporal space and thus can be seen as existing simultaneously. Preparedness for emerging future biological events, then, involves more than questioning how the future is contingent on the present and how the present is contingent on the future’s perception; it also recognises the need for a new time positioning that allows operating on both present and future risks simultaneously. Governing these risks, then, means governing through time. Keywords: risk, time, security, preparedness, vaccination Introduction During the winter of 2002–2003, the Israeli government authorised vaccination of medical teams and security personnel against the virus that causes smallpox. The vaccination programme grew out of reports that Iraq might attack Israel, possibly using biological agents, during the build-up to the Second Gulf War, as well as from assessments that the virus might be deployed as part of a biological terrorist attack on Israel (Shai 2002, Orr et al. 2004). The programme was part of a larger project whose objectives were to prepare a team of first responders to deal with casualties following a major biological attack, to prepare a sufficient quantity of smallpox vaccine for the entire population and to create a large stock of vaccinia immune globulin (VIG), which can be used to treat side effects in those receiving the vaccine for the first time. The project proved controversial and raised public concern not only about the danger of a future smallpox outbreak, but also about the vaccine, which can cause serious side effects or even death. In this article, I analyse this event and the debate among government officials and the Israeli public regarding the need for the vaccination project. I argue that the problem of Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 33 No. 6 2011 ISSN 0141–9889, pp. 930–945 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01340.x Ó 2011 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness Ó 2011 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA