Governing layers of shifting sands: Subterranean hazards, unfolding catastrophes and quotidian fragmentation

Abstract In this paper, we use a spatiotemporal axis of analysis to unpack the governance and management of two pressing yet diverse types of subterranean hazards: earthquakes and nuclear waste repositories. In each case, decades, centuries, or millennia of slow movement run up against the fast movement of disastrous moments. These contrasting spatiotemporal relationships are emblematic of the different temporal and spatial horizons researchers, scientists, and hazard managers must grapple with as they assess past, present, and future catastrophes. We explore how thinking across multiple, overlapping spatiotemporal horizons unfolds in different governance contexts to influence quotidian decision‐making processes. Our examination of each hazard reveals two very different perspectives on the subterranean, the risks contained within, and the fears they produce. For residents in high seismicity areas, awareness and anticipation of earthquake risk are both constant and ubiquitous. Technologies are deployed to bring the subsurface to life and animate the underground, thereby conjuring emotional responses to future risks. Meanwhile, the case of nuclear waste management highlights how technologies are used to keep the underground inanimate, effectively burying risk beyond human consciousness. These different realities are produced and experienced, in part, through a process of quotidian fragmentation where people live simultaneously in material (present), remembered (past) and imagined (future) worlds. We hope that highlighting these dynamics can help hazard management professionals better understand how different governance techniques fragment the public's experience with potential hazards and shape their understanding of societal risks.