IT is amazing how easily normal, rational humans are reduced to abject panic.

During the few days of the fuel protest last year, shortages of petrol were caused by people panicking and buying up fuel they didn't really need. Today, we report that army surplus shops in the North-East have run out of gas masks with normal, rational parents even trying to fit them to children as young as three. Try getting a three-year-old to wear a bib for any length of time if they have decided against it, and you'll see how difficult it would be to persuade it to smother itself in uncomfortable plastic.

The North-East, though, is not alone with shops in the Midlands and London reporting similar panics, and America and Australia also experiencing a rush on gas masks.

But even the shop-owners who sell the masks admit these panickers are wasting their money. To produce deadly chemicals is very hard; to store them is extremely difficult; to transport them around the world needs specialist equipment; to release them effectively is also a very tough task. Although the terrorists who attacked America showed great ingenuity, they would have to surpass themselves to kill all in the North-East with poison gas.

And if they did manage to surpass themselves, it is extremely unlikely that a gas mask on its own would be able to protect its wearer.

However, this rush to buy gas masks shows what the terrorists have done to us. They have robbed our society of its feelings of safety and security. They have made us feel vulnerable as we go about our daily lives in the North-East of England - imagine how panicky those on the east coast of America feel.

This is why the war being waged against terrorism by America and her allies must succeed. Although it is still a poorly-defined war in terms of knowing who or where the enemy is and how he is going to be attacked, it is a war in which the ultimate aim must be the return of our basic human right of security.