 Do you feel safe right now? How have you felt since 9-11? Today, Australians are still afraid. Nearly half of us fear that we could be the victim of a terrorist attack, and two-thirds think our government should do more. But there's a paradox in national security. The more evidence we see that we're being protected, the less safe we feel. Imagine you came home one day to find riot police on your street. Would you feel safer? I'd be asking what's wrong. National security can be used to justify anything, from surveillance to torture to war. If we knew what we really wanted from security, we could stop it from hurting as much as it helps. But even in the academic literature, no one agrees on what security means. Many people talk about security in practice, but few talk about the way it makes us feel. What if we could use stories to answer this question? Popular books and media reflect our hopes and fears, and since 9-11, superheroes have been more popular than ever. I've studied 55 years worth of Iron Man comics. That's about 660 issues and seven films. I've researched their history. I've compared them to political speeches, and I've broken them down to find out what they say about security. Now, these are American stories, but American fear influences Australian politics. Iron Man is part of a global conversation, and we need to listen in. Because despite the fantasy, Iron Man is all about national security. When Tony Stark's life is shattered by a terrorist attack, he becomes Iron Man. He cocoons himself in super-powered armor, and he goes after the bad guys. But the more armor he has, the more it wears him down. Iron Man can never keep people safe for very long, and it comes at a painful cost. Iron Man reflects our fear that if super-powered security fails, we'll be hurt worse than before. So why can't we let it go? In the stories I've studied, security never just means safety. It promises freedom, opportunity, and progress towards a better life. So when our security is threatened, we feel as though all of those things are threatened too. But if we give up our freedoms to feel secure, then we'll lose what we're trying to protect. Super-powered security comes at a cost. My research tells us what it really means to feel secure, so that we can decide what cost we're willing to pay.