Despite fears of terrorism, anti-Americanism, and infectious diseases, the readers we polled have continued to travel abroad and have a great time. Wendy Perrin reports

Baruch Fischhoff, a professor of decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, is hardly one to court danger. But last January, when the United States was on the verge of war with Iraq and most Americans were avoiding the Middle East, he went off to Israel. And in July, when many travelers had canceled trips to Kenya after the State Department issued a travel warning advising Americans not to visit the country, he spent his vacation there. He saw the risk as relatively small.

And Fischhoff should know: As one of the nation's leading risk experts, his travel decisions are guided by well-researched calculations, and he had determined that, at the time, "the statistical chance of being hurt by terror in Israel was only one in one hundred thousand." As for Kenya, "the past attacks there had hurt a tiny fraction of all tourists, and none in the wild areas." Moreover, he points out, "avoiding these risks meant taking others." At home, he could die in a car accident or from food poisoning.

We were interested in how our readers are making their own decisions about where it is safe to travel, so starting in November 2002—a month after the terrorist attack on the Bali nightclub—we began conducting a series of reader polls with the help of Fischhoff and other experts. We've tracked subscribers' changing attitudes toward traveling to destinations made questionable by war with Iraq, outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and terrorist threats. What we found in our most recent poll, conducted in August 2003, is that our readers perceive less risk in the world now than they did a year ago. Rather than shy away from overseas trips, as many Americans have been doing, they are willing to visit places with problems. They are factoring the possibility of terrorism into their travel plans and are taking steps to counter the dangers. In short, says Fischhoff, "they are learning to live with the risk of terrorism."

The number of poll respondents willing to travel to Bali, for instance, has risen from 44 percent a year ago to 73 percent today. Indeed, of 12 potentially risky countries that we've been tracking since last November, readers are more willing to go to every one of them.

We were surprised to learn that although the allure of a destination declines when it is in a period of crisis, once the trouble has passed, readers' willingness to go rebounds to higher levels than before. Between November 2002 and the start of the war in Iraq, the number of respondents who were willing to visit neighboring Turkey, for example, dropped from 71 percent to 48 percent; in our most recent poll, it shot up to 79 percent. Before the outbreak of SARS, 84 percent of respondents were willing to travel to Hong Kong. During the outbreak, only 38 percent would go; afterward, 88 percent.

Why risky places seem less scary now
During a period when many Americans have avoided international travel, Condé Nast Traveler readers have continued to head overseas. In the six months following President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address—when he announced that war in Iraq was imminent—nearly half of all poll respondents traveled abroad. More than a third did so when other Americans were at their most skittish—during the two and a half months between the State of the Union address and the fall of Baghdad.