Significant progress has been made in understanding the various responses to risk, and their implications for communication and conflict resolution. The precursor to the current volume (Bennett & Calman, 1999) gave some indication of the state of play within the academic and practice communities about 10 years ago. Since then, the field has moved on. Given these changes, some of the ‘established knowledge’ of 10 years ago may look less well established — or at least less significant — now. However, much of what seemed to be emerging in the first edition has been borne out by subsequent developments. This chapter aims to set out some of these (relatively) enduring fundamentals.