A journey into the social staging of threat and reassurance. Fragmentary archive footage from the USA of the 1940s/50s and associative images of Hamburg, Germany today are woven together to create an enigmatic narration. We meet silkworms recording memories, family history found on the Internet, polio epidemics in new housing estates and Christmas parties. Time and again, we encounter images and their copies, role models, clichés and the gaps in between.