I plan on traveling to a lot of different countries in my lifetime. I know it's not exactly realistic to think I'm going to travel the world when I'm only a junior in high school and don't know where I'm going to be years from now, but I'm still planning on it. But every time I mention traveling, my dad immediately goes into his whole idea of how if I go to other countries I'm going to get kidnapped or something. He even wanted me to watch the movie "taken" to scare me out of my desire to see the world. I've been to Australia and New Zealand, but those were for school and I was with a big group the whole time, so there were no worries there. Clearly, in my dad's point of view, backpacking through any country, even in a fair-sized group (just saying if it ever happened) was about the most dangerous thing I could ever do

I know it depends on the country, but how dangerous is it, really, to travel? There are a lot of things you can do to make it safer: what are some of them? Anyone have experience traveling or know people who do?