I have been doing a lot of reading on The Troubles in Northern Ireland recently and am having a bit of trouble really wrapping my mind around what an average persons experience would have been like during this time.
So I guess my questions is what would it be like for an "average" person during the troubles. Was there a tangible fear associated with leaving your house everyday? Would you always be looking over your shoulder wondering if you would be gunned down in random sectarian violence? Was it significantly different living in a city (Belfast for example) vs living in the countryside? Did Catholics have to fear more than Protestants or vice versa?
I wrote my senior thesis on Northern Ireland. Not my personal first-hand account, but this website is an excellent source for statistics/dates. This particular link has several personal accounts.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/people/accounts/index.html
I know way more about the politics than the lives of ordinary people, but nothing I've read has given me the impression that people were always looking over their shoulders. Yes, there were areas that were very heavily "unionist" or "republican" - but if you were of the opposite political leaning, you probably would not venture into those areas.
The cities were definitely more violent than the countryside - Belfast being the prime example. But what you have to realize is that much of the countryside was Irish/Catholic and there were very few Protestants/Anglo-Saxons in those areas. Hence: Less conflict.