Is the politics of fear spreading?

[Capt Jack]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

I'm sure it will rank as one the of best fictional disasters stories ever!

yup, ranks right up there with Y2K. a ton of folks made a killing from the fear mongering built around that...embarassingly, Im one of them.


when a doom prediction fails to be more than a fart in a windstorm, make a bigger windstorm.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Capt Jack

yup, ranks right up there with Y2K. a ton of folks made a killing from the fear mongering built around that...embarassingly, Im one of them.


when a doom prediction fails to be more than a fart in a windstorm, make a bigger windstorm.

..I think that's a different case. You say you "made a killing" out of Y2k. Let me ask you this. What would have happened if the work you competed had never been done? Would the clients systems have crashed or otherwise screwed up come the year 2000? Probably so. The main effect of the y2K bug was eliminated because the hew and cry forced pointy headed bosses everywhere to sit up take notice and free up the resources to fix the problem. If the entire issue had just been ignored then the disaster would indeed have happened. So while the general alarm did in fact overstate the issue, nuclear sites going critial and the like, it did help to solve what was a real issue.