nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Huge panics and scares that never quite happened

mike65

Remember Bovine spongiform encephalopathy/BSE aka Mad Cow Disease and its human variation variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?

The latter was going to be the death of all meat eaters you'd have thought such was some of the hysteria 15-20 years ago with talk of hundreds of thousands to perish (the Daily Mail was carrying stories about it only 14 months back) . Typically enough scientists refuse to rule out a long term threat suggesting it could take up to 50 years for vCJD to become apparent in most of those who have eaten infected meat. People have died, about 165 of 175 diagnosed but the diagnosis rate is steady at 2 per year since 2008, I suspect most of us can sleep easily.

What other "OMG we're all gonna die" stories are out there? Avian Flu?, Chernobyl? Mobile phone transmission cancer (that's gone very quite now everyone uses them)?

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

Deise Vu

Deleted User wrote: »

Most of the systems in these countries were mechanical so the y2k bug was irrelevent to almost all of their working practices, in the few rare occasions that there was an issue it was a simple case of CTRL-ALT-DELETE and continue on.

Mechanical bank systems? Jets, Air traffic control, hospital equaipment, all the household gear we were told would be exploding and / or launching a takeover of our houses? You learn something new every day.

sock puppet

Deise Vu wrote: »

Mechanical bank systems? Jets, Air traffic control, hospital equaipment, all the household gear we were told would be exploding and / or launching a takeover of our houses? You learn something new every day.

Just how developed do you think Haiti were in the 1980s?

who the fug

Ray Palmer wrote: »

That would because people spent years fixing the problem before hand. I found a y2k bug a few months ago.

Cool what was it?

miss no stars

davet82 wrote: »

Originally Posted by Duggy747
Next, it's Lukewarm Universe.

that sounds serious, what the fcuk are we gonna do!! :eek:

Technically it's been happening for almost 14 billion years. It's cold compared to what it once was. Eventually though, the universe will* run out of energy and die.

(* by will I mean that most likely will, but there are some things that still aren't fully understood such as dark energy and matter, so I guess there's still potential that the universe won't run out of energy but that'd require that our entire knowledge of physics be re-written basically. I don't know whether dark energy and matter obey the e=mc^2 equation? If they do, presumably dark energy can also run out)

[Deleted User]

Deise Vu wrote: »

Mechanical bank systems? Jets, Air traffic control, hospital equaipment, all the household gear we were told would be exploding and / or launching a takeover of our houses? You learn something new every day.

A room full of clerks, Jets they belong to the airlines not the country, ATC can be manual, household gear LOL, things were a lot simpler in most countries a decade ago. The worst thing that happened was a calandar application showing the date as 19100

Chuck Stone

Swine Flu.

Ray Palmer

Deise Vu wrote: »

So every third world country such as Zimbabwe, Haiti etc etc could afford all the updates and dilligently carried them out 100%? That is unbelievable. And I mean unbelievable.

Updates don't really cost anything they are part of the licence. Don't know about Zimbabwe but I do no similar poor South American countries got their software from Ireland including updates. They wouldn't be able to do any banking internationally if they hadn't.
Internal transactions are mostly on paper. Strangely Japan seen as a majour tech country also use mostly paper.
Airplane stuff also also uses international standards and software. Planes falling from the sky was always an exaggerated claim. It wasn't made by the industry but hack writers.

Deise Vu

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Updates don't really cost anything they are part of the licence. Don't know about Zimbabwe but I do no similar poor South American countries got their software from Ireland including updates. They wouldn't be able to do any banking internationally if they hadn't.
Internal transactions are mostly on paper. Strangely Japan seen as a majour tech country also use mostly paper.
Airplane stuff also also uses international standards and software. Planes falling from the sky was always an exaggerated claim. It wasn't made by the industry but hack writers.

I see, we spent billions of manhours on it from developing upgrades to Y2K project managers in every business, we set up a Govt quango to daily berate the population for not being Y2K compliant. Then Mickey Mouse countries just downloaded our updates and happy days, they were grand.

And you still claim it wasn't over-hyped?

Ush1

That HIV causes AIDS. Ha, really got us that time!

Sarn

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Oops!

[Deleted User]

I thought I was out of coffee, but on closer inspection there was some behind the sugar in the cupboard.

Phew! Panic averted

Ray Palmer

Deise Vu wrote: »

I see, we spent billions of manhours on it from developing upgrades to Y2K project managers in every business, we set up a Govt quango to daily berate the population for not being Y2K compliant. Then Mickey Mouse countries just downloaded our updates and happy days, they were grand.

And you still claim it wasn't over-hyped?

You just over hyped what was done. We used computers where they don't so we had to spend money. Private companies with bespoke software had to fix their software. Many just replaced their systems coming up to 2000. I don't ever recall daily warnings nor the quango. There was a danger but it was prevented by fixing the problem.

StormWarrior

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

Microwaves - emit radiation and give you cancer

It's actually been shown that eating microwaved food affects your blood. They took blood from people, got them to eat microwaved food and took blood again. Bad changes had happened. Can't remember what exactly but I'm sure anyone interested could google it.

Also microwaves were once banned in russia after the russian government saw classified information about the damage they do people.

9959

StormWarrior wrote: »

It's actually been shown that eating microwaved food affects your blood. They took blood from people, got them to eat microwaved food and took blood again. Bad changes had happened. Can't remember what exactly but I'm sure anyone interested could google it.

Also microwaves were once banned in russia after the russian government saw classified information about the damage they do people.

How come they never banned Vodka?

who the fug

9959 wrote: »

How come they never banned Vodka?

cheaper to make than microwave ovens, and means the proles forget about microwave ovens

Mr. Nice

sock puppet wrote: »

Just how developed do you think Haiti were in the 1980s?

I thought the whole Y2K thing happened after the 1980s

who the fug

Clumsy Lout wrote: »

Twin Deck cassette recorders would result in Adam Ant, Nik Kershaw and Howards Jones having to draw the dole.

Wait, they were right!!

worse it would kill the music industry

Recluse

Iv lost count of how many end of the worlds I have survived.

Madam_X

The Cuban missile crisis/end of the world scare. People really thought that was it.
I don't know whether humans cause climate change for certain but I wouldn't dismiss those who have researched it and come to that conclusion.

CruelCoin wrote: »

Dude, short of going back to living in caves and living meal to meal due to a lack of refrigeration, its not going to stop, so chiiill. (Not thats its real anyway, no matter what gore says).

What makes you say climate change caused in part by human activity is not real?

iDave wrote: »

After a bit of snow 2 winters ago we were supposed to be plunged into some sort of 10 years cycle of snowy winters.

Jeez it was a lot more than "a bit of" snow! I don't remember any warnings of many more severe winters (for here).

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Eh, the temperature of this planet has always been changing, a few thousand years ago we had an ice age

Human activity affecting the atmosphere for thousands of years too though.