-
Forgotten Public Panics
Over the years there have been numerous issues/events/crazes that have caused intense panic and hysteria amongst the general public at large here in the UK, and then seemingly forgotten about soon after, once both the public and the media had moved onto the next 'big issue'.
As you all know full well, the foremost panic at the moment (both here and the world over) is Coronavirus. Does anyone remember any big issues/events/crazes during their lifetime (ultimately post-WW2) that became fully-fledged panics and then quickly forgotten?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
We were talking about this at work today. Do you remember the supposed petrol shortage a few years ago when there were huge queues at the petrol stations and it caused an actual shortage?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
I was in the thick of it when the Falklands War broke out...
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Does ANYBODY else remember the numerous scare stories in the press in the 70s when we were told the next Ice Age would be hitting around the year 2000?
I also remember Hong Kong Flu. My Mum and one of my brothers WERE very ill, but the other four of us in the house didn't even catch it.
And then those of us who survived that were supposed to be dying of AIDS...
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pulisa
I was in the thick of it when the Falklands War broke out...
I remember feeling very scared. That must have been frightening, how were you in the thick of it?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
I'm not in the UK, but I was 18 on 9/11 and my family is from about 45 minutes outside New York City. It was my first week away at college in Baltimore, which is about 45 minutes from Washington, DC. It was the absolute most terrifying day of my life. All the phone lines were overwhelmed so I couldn't get in touch with my family for a few hours and I didn't know if people I knew in NY had been killed. Afterwards we had no idea what would happen next. I remember looking up every time a plane flew over, being scared to fly, being scared to be in big crowded places, etc... for quite a while. It was the first time I'd been away from home so that made it extra disconcerting! And this is before I had any trace of anxiety!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
The big hurricane famously dismissed by one weather forecaster.
The IRA bombings.
A few earthquakes.
The scaremongering and utter nonsense peddled by the health bodies themselves about AIDS.
All those police scary animal posters with hyenas on who were going to rob us.
The oil panic buying mentioned above that only made it worse.
Anyone remember the old public safety adverts that would probably terrify many a millenial? The railway lines, electricity pilon and the knife, the man mowing over his cable (until manufacturers worked out how to prevent the worst of it by getting rid of DC current in the things), and the creepy one about kids drowning.
Going much further back what about the mud slide that engulfed a school killing children and teachers trying to protect them.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
I remember the Swine flu pandemic in 2009, the terrorist attacks on the London Underground in 2005. Also the 9/11 attacks in which I remember feeling like it was the beginning of the end of the world and I didn’t struggle much with anxiety then but I think that affected the world and how people viewed flying from then on. Even now watching any documentary or anything i can’t comprehend it. My dad was in the gulf war too and I remember that. I remember when we lived in Germany and having a constant threat of the IRA, I remember something being left underneath our car and my dad going outside to see what it was incase it was a bomb of some description. I was very young then but remember being frightened. I guess when we really think about it, there are always bad things happening and fortunately most of us come through unscathed. Like we say, the media just gets worse year on year. We didn’t have access to worldometer statistics and suchlike when swine flu was going on. If we did I didn’t know about it.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Let's not forget Y2K ;)
Positive thoughts
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
My local Greggs opened 12 minutes late one Monday morning and you'd think somebody had been murdered.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fishmanpa
Let's not forget Y2K ;)
Positive thoughts
Another Armageddon that never was....
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
What about all those earth killer asteroids? Been a while since we had one of those threads. The media loved them but these days it's just another yawn worthy space rock passing by...
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kirbear
I remember the Swine flu pandemic in 2009, the terrorist attacks on the London Underground in 2005. Also the 9/11 attacks in which I remember feeling like it was the beginning of the end of the world and I didn’t struggle much with anxiety then but I think that affected the world and how people viewed flying from then on. Even now watching any documentary or anything i can’t comprehend it. My dad was in the gulf war too and I remember that. I remember when we lived in Germany and having a constant threat of the IRA, I remember something being left underneath our car and my dad going outside to see what it was incase it was a bomb of some description. I was very young then but remember being frightened. I guess when we really think about it, there are always bad things happening and fortunately most of us come through unscathed. Like we say, the media just gets worse year on year. We didn’t have access to worldometer statistics and suchlike when swine flu was going on. If we did I didn’t know about it.
The Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 (as things stand so far) was actually far worse than the current CV. And I wasn't overly fazed by it at its peak either. Approximately 28, 456 people in total tested positive for it here in the UK and it reportedly yielded 474 fatalities here to. So far (touch wood), zero CV fatalities here.
I was probably more concerned at the time about the Credit Crunch that started towards the end of 2007 and was probably at its worst during the first half of 2009, and all the constant tales of hypothetical Armageddon-type scenarios due to it, that thankfully never materialised.
The terrorist attacks in Central London in July 2005 were pretty damn scary at the time, even though I live in leafy Staffordshire, several miles away from our Capital, but I remember being extremely freaked out by the English city riots of August 2011, even though thankfully both my town and the county of Staffordshire as a whole were completely unaffected, despite the nearby big cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton being seriously affected. I was traumatised by said disturbances for almost a year, even though, in a physical sense, they never actually affected me directly, but most certainly did mentally and emotionally.
I also remember the big moral panic about 'chavs' from about 2003 onwards, which probably came to a head during the August 2011 riots, then said culture suddenly seemed to peter out rapidly and they (chavs) hardly ever seem to get mentioned these days. I also hate the way that certain places have been labelled 'chav towns' and the general trend of 'town-bashing' that seems to have become increasingly prevalent over the past twenty-odd years or so.
You are not wrong, Kirbear, the media do seem to get worse year on year, and sadly, they seem to be untouchable.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fishmanpa
Let's not forget Y2K ;)
Positive thoughts
It actually happened...twenty years later!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...we/4419535002/
Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Anyone remember the media going nuts about the flesh eating bacteria? We very rarely see a thread about it on here, in my time here anyway, but I bet the boards had their scare back then.
And the common denominator is always the media combined with anxious people or those easily led.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ankietyjoe
My local Greggs opened 12 minutes late one Monday morning and you'd think somebody had been murdered.
In 12 minutes I could have made and ate my own breakfast.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
leaving the EU was supposed to make our economy collapse as well.Brexit's forgotten cause of the coronavirus scare.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
WiredIncorrectly
In 12 minutes I could have made and ate my own breakfast.
/whispers - I don't even eat breakfast.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
whispershadow
leaving the EU was supposed to make our economy collapse as well.Brexit's forgotten cause of the coronavirus scare.
Personally (and rather ironically), I now see the Coronavirus as a kind of 'drill' for the feared worst-case scenarios concerning Brexit, though I could be talking a load of old pony, of course.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
What about the major panic of 1958?
The BLOB!!!
Had the entire country in a frenzy!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Noivous
What about the major panic of 1958?
The BLOB!!!
Had the entire country in a frenzy!
The BLOB? Please enlighten us (as long as it's not too sensitive a topic, of course).
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lencoboy
The BLOB? Please enlighten us (as long as it's not too sensitive a topic, of course).
Not the 'on the' type :sofa: the film with Steve McQueen.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Just thought of another one.
Remember the (UK) Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001?
I clearly remember all the panic that caused at the time, and I especially remember hearing and reading about many businesses in rural communities soiling their underpants due to both the prospect and actual cases of lost custom/revenue due to said crisis and their areas being in lockdown. A bloke who was in a cover band with my brother back then (and was in his early 50s at the time) was convinced that the F&M crisis was actually non-existent and all concocted by Blair and his 'New Labour' govt of the time as some 'hidden agenda' to put farmers and the like out of business and went on to opine that he (Blair) was the worst PM this country had ever had! Talk about totally BS conspiracy theories? I also remember about two years prior to then that very same person also admitted to being very anti-Thatcherite some ten or so years earlier!!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Yes, I remember F&M as it affected what we did sending out engineers and meter readers. There had to be disinfectant trays they could use or we couldn't send them to any farm or even certain larger places.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
The Edwina Currie salmonella eggs furore
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pulisa
The Edwina Currie salmonella eggs furore
John Major gave her a stern telling off over that...and then she disciplined him in return :whiplash::emot-puke:
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Making it a Major Curried Eggs Scandal...
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Remember the 'Happy Slapping' craze that brought panic and terror to many of our streets during the latter half of the noughties?
Where violent thugs would be giving their victim(s) a vicious pasting and it being filmed at the same time, then ending up on the likes of YouTube, etc.
I seem to remember said craze being pretty much gone by about the latter half of 2011 and beyond, and thank god as well. Possibly a by-product of the 'chav' culture of that particular era.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
I remember all the panic during H1N1 and Y2k
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
AIDS, the BIG one, killer bees, nukes, Y2K, west Nile, Ebola, swine flu, the end of the Mayan Calendar, 06/06/2006, Zika....
Damn this makes me feel old...
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Oh, and the 2004 asteroid, Apophis... I wonder where that thing is floating now?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntsyVee
AIDS, the BIG one, killer bees, nukes, Y2K, west Nile, Ebola, swine flu, the end of the Mayan Calendar, 06/06/2006, Zika....
Damn this makes me feel old...
In a lot of ways, despite a lot of the horrible and scary threats of the past, I'm kind of glad that I grew up during a seemingly more innocent and carefree time where we didn't have 24/7 rolling news channels, social media and generally less hysterical and sensationalist media. Oh innocence is bliss!!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Killer bees and happy slapping, how could I forget about those! And not long ago we had the creepy clowns too. I was really hoping to bump into one of them on a dark night so I could vent some stress relief on one :winks:
We had other killer species too in recent years. Giant mutant rats as well. All gone as the media have moved on to other things.
Did I mention the flesh eating bug? Like each pandemic that was constantly in the news.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Oh yeah...what happened to MRSA?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
I remember the mad cow disease (BSE) scare in 1996 and it causing CJD in humans who ate infected beef. I was only 12 years old at the time and I remember being scared as I had eaten beef especially when I was younger. At the time, some people were predicting that millions of people in the UK could die of CJD (it has a 100% mortality rate, so in that respect it's scarier than coronavirus). It particularly scared me that scientists said the incubation period could be several years long, so even if you had eaten infected beef in the 80s, you could still die. In the end, only about 200 people contracted CJD and died. I remember in 1996, I was too scared to eat beef for several months, although I gradually reintroduced it into my diet!
24 years later, I am still alive! :) So whenever I see headlines with wild figures saying millions of people could get coronavirus in the UK, I remind myself of the mad cow disease/CJD scare. That's not to say that people shouldn't take it seriously - I am staying indoors as much as possible at the moment to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. I am still fairly young and healthy so if I caught it I would probably survive, but my parents are in their 70s and have underlying health conditions, so I definitely wouldn't want to inadvertently spread it to them.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Hi gang. Just wondering what happened to the coronavirus thread? Sorry, I've been just getting over the leave-me-alone-a-virus!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
My dad (currently in a nursing home) has MRSA. He's being treated. They barely bat an eye at it in a nursing home. plus they've locked the door for two weeks because of the coronavirus so nobody can visit their loved ones. He's a tough old guy. Time will tell. I may go get tested for it myself as I was up visiting him a few days ago feeding him and rubbing his head. He has it in his eyes. That's life.
N.
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Don't forget the mass panic of 1933...King Kong!
And of course the panic of 1975...JAWS! Dun Dun!
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Anyone remember living under the threat of the "4 minute warning" in the 70s and 80s? The Soviet Union could fire nukes that would hit the UK in about 4 minutes and blow us back to the stone age, with added radiation just for shits and giggles. I was a kid at the time, but it depressed the hell out of me and I used to think why bother planning for the future? We could all be dead in 4 minutes!
And then in 1989 the Warsaw Pact suddenly collapsed, and in 1991 even the USSR itself was suddenly gone. All that worrying, and for what?
-
Re: Forgotten Public Panics
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Noivous
My dad (currently in a nursing home) has MRSA. He's being treated. They barely bat an eye at it in a nursing home. plus they've locked the door for two weeks because of the coronavirus so nobody can visit their loved ones. He's a tough old guy. Time will tell. I may go get tested for it myself as I was up visiting him a few days ago feeding him and rubbing his head. He has it in his eyes. That's life.
N.
That's another 'crisis' that barely seems to get mentioned in this country anymore. During the first half of the 2000s the Daily Fail, etc were constantly spewing out OTT scaremongering stories about the MRSA bug plaguing NHS hospitals, etc, and remember it blatantly used as a political weapon to bash Blair and Co with during the run up to the 2005 General Election, then strangely, a lot of the hysteria surrounding MRSA was pretty much gone from about 2006 onwards, despite New Labour still remaining in power for another four years!