What topics cause irrational panic?

Global financial crisis and SARS are 2 that come to my mind.

Hard working, middle class families losing their homes.

I know it sent my wife into a panic a few times.

Hurricane Season.

@fishguts:Fear of Global financial crisis is irrational?

…yeah all kinds of natural disasters

Computer Viruses.

Just a note: I’m more talking about the level of panic being irrational, as opposed to the topic being something that isn’t concerning. Thanks for your replies so far!

Oh, you mean like when Oprah announces that she’s retiring? ;)

@Sueanne_Tremendous Initially no. However, the media with their scare tactic reporting has whipped up a frenzy that has caused people to make very silly decisions with their money (irrationally) based on the hype they are bombarded with.

@FishGutsDale ok.

It’s not topics that can irrational panic. It’s a lack of deeper understanding that can cause irrational panic or equally harmful irrational complacency and inaction.

Here are a few examples for which a lack of deeper understanding can cause irrational panic:

Fear of a tsunami, even though seismologists labeled the seaquake as too weak, e.g. 7.0 or less on the Richter scale

Fear of a lightning while being inside a car

Fear of contracting AIDS when shaking someone’s hand

Fear of having a normal flu which is not the same as influenza

Fear of the paranormal like a ghost when it’s actually just bad plumbing in a house

Fear of all vaccines even when people are healthy and able to deal with side effects

Fear of small spiders

Fear of mice

Here are a few examples for which a lack of deeper understanding can cause irrational complacency and inaction:

Using online banking and credit cards on PCs without a firewall and anti-virus program

Not saving any money even if people could afford it, instead applying for “easy” credit to buy things people can’t afford

Ignoring the potential mid-term threat to our ecosystems from excessive carbon emissions

Ignoring hurricane evacuation recommendations

Getting the video camera to capture the wonderful sight of the retreating ocean in Thailand

Staring out of the window to see from where the tornado is coming

Staying under the tree on the top of a hill during a thunderstorm

@lynneblundell – In my opinion dealing with natural disasters can cause both irrational panic or irrational complacency and inaction or the wrong action.

Serial killers, snipers (as in the Washington D.C. snipers).

Avian flu
Flying – thinking that you are more likely to die in an airplane than a car when the opposite is the truth
Germophobia
Parents cocooning their children for fear of them being abducted

Socialism
In American policy discourse, if you can cast any idea as “socialism”, you’ll get a good third of the country up in arms, which brings me to my next item:

Gun control
That same third will run right out and buy ammunition if there’s even the suggestion of limiting the firepower of “Joe Sixpack”.

@Harp And let’s not forget “pulling the plug on Granny.”

death squad

Anything computer based (viruses and hackers etc)

But then also anything health based (again, viruses etc.)

Oh, and (OMG!) gay marriage.

Iran.

Lady gaga

I think the media is the biggest culprit in stirring up irrational panic. They focus an extremely disproportionate amount of time and coverage on issues like these, and fail to put them into perspective, causing people watching the news or listening to the radio to believe they are bigger issues than they are.

I’m willing to predict that as we reach the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, the media will spend a ton of time on the possible upcoming end of the world. Remember how much time they spent predicting technological disaster when we reached the year 2000? How much more sensational to focus on the end of our existence!

Nor’easters
9/11
Y2K
Aliens
High tension wires
Cancer hot spots
herpes

I found a site that lists 363 medical conditions that freak people out. They are listed in alphabetical order.

Also the fear that the world as we know it will end in December 2012, and other similar things.

Oh yeah… don’t forget mad cow and the Ebola virus.

I found an article and video on this subject you might find helpful.

Immigrants seem to concern an inordinate amount of people.

I had a neighbor in Florida who had 14 English Mastiffs, a huge arsenal of guns, and razor wire fencing around his property because he wanted to be safe when the anarchists take over.

In Canada, Swine flu
What a Bull Shit scare tactic everyone is going to die!!! if you don’t get immunized

Child molesters, especially “sexually violent predators.” The vast majority of sexual offenders are borderline date rapists and incest offenders, meaning that the vast bulk of sex offending is both widespread and undetected. Around 1996, various legislatures around the US invented the legal category of “sexually violent predator” in order to drum up and to capitalize on people’s fears and hatred of sex offenders in order to provide occasions for politicians to show how tough they are on this pariah class. In California, there is one registered sex offender for every 186 men. I have no doubt that if the true range of sex offending were known, it could very likely be 1 in 18.6 or maybe even 1 in 5 if you count men who persisted even after the woman said she didn’t want to continue.

“Criminals” and anyone who has ever been to prison. Roughly 87.5% of the people in prison are there either on drug or drug-related offenses, because they are mentally ill, or because they are parolees “violated” for technical conditions of parole (things that are not actually crimes).

Drug addiction, particularly heroin, meth, and crack. One would think that addiction was a fate worse than death. In actual fact people get addicted to sugar, fat, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine (the most addictive substance of all) all the time without becoming demoralized or unscrupulous. At one time both heroin and cocaine were sold over the counter and people had little problem with them because doses were low and easily withdrawn from. Meth was supplied to millions of men on both sides during WW II, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and to millions of housewives, with few ill effects. Cocaine and Ritalin are chemically almost identical, yet we demonize one with punishments approaching those for homicide, and we give the other to our kids, sometimes whether they need it or not. Most of these fears are artificial—that is to say, they are ginned up by propaganda and yellow journalism, often with a racist tilt. It turns out there was no such thing as a “crack baby”; these were simply preemies born to poor black women. The fact is, anyone who truly wants to quit can simply decide to do so; indeed, about 5% of all addicts quit on their own and stay quit, if left alone. Making drugs illegal only adds a layer of complication, obsession and dysfunction that makes it difficult for the addiction cycle to run its course.

Cancer.

And, for certain people already predisposed to irrational panic: Witches, sin, damnation, the end of the world, and anyone whose “wickedness” might call down God’s Wrath on the rest of humanity.

Also in Canada, @coffeenut et al – SARS at the time. What a crock. Like two people of 30 million – statistically it’s like getting struck by lightning 100 times in one day.

The end of the world in 2012.

Any kind of drastic change in general frightens people. Change messes with peoples ideas of how things should be. When something isn’t how it’s supposed to be, we panic.

When African-Americans started to move into predominantly white neighborhoods.
The integration of schools.
When women began to enter the workforce as opposed to staying at home.
When two men or two women want to marry.

After someone commits suicide and it’s announced on the nightly news, the suicide rate increases. (I’ll try to find the article I read about this.)

Found it.

Getting word that someone you love is going to be deployed.

Shark attacks

Gay immigrant socialist monkeys spread the deadly Ebola virus.

@Darwin Irrational panic?

I have to agree with @Zuma. Child molesters, pedophiles, sex offenders. Mention those things and people become rabid animals and fly into a hysterical frenzy.

@janbb – Yes. Although just about everyone who goes there comes back changed and often damaged in some way, relatively few don’t come back at all. Thus, it is irrational to panic about ones loved one being killed. However, it isn’t all that irrational to worry about PTSD. Hundreds of thousands have served and are serving. Fewer than 5,000 have come home in body bags.

@Darwin I intellectually hear what you’re saying but know I would be panicking if my sons were deployed; fearful of death certainly, but also of PTSD, exposure to horror, loss of sense of self, loss of limbs. I don’t consider that irrational at all; I think anyone who goes to war probably gets damaged in some way..

@janbb – Since I am the wife of a retired military man, and because I live in a military town, deployment is a terribly common thing (actually, I just ran into my mail carrier Wednesday who is in the National Guard and was called up not once, but twice. It was the first time I’d seen him since he got back) so most of us don’t panic or become irrational about it. However, there are some that do, and it literally paralyzes them and makes it terribly hard on their loved one who is being deployed.

And actually, we just lost two guys from our church two weeks ago, but they were on a routine training flight here at home that went wrong in some way. They just found Joe’s body finally last Saturday – he never even made it out of the plane. These guys are flight instructors, so one would think they would have few mishaps like that.

That legalization of marijuana will lead to a nation of drug addicts.
(Wait- didn’t they say that about ending prohibition?)

Apparently, the proper “disposal” of a worn out and wet bible causes panic. See here

A confederate flag in someone’s yard
An ‘adult’ store in your neighborhood

@YARNLADY brings up a good point. There’s a phenomenon called NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). People think things like landfills/waste dumps, homeless shelters, and prisons/juvenile delinquency centers are all needed for society. Then people panic when one of these is built in or near their neighborhood. I think it’s a pretty interesting behavior. People want homeless shelters (etc), but not near them.

@Allie Yes. We had a big uprising in our neighborhood recently when someone reported that a religious group known for “group housing” bought three houses. There were meetings organized to petition the city council to make a regulation that there could be only one group home in a given area (1 square mile).

They discovered there already is a rule like that, and now the homes are occupied by large groups of related people, Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad, their grown married children, and lots and lots of school kids.

I saw four cars and have counted at least a dozen people living on the other side of the fence from me.

@Darwin I guess we just bring a different orientation to this issue: I can see where in a military milieu being deployed would be part of the expected fabric of daily life.

Property values plunging because minority are moving into the neighborhood.

Homosexuals ruining marriage and making us commit incest and bestiality.

Negroes becoming president against the natural order of all that is holy.

Marijuana turning our children into Manchurian Candidates.

Liberals making Grandma get an abortion before they take away her Medicare and let her die.

Canadadians making us have Bad Healthcare where we will all die waiting for the MRI that could have saved our lives.

Global Warming alarmists trying to ruin our sacred fossil fuel economy given us by God.

Islamofascists who run convenience stores while they plot the next 9/11 attack.

Mexican illegals who have come to steal our precious stoop labor and apple picking jobs which keep Real Americans from starving during the Obama Depression.

The Trilateral Commission.

Wealthy Jews who control the money supply with phony non-gold-backed fiat currency.

The War Against Christmas in which the Obamas will call Our Nation’s Sacred CHRISTmas tree a “Holiday Tree” and smash all the Baby Jesus Ornaments on the White House Lawn near the garden where they grow subversive Organic lettuce.

Atheists teaching our children that Great-grandad was an ape and not the Civil War Veteran we know he really was.

Canadadians? Is that like Trinidadians but northern?

Gay marriage.