For those who haven't been trained to handle emergencies and act as a first responders, the most dangerous time in any emergency is a lack of reaction. People are afraid of being made to look foolish so getting a strong reaction out of anyone in public is nearly impossible. Indeed in a time of crisis a lot of people don't want to respond unless they can actually see it themselves, or if they can they do not think it's real especially when the reality isn't as flashy and dangerous seeming as a movie.
In general the idea of something going wrong and everyone panicing, is incorrect, unless of course you have a bunch of people trapped in a burning building or something where people actually see the flames and the smoke right bloody there and it's indisputable.
Screaming "Fire" in a crowded movie theater just does not get the reaction it used to.
The point of this lecture is that BS Spam like that probably is, combined with all of the idiotic "tests" of evacuation plans and such have simply jaded people to the point where nobody believes in a real emergency unless they can see it. As such, it's likely that anything via computer that was a big deal would simply hit because it would be impossible to get enough people to take it seriously fast enough to be a factor.
Exceptions are things like Michaelangelo and the Y2k bug, which were so long in coming that people had an insane amount of time to get the information out to prepare people and get them to take it seriously.
To be brutally honest, I almost would like to see a society wide cataclysm, whether a massive Y2k/super virus type computer apocolypse, a fantasy zombie uprising, an escaped viral plague, or whatever else. For one we simply have too many bloody people, and two on the occasions when I've had to herd casino patrons due to bomb threats (which all turned out to be false) I have no real faith in the survival insticts of humanity in general and feel that our species would benefit by re-activating them. Frankly when you've got something that might be a bomb in an aisle of slot machines, some fat lady needing to count out all her coins and credit, and then receive assistance to move her lardness out of the aisle strikes me as being ridiculous. As does the fact that for purposes of lawsuits and *ahem* customer service you can't just grab the person and hurl them out of the aisle (with the help of other workers if they are that big) and then do what is nessicary to keep them out of the way. If I wasn't there I'd LOVE to see someone actually have planted a bomb that takes out 50 or 60 people just to reduce the general moron factor.
The thing is, I worked for what was a world class establishment, where admittedly security was a dog and pony show, but still did clearances and such under these circumstances. Frankly if a group like that with a full time security staff that undergoes training for emergencies is unlikely to be able to do much to save/move people in a real crisis, I can only imagine the level of darwinism we will see if something actually did happen because most places don't even go through the motions we did.
Just my (long and rambling thoughts) on the idea of the Email. Of course it's likely to be fake, but that's half the problem, and exactly why if a super-virus that doesn't telegraph it's existance months or even years ahead of time ever appears we're all going to be F@cked. I just hope that not only does it happen, but a plane falls out of the sky and lands on the house of the spammer who wrote that (if it's fake).
