# Cases where a populace has panicked **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 23, 2019, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937 "2019-04-23T14:08:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/41 "2019-04-24T04:09:31Z")
If the OP is specifically asking for times governments were proven right in their decision to keep information secret (or wrong in their decision not to). The British government keeping secret how low food supplies had got during the Battle of the Atlantic has to be a contender. Obviously you never going to prove what would have happened the alternative reality where the British government were honest about the fact there wasn’t any food left (and of course there are revisionist who say they were never that close to running out of food). But the balance evidence to me is there would have been a lot of panic and overwhelming demand to sue for peace if the government had been honest with the public. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/42 "2019-04-24T04:19:01Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Hardly. Consultants made billions unnecessarily from their clients that didn’t know better. But that what consultants\* always\* do. Nothing to panic about. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/43 "2019-04-24T04:33:08Z")
> [@swampspruce](#): > > Some good examples so far, even the Whatsapp although that’s almost the opposite of what I had in mind. Rumour mills have been an issue since one person could talk to another about a third and I get the mechanisms of how FUD (Fear, uncertainty, and Doubt) spreads in that way due to a lack of clear info. What I’m trying to figure out is whether government warnings have indeed caused mass panic (Not propaganda but clear, factual warnings about something like a tsunami warning for example.) Rumasa. (Sorry, I haven’t been able to find any decent articles in English, google insists in taking me to Spanish newspapers; wiki has a bare [stub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumasa)). Banks aren’t required to keep in hand all the money they have in deposit. In fact, one of the main mechanisms by which they make money is by taking deposited money and loaning it to other people; the interest that they pay on the deposit (if any) will be less than what they charge on the loans, plus they tack on as many commisions and fees as they can on both sides. This is normal. It’s the core of banking. Banking regulations indicate banks need to be able to cover a certain % of their total holdings within certain times but do not require bankers to just sit on piles of big coins waiting for them to hatch little coins. Rumors that the banks which were owned by the Rumasa Holding Group “do not have enough money to pay back the money people have in deposits” (which is actually normal, as explained above; I don’t keep all my money in my wallet either) caused a wave of people going to those banks to close their savings accounts and claim their CDs back whether they’d matured or not (references to [Mary Poppins](https://youtu.be/eOi6c3NPYms?t=83) abounded in the news). I doubt I’ll ever know how healthy Rumasa’s accounting was before the panic, but after two weeks of “give me back my money!” the government just walked in and took everything the Holding owned, under the by then certainly true premise that “the amount of cash they have in hand doesn’t cover the required %”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/44 "2019-04-24T04:39:47Z")
> [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](#): > > But that what consultants\* always\* do. Nothing to panic about. Well yeah. If I knew the law well, I wouldn’t need to consult accountants and lawyers. And if my clients knew the Big Blue Database, I would need to find another line of work. But what people complaining about the costs of consultants forget is that nobody is an expert in everything and that keeping in-house experts on everything is also not free. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/45 "2019-04-24T05:00:54Z")
Remember that [Ponzi scheme](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/13/business/pyramid-scheme-a-trap-for-many-romanians.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all) in Romania? The official quotes there claim that the government let it go on because they were _afraid_ of riots and protests (and, more likely, of losing power): > [@](#): > > “I’m really very concerned,” said Dan Pascariu, the chairman of the Romanian Bank of Commerce, adding that he estimated that three or four of every eight families in the country had invested. “There could be riots by those who are the losers. I think the founders of the scheme made a big mistake by going to the miners. You don’t kid with these people.” ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/46 "2019-04-24T11:11:02Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > If the OP is specifically asking for times governments were proven right in their decision to keep information secret (or wrong in their decision not to). The British government keeping secret how low food supplies had got during the Battle of the Atlantic has to be a contender. > > Obviously you never going to prove what would have happened the alternative reality where the British government were honest about the fact there wasn’t any food left (and of course there are revisionist who say they were never that close to running out of food). But the balance evidence to me is there would have been a lot of panic and overwhelming demand to sue for peace if the government had been honest with the public. Similar situation: during the [1998 ice storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm) in Québec, there were daily press conferences by government and Hydro-Québec bigwigs. Lucien Bouchard at one point said that there was a serious situation being looked at in Montréal, but didn’t specify what it was. He waited until the situation was resolved, a few days later, before revealing it: there are just two water pumping stations for the whole island of Montréal (pop. about 2 million), and for several hours they had _both_ been without power. So people could still get some tap water (from the gravity reservoirs carved into Mont-Royal), but there wasn’t enough to put out even a medium-sized fire. If he had revealed it as it was happening, people would have sucked the reservoirs dry while arsonists had a field day. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/47 "2019-04-24T12:13:37Z")
> [@Noelq](#): > > Would the Y2K panic qualify? > > Hundreds of folks thought the world would end. Millions of dollars were spent on renovating/checking computer equipment to ensure it wouldn’t stop working. I was at a NYE bar party that night. I asked Ron, the owner, if he thought the power grid might fail at midnight and he scoffed. Then I pointed out that he could always throw the main breaker and his eyes gleamed. We did the 3 . . 2 . . 1. . and the lights went out. Someone screamed. A woman started crying. Ron spent hours apologizing to people. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/48 "2019-04-24T13:00:32Z")
Don’t know if this is a widely held opinion / experience, but I felt the anthrax attacks after 9/11 created a lot of panic and fear - obv not at the level of mass hysteria, taking to the streets or anything, but it seemed really unnerving and ratcheted up tension. It was like a second wave attack after the meteor strike of 9/11, but something far more insidious that could reach surburban Americans. I was working in Philadelphia at the time, and the letters were sent from New Jersey, so perhaps being close by meant the case got heightened coverage and had more impact in that part of the world. [Just reading about the attacks now on wiki, years after, and the investigation seems quite a story, no real satisfactory resolution]. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/49 "2019-04-24T13:17:49Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Does that EVER happen? Hollywood would seem to imply that as soon as the [EAS buzzer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsvQBahmRU0)sounds people run out into the street to flip over cars and set them on fire. They do that during much more meaningful times, like when their team wins the NCAA tournament. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/50 "2019-04-24T16:08:51Z")
Some excellent responses and Thanks **Nava** for making me brush up a bit on my Spanish. I couldn’t quite follow everything in my searches and tried not to use the translate function but it seems like the run was started partially by the news that the government was privatizing the Holding company and everyone would lose their money; or am I misinterpreting? \*\*Griffin \*\* and **Heracles** , these are one example of what I was asking about; scarcity kept hidden to prevent potential panic. How can you break that mentality of “I need to get mine before it’s all gone”. Is it such an intrinsic part of our Nature that remaining oblivious is the only way to keep the masses tractable? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/51 "2019-04-24T17:55:07Z")
> [@swampspruce](#): > > Some excellent responses and Thanks **Nava** for making me brush up a bit on my Spanish. I couldn’t quite follow everything in my searches and tried not to use the translate function but it seems like the run was started partially by the news that the government was privatizing the Holding company and everyone would lose their money; or am I misinterpreting? Not “privatize”: it was private. The government expropiated it, which is supposed to carry payment but they, ah, ignored that bit. The original news were that Rumasa was “going to be investigated because they can’t pay back the money deposited in their banks”. As expressed, there wasn’t even a need to investigate: the accusation would have been true of any bank in the world; no bank can pay _all_ the money deposited in it. It wasn’t even expressed as an accusation, a “maybe”, but as a certainty and as something terrible, horrible, which no decent bank would ever do! Such as, say, all those Spanish banks and savings banks where former politicians get cozy jobs with 6-figure salaries for having coffee with their pals once a year. By the time the cops walked into the bank offices, the accusation was also true in the sense of not being able to pay back the amounts required by law. And by the time all the suits and countersuits and criminal trials and political messes were over, the money trail went through every tax haven, island nation and money laundering scheme known to forensic accountants. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/52 "2019-04-24T19:15:56Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > I was at a NYE bar party that night. I asked Ron, the owner, if he thought the power grid might fail at midnight and he scoffed. Then I pointed out that he could always throw the main breaker and his eyes gleamed. > > We did the 3 . . 2 . . 1. . and the lights went out. Someone screamed. A woman started crying. Ron spent hours apologizing to people. :thumbs up: ---
**Author:** ![Emergency911](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/43a26b/32.png) [@Emergency911](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emergency911)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/53 "2019-04-24T19:51:23Z")
When I read the OP, the first thing I thought of was when there is snow in the forecast. It’s not a nation wide panic, but locally, (I live in the Midwest US), if you don’t get to the grocery store early, you won’t find a loaf of bread, jug of milk or eggs anywhere in the forecast area. There are always local news agencies at the store showing the empty shelves where there used to be bread, etc. It’s been this way around here for as long as I can remember. All of my friends refer to it as a “French Toast Panic” when it happens. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/54 "2019-04-24T20:47:11Z")
Sorry , I meant nationalize.:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/55 "2019-04-24T22:28:21Z")
Quoting from an earlier post: “Americans went absolutely nuts after Pearl Harbor. Everything that you’d think was only possible in today’s social media world happened then.” I must have been living on a different planet than described by this. I was 11 years old on Dec. 7, 1941, and remember nothing even remotely close to this. No panic of any kind - life went on, not completely as normal, but pretty close. Gas, tire, sugar etc. rationing came along, but everyone seemed to take these in stride. I was living in a very medium sized town in southern Illinois at the time, one you would be sure was filled with rednecks. There was a burning hatred of the Japs, but since nobody of that ancestry lived within a thousand or so miles, I guess it was pretty hard to take any direct or indirect action against them. ---
**Author:** ![road\_lobo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d78d45/32.png) [@road\_lobo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/road_lobo)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2019, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/56 "2019-04-25T05:01:44Z")
> [@Noelq](#): > > Would the Y2K panic qualify? > > Hundreds of folks thought the world would end. Millions of dollars were spent on renovating/checking computer equipment to ensure it wouldn’t stop working. There was a Y2K problem, not a Y2K panic. Millions of dollars is peanuts in the context of corporate finance, and corporations spend millions of dollars (conservatively) every year dealing with bugs. Consultancy scams and media scaremongering happen every day. Potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans anticipated the literal Apocalypse because of the new millenium. That didn’t constitute a panic, and neither did anticipation of the Y2K bug. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/57 "2019-04-25T05:19:50Z")
After the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake (Tokyo), there were wild rumors about Koreans poisoning the wells and other acts. People started to kill the Koreans and in some cases even the police and army got involved. Estimates is those killed range, but generally accepted as more than 6,000. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2019, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/58 "2019-04-25T05:23:50Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > Don’t know if this is a widely held opinion / experience, but I felt the anthrax attacks after 9/11 created a lot of panic and fear - obv not at the level of mass hysteria, taking to the streets or anything, but it seemed really unnerving and ratcheted up tension. I think that might have actually gotten pretty close to mass hysteria. There were thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of false alarms in the couple of months afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2019, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/59 "2019-04-25T05:37:24Z")
> [@Emergency911](#): > > When I read the OP, the first thing I thought of was when there is snow in the forecast. It’s not a nation wide panic, but locally, (I live in the Midwest US), if you don’t get to the grocery store early, you won’t find a loaf of bread, jug of milk or eggs anywhere in the forecast area. There are always local news agencies at the store showing the empty shelves where there used to be bread, etc. It’s been this way around here for as long as I can remember. All of my friends refer to it as a “French Toast Panic” when it happens. Is it really a panic when someone sees that there’s going to be inclement weather on Wednesday, and says “eh, I’d rather go on Tuesday”? Bread, milk, and eggs are relatively fresh, so they’ll run out first when an unusually high number people are shopping. They’re buying canned goods and frozen food and cereal too, it’s just that the store usually has more than one day of those things on hand. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2019, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937/60 "2019-04-25T12:28:59Z")
> [@swampspruce](#): > > Sorry , I meant nationalize.:smack: Not even; the rumors were about _intervención_, which is a temporary takeover by the government (usually the judiciary) that does not involve closing anything down. Basically you get invaded by one or more _interventores_ (government accountants) but continue doing business more or less as usual. What ended up happening is that the holding was grabbed and split around, some companies closed (mainly the banks), others sold piecemeal. A redo of the Desamortizaciones by which the Spanish government, starting at the very end of the 18th century and continuing well into the 19th, expropiated a lot of land (mainly from the Church) and split it around among the pals of whomever was in charge. The most famous ones are those of [Mendizábal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_confiscations_of_Mendiz%C3%A1bal) but they weren’t the only ones, just the ones people are most likely to have heard about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cases-where-a-populace-has-panicked/832937.md?page=4)