Mass Hysteria, Mass Panic

Let's say that someone put out an e-mail or text campain that read something like

(an astroid large enough to destroy all life on the planet has been detected on a colision course with Earth. Anyone capable of evacuating the planet please do so now.)

If this was official looking enough, with enough technical jargon, would it be able to cause a mass panic in America.

Or would people take the time, that the text said they didn't have, to research it.

Or would they simply blow off the end of the world warning.

Is this why you posted that troll thread a few hours ago that you expected to gain popularity?

Just askin...

To Add: We would see it coming in the sky, it wouln't just appear friend, and yes it would cause panic if we saw a giant fire ball heading towards us.

~Keeper

[edit on 8/11/2009 by tothetenthpower]

reply to post by tothetenthpower


sort of, the troll thread was a two part post, the first part was for kind of entertainment and I was going to explain its hypotheticalness in a follow-up post and ask the question of its effect as a text camp. but I type too slow and could not explain myself in time to keep the post out of the trash bin.

So how many days out could an astroid be and already be visible to the untrained naked eye as threatening.

wow, I've never thought about popularity before. negative popularity would suck.

reply to post by president


Well I don't know how old you are, but if you remember Hailey's comet coming about a decade ago, it was clearly visible, streaking accross the sky, and it was thousands upon thousands of miles away.

So it's like Nibiru, it would probably be visible for I dunno...a year or so before it became some huge ovject in the sky 6 months before it hit the planet.

I'm not an expert on these things, but that would seem appropriate.

~Keeper