[anigbrowl]

I don't think people panic about plane crashes; the grounding of 737s a few years back might have been an overreaction to the statistical signal, but that signal also seemed to point to a deep control theory problem (sensors and systems that prompted pilots to do exactly the the wrong thing in a particular corner case.

9/11 is a better example of what you're talking about, where a genuine disaster was so traumatic as to reshape the whole society in ways often detached from risk or rationality.