Here's a list of things in no particular order that the media tried to terrify us with.
Radon, remember that was supposed to kill us all?
Legionaries disease.
Asbestos, which is always ready to claw it's way out of the wall and attack.
Alar.
Swine Flu, was also supposed to kill us all.
Bird Flu
Hong Kong Flu, which was horrible but not the second coming of the Black Plague.
Acid Rain
Global cooling-- yes, in the 70s they told us that we were going to freeze to death.
Killer Bees
Y2K
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Ebola. Unless you came in contact with an Ebola victim's explosive bodily fluids the odds of you getting sick turned out to be incredibly slim.
Herpes, long before AIDS, the media told us that Herpes was going to get us.
Killer clowns--- that was probably a well orchestrated publicity stunt for the Steven King It movie which is coming out this year.
The Russians were going get us and if you didn't speak Russian you were in trouble.
The Chinese were going to get us and if you didn't speak Chinese you were trouble.
The Metric system:If you didn't learn it you weren't going to be able to get a job when you grew up and would end up on the street. I still get mad about this when I think about it. What a horrid thing to tell little kids.
Homelessness. If your dad lost his job on Monday, you and your family would be on the sidewalk by Wednesday. Apparently drug use, alcoholism, insanity, lack of impulse control or being a criminal drifter had nothing to with it.
AIDS. Any day now it was going to jump out of the original victim population and our friends and families would die like flies.
Toxic shock syndrome. If you were a teen aged girl it was coming for you like a wolf on a lost sheep.
Poison Halloween candy
Cults in every kindergarten ---(although witchcraft is real and it's not uncommon to walk into a nice seeming person's home and find a Ouija board or a book of spells the lurid tales about knives that didn't leave a wound or cause blood flow and tunnels to dungeons we were told on the news were false and innocent people went to jail.
Lynne reminded me of the Zika virus. It was tragic for the babies who were born with it but we didn't all come down with it and most women who traveled in the Zika zone and who didn't have panic abortions ended up with perfectly normal children.