In the late 1990s there was a fun geek webcomic called "After Y2K" that imagined a very different world caused by a huge disaster. I didn't expect anything other than what actually happened, but a lot of people actually believed some of this stuff.

https://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/Aftery2k/aftery2kmai...

I did an email interview with a major publication in Brazil about the Y2K issue and carefully explained what would and what would not be a problem and how the most serious issues had been fixed at a significant cost. They ignored everything I said and only posted "Mainframe computers will be with us for a long time, says Jecel" in a way that made it sound like a threat. The rest of the article had the typical horror scenarios. They wasted an opportunity to be able to gloat about being right.

Robert Cringely's "Y2K: The Winter of our Disconnect?" was about the only voice of reason in the media back then and he got angry emails saying thing like "the blood of all those who died due to his misinformation would be on his head".