I was thinking specifically here about people in North-Western Europe and the UK who panicked when the Chernobyl accident first came to light and thought they'd

I was thinking specifically here about people in North-Western Europe and the UK who panicked when the Chernobyl accident first came to light and thought they'd be dead within days. To my mind, that was indeed pretty irrational. It's also an interesting contrast to what I've read about the attitude of the people who actually lived in Pripyat at the time who were arguably irrationally calm.