The year 2000 problem is a good example of this. The year 2000 problem was not a problem. Not because it wasn't a problem, but because a shitload of people did a lot of work to make sure it wasn't a problem. If we didn't have news saying 'oh no, this is a problem' before Jan 1 2000, would it have been taken so seriously?

In February 2021 Texas was so incredibly close to losing the grid that it should strike terror into the hearts of anyone that lives there (see Practical Engineering episode on black starts). Simply put this would have been a massive humanitarian disaster in the 3rd largest state in the US of a size the US has not seen in the modern era. Thousands would have died from the extreme cold that was occuring. Thousands more from a lack of medicine. Fuel would have been trapped in the ground, and ran out quickly anyway. The loss of refining capabilities on the coast would have crippled the entire US. Because of the stupid design of the Texas grid it would have taken weeks or months to get everything back online.

The modern world has become very fragile due to long supply lines of necessary supplies. Covid did a good job of showing some of these weaknesses. I don't think the "did bad thing happen or not" is the way we should be looking at this. It's "How can we reduced the impact of bad things happening". And we're doing a terrible fucking job at it by consolidating companies and industries even further.

Maybe we should actually be worried about a billion+ death event in the near future because of our stupid decisions at a global scale. Maybe we should turn that fear into doing something into preventing it.