Why isn't our society freaking out over this?

[Piratecat]

Cultists, cannon fodder and mooks have to come from somewhere.

 

[Ostlander]

Lol, maybe these people disappear from this world and end up in that dimension where missing socks and pens go!?

 

[Repentant Lurker]

When we have this many people on the globe some are going to fall through the cracks. Also the fact that 50 million people could vanish from a third world nation tommorrow and would still come second to a "Britany & Paris nude love rampage" headline (you know it would!) just shows what kind of monkeys we are. Besides us vampires gotta eat ya know

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Some may say there's always been these predators lurking about and it's our relatively recent ability to exchange information instantly that makes the issue seem so new and horrifying.

I think the fact that it has become easier to get information anonymously has possibly increased the number of people who are willing to actually try something. 40 years ago when a predator was limited to finding out about a person by actually meeting them first, it probably deterred a number of them from every actually trying something.

Nah it is new and the trend is horrifying. There's a subculture of predators out there and it's growing like a cancer. As they grow the number of missing people seems to grow right with them...coincidence?

Again, looking a little closer at the data, there is no evidence that there are more missing people. More cases are being reported than in 1980, but the number seems to go up and down, and the number of cases closed are keeping pace. That says to me that law enforcement has found many of these cases are not valid, or are overreactions to kids being late or at a party or whatever. If law enforcement officials were really closing that many more cases because they were doing a great job finding more people who were really missing, I guarantee they would be trumpting their success to justify funding for their organizations.

As to WHY people are not freaking out...they do when it happens to them, their family and friends, their neighborhoods, etc...Until then it's Reality TV and fast food to make all those baddies out there seem like a distant bad memory.

People really don't want to face the idea of something bad happening when it hasn't happened to them. Not any different for somthing like cancer. People freak out about it when it happens to someone they know, or a cancer cluster is found in their town. Until then, it is usually just a bad thing that happens to other people.

 

[Ostlander]

Good points, freaky all the same. A total lack of humanity on the rise...or maybe there are things that really bump in the night out there, lol.

 

[trancejeremy]

If you actually look at the data (which Thornir Alekeg provided), it's only about 2-3 thousand people actually really go missing a year in the US. (There are 31 years of data, and like 100,000 active records which haven't been cleared)

Considering the size of the country, that's hardly a huge number. Especially since they also seem to discover about half that (1500 or so) people a year whom they can't ID.

So the reason people are't freaking out, is that there is nothing to freak out about.

 

[Ostlander]

that's still a lot of people. I'm not freaked, mostly curious about the behavior...in regards to the predatory aspect of the disappearances. Sure sometimes people just WANT to vanish, but it's the people that are taken that gets me jittery sometimes.

Which takes me back to the "things that bump in the night" idea...what if?

Just an idea; what if?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you actually look at the data (which Thornir Alekeg provided), it's only about 2-3 thousand people actually really go missing a year in the US. (There are 31 years of data, and like 100,000 active records which haven't been cleared)

Considering the size of the country, that's hardly a huge number. Especially since they also seem to discover about half that (1500 or so) people a year whom they can't ID.

So the reason people are't freaking out, is that there is nothing to freak out about.

I'm not sure how people can read the first post and not spot that immediately.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

that's still a lot of people.

Three thousand people out of almost 300 million? That's not a lot by any stretch of the imagination.

Runaways, people becoming homeless and dropping off the grid, non-custodial parents abducting children, murder, accidents away from home (including drownings), there's a lot of ways for people to vanish without a scary conspiracy being involved.

 

[Ostlander]

Totally, but the spooky part is what's fun! It makes for good storytelling.

I'm certain there's a lot of people that would love to drop off the face of the Earth for any number of reasons, especially now that it seems that we're all tied into this huge information grid now. My creditors probably know more about me than my mother!

The hospital I work at has aprox. three thousand employees...to me it's still a good number of people. It would be like if I went into work one day and everybody had vanished. Out of 300 mil. not so bad, but enough to raise a few eyebrows.

Why people really freak out: Media (Fear sells)