People often respond to low-probability, high-consequence events like terror attacks or nuclear accidents with a Dread Risk response. This intense fear of the perceived sources of dread leads to extreme avoidance behavior, which often means that people expose themselves to higher risk of dying in more common incidents like traffic accidents.
“Our findings suggest that it doesn’t matter how well-informed people are, they are likely to have an evolved tendency to bias their behavior against exposure to rare but mass mortality events, which we term environmental or aggregate risks,”
From Brassville to... (working title) 