I don’t think they’re scared, I think they know it’s a lose-tie game.

If you’re correct, there’s not much reward aside from the “I told you so” bragging rights, if you’re wrong though - boy oh boy, you’ll be deemed unworthy.

You only need to get one extreme prediction right (stock market collapse, AI taking over, etc ), then you’ll be seen as “the guru”, the expert, the one who saw it coming. You’ll be rewarded by being invited to boards, panels and government councils to share your wisdom, and be handsomely paid to explain, in hindsight, why it was obvious to you, and express how baffling it was that no one else could see what you saw.

On the other hand, if predict an extreme case and you get it wrong, there’s virtually 0 penalties, no one will hold that against you, and no one even remembers.

So yeah, fame and fortune is in taking many shots at predicting disasters, not the other way around.