> A lot of times these hypothetical fears are disconnected from reality.

Conversely, a lot of times people don't fear real dangers of reality until it bites them. "Hackers wouldn't care about me, and the single password I use on every website is super good and complicated."

> but people generally don't engage in destruction for destruction's sake

Generally true, but they do engage in destruction when there's profit to be made or when it becomes in their geopolitical interests, and sometimes that destruction is quite notable: Remember when it was safe to assume that passengers could passively wait out airplane hijackings?

Your average script-kiddie might not seriously consider cutting everyone's brakes simultaneously, Al Queda would have been giddy.