These doomsday prophecies are always conveniently distant. You can tell people any scary nonsense as long as it's far enough away that everyone will have forgotten the details of your prediction by the time it fails to come to pass.
It's just the same as how we can show people today any number of doomsday prophecies from the past about how the world was definitely going to be wrecked by 2020, or 2010, or 2000, or 1990, but somehow nobody thinks they were serious back then... but then they take the doomsday prophecy about 2030 seriously.
It's just the same as how we can show people today any number of doomsday prophecies from the past about how the world was definitely going to be wrecked by 2020, or 2010, or 2000, or 1990, but somehow nobody thinks they were serious back then... but then they take the doomsday prophecy about 2030 seriously.