When I was young I had messed with the computer and it showed an english message with the word "atom" in it. My mom not being a native speaker freaked out as if a nuclear explosion was about to take place.

I almost shit myself the first time I saw X Screensaver..

It has to take the prize for worst UX ever.

do you mean the bsod screensaver

sometimes people also complain about xscreensaver's lock screen because it doesn't use a widget library, but the alternative lock screens can often be crashed through bugs in the widget libraries they use

The one with the flaming screen and countdown timer. I had just installed the distro and though I had some malware installed.

oh, that's just the lock screen

the flaming screen is just the xscreensaver logo (it's supposed to save your screen from burnin, originally)

i hadn't ever heard of anyone thinking it was malware, that's pretty funny

jwz is a more brilliant troll than i gave him credit for