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Yeh, they did.
They were extremely smart people.
And they considered the possibility of that happening.
They calculated the probability of it happening, considered their known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns in their calculations, and concluded the possibility (including their error margin) was so incredibly low that it wouldn't happen.
And they were right.
A scary prospect, to be sure.
But ultimately, that's what experts do.
Anyone can build a bridge that will stay up, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that only barely stays up.
And besides, if they were wrong, it would very quickly not matter any more.