Europe travel warning

A few weeks back i was stopped by a man and his wife and asked what number bus they needed to catch to get to the town centre. Judging by his accent he was obviously American or Canadian and thanked me warmly when i told him i hadn't a clue. I decided afterwards that he had to be American because he ended every sentence by calling me buddy.
Now i don't think that every American tourist calls everybody buddy but it does seem that whenever i have been called buddy, it was by an American.
I have no problem with being called buddy, the guy in the newsagent calls me dude every morning, but it seems that American and Canadian tourists may be thin on the ground soon because they both have been warned of the raised level of terror attacks in Europe and their citizens should take every precaution to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when travelling.
Our own threat level stands at severe which means that an attack is highly likely and we have been issued with a warning of the high threat of a terrorist attack in France and Germany.
Confusingly, Germany has said it will not change its country's threat level because there are no indications of imminent attacks there.
A cynical friend has already put it down to Obama sucking so badly in the USA and with imminent mid-term elections, he has taken a leaf from the G W Bush book and stoked up an imaginary threat, but it seems that it is how cynical we have become over this war on terror.
My opinion of Obama has sunk further with the longer he has been in power but i don't know if i believe this is just fear mongering because an election is coming up, there must be some sort of threat.
Maybe us Europeans, and especially us British, are a bit more blase about terrorism threats, more an inconvenience rather than something to cower from. Hopefully this will be another false alarm but it is understandable that Governments want to make announcements like these so they are covered if anything does happen, but it is also understandable if the public take the next announcement with a slightly larger pinch of salt.