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“That’s Horrifying Information”: 68 Disturbing Truths To Keep You Up At 2 AM
The world is a dangerous place, and it might be scarier than we think. Many people even worry about the fate of our civilization, as 70% of the global population expects a major worldwide conflict in the upcoming 25 years. But there are a lot more things that make living scary.
For example, have you ever thought about just how much of your data social media companies and apps are tracking? And have you ever heard about the Baby Scoop Era when newborns were taken from unwed mothers and fathers and given to those who couldn't have children?
If you haven't, this is a good opportunity to learn more about these and other phenomena. Folks have been sharing all sorts of unsettling facts in a thread where one netizen asked, "What is a disturbing truth that you know?" Here is a compilation of the most scary random facts that you might not have known yet!
Discover more in “That’s Horrifying Information”: 69 Disturbing Truths To Keep You Up At 2 AM
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#1
I work in Research Funding, so have a pretty wide ranging view of the problems our species and planet are facing. Soil quality, falling crop yields, rising sea levels, microplastics, pollinators, biodiversity, rising temperatures, anti-microbial resistance, AI power drain accelerating climate change and water shortages and so, so much more. Far, far too little is being done and far too late.
A great deal of effort, money and resource is being put into distracting people from these issues and stoking social divisions. If everyone is angry about engineered problems they won't blame those responsible for the real ones. Ask yourself why the richest people on the planet own a lot of the media.
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#2
Crows can remember human facial features and they hold grudges, remembering bad interactions with people for many years. They can also pass this knowledge to their offspring, creating a generational grudge.
Don't [mess] with crows.
#3
As nurses, we sort of "lie" to family all the time, particularly in hospice which is what I do and will speak from.
Let me explain non-maleficense: my care is for the patient. Do no harm. The benefit is for the patients benefit only.
Example: Is there anything more we can do for my 92 year old cancer ridden heart disease grandma to get more time? Her son will be here in 4 days!
Yes... I could... fluids subq, o2, meds, pull back the morphine, push Ensure protein drink if they have a feeding tube for calories and less ativan JUST a smidgen and I could def get her a few more days.... and in much more pain and anxiety...
My answer: im sorry, theres nothing we can do.
I dont care that you want more time with your mom or dad or grandma, I will tell you there is nothing more, because there is nothing more for the patient here... it's just needless suffering for the family to benefit from.
And so I offer the pain meds, I offer to increase with MD approval, and with that approval I know I'll be walking them to the veil at this point to cross over. (Let me edit in a disclaimer here: all drugs education and risks are laid out as part of what I do as reflex and training, ww dont mention drugs without risks and benefits, as in "this could be what does it but it will make them more comfortable" etc)
My mind prepares to get you all to acceptance as in 45 minutes, their breathing will stop when it hits. They will blame the meds or say it was too strong etc.
I once had a woman barely retirement age sorta, vomiting blood every 30 min, got the whole family to acceptance, cheered her on telling her how beautiful she looked, how incredible she was doing, how we were almost there and almost done. She smiled, sipped water, vomited blood, I wiped her face, put a cool cloth on her forehead, and gave her more water. She closes her eyes and I offer her pain meds and her dilauded and she said yes. We all smiled and nodded at eachother, tears in our eyes, and she said she felt better, vomiting slowed a little, she had some energy to talk to everyone and I said you need to say all that you can, now.
2 hours later she was gone.
I didn't tell them that I came to assist. It wasn't for them, it was for her.
After she's gone it will be all about the family for the next 13 months. That's a bereavement team, my goal is pre-bereavement acceptance.
#4
Abortion bans in the US mean that OBGYN residents in ban states are unable to access the training needed to practice to the full scope of their specialty, including managing pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and other vital services.
#8
That a majority of Americans lack the literacy and education but also the critical thinking capacity and motivation needed to do the kind of knowledge work and even factory work needed in the next 30 years.
#9
The USA has the worst outcomes for maternal & infant mortality among all industrialized countries. It takes an education one can’t get by being passed through the assembly line, to avoid being a statistic. Most of the morbidities & mortalities are preventable. The problem is the system of care.
#10
This isn’t super disturbing but it disturbed me, I used to work in a charity shop in London and it really opened my eyes. About **80%** of the clothing donations never made it to the shop floor — they were sold off for pennies per kilo to a “rag man” for *textile recycling.*
*Most fast fashion items don't have a resell value ( ie Shein, Temu, Primark etc)*
But here’s the thing: most of it isn’t actually recycled. It gets packed into bales and shipped to countries like Ghana to be resold, but the quality is usually so poor that a huge percentage ends up as waste.
A lot of it ultimately gets:
* **Dumped** in open landfills, on beaches, or near waterways
* **Burned** in the open because there’s no proper waste infrastructure
* **Polluting the environment** with microplastics and chemicals as it breaks down
On top of that, the flood of ultra-cheap second-hand clothing can undercut local textile industries, making it harder for local manufacturers to survive.
It’s wild how much of our “donations” are basically just waste exports.
#13
If you have a smart anything, smart fridge, camera sensors etc there are millions of unsavory people all over the world that already have your information.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, it's not because you are not trying hard enough. It's because the system is designed for you to fall and fail.
#14
The fact that misinformation spreads faster than the truth online is pretty chilling. It’s like we’re living in a world where facts don’t matter anymore.
#15
For a lot of people in nursing homes, nobody is really checking on them. Families visit less and less, staff are overworked, and if something bad happens, it can go unnoticed for a long time.
#16
Measles resets your immune system. All those antibodies you’ve got from years of colds and stomach bugs and sore throats? Yeah, measles is cleaning those out. If you’re lucky enough to recover from measles, you could still be catching every disease you’ve ever had all over again.
#17
There are extremely poor parents in 3rd world countries all over the world who actively have and sell their children for as little as 10k usd, which is a life changing amount of money for many of them, to the groups behind the operation of places like what happened on Epstein Island, which is still going on somewhere else right now.
#20
I’m a Home Healthcare Aide for senior citizens, and the amount of seniors living in neglect and squalor (even in facilities, and often times of the senior’s own choosing) is appalling. The number of times I’ve walked into a home and thought *”adult protective services really needs to step in here because this place is a biohazard”* has been far too many.
#21
If (god forbid) you get cancer and need chemotherapy, when they administer the chemo through the IV, you can taste it. It tastes like chemicals. No one prepared me for that. Absolutely disgusting.
#22
No matter how careful, aware, gentle, or rough we are with our kids we WILL [mess] them up somehow. And that we also cannot fully protect them from predators.
Also, religion doesn't impact our experience of the dying process as much as one would hope. A life well loved does.
Pervasive mental illness (schizophrenia/bipolar/etc) can truly appear out of nowhere anywhere in life, but primarily in your teens/twenties.
Source: Am trauma/grief/crisis therapist.
#23
There could be a girl locked upstairs in any house on my street for the last 10 years and I’ve spent 10 years not knowing I could save her.
Ariel Castro, the one who did have 3 women in his house for more than a decade, including one having at least one baby and the other being beaten until she miscarried repeatedly, that was in a neighborhood maybe 20 minutes from here. Nobody had a clue.
#24
Even mild covid infections can cause serious health problems and permanent damage to your body.
It's mostly disturbing because people act like because it hasn't hurt them, it won't. Not true.
And people act like catching repeatedly is totally fine. It's not.
#25
I've been working in biodiversity conservation/climate change mitigation for over 20 years. We are [in a predicament]. Maybe not in a purely apocalyptic way, but anyone born in the next 10-15 years will grow up in a massively different world than the rest of us. And it won't be good.
#26
Humanity started and will end and it won't even be a flash in the age of the universe and most likely nothing will ever remember us.
#28
That nobody is immune to propaganda or scams. Even the most diligent, intelligent and hyper aware people can find themselves wrapped up in a cult where they believe the democrats in the government are 5th dimensional beings from another planet hellbent on drinking childrens blood. Or find themselves spending thousands of dollars on cleanses and obvious pyramid schemes.
#29
At least 1.5 million babies were stolen from unwed mothers and fathers during the Baby Scoop Era.
#30
There are people that have been kidnapped and locked into basements of houses all over the world.
#31
Peter Thiel and the rest of the tech bros are plotting to replace our democracy with the Network State.
They write books about it. They have podcasts about it. They want corporations to rule over everyone and remove governments.
#33
I worked for TJ Maxx in college. When retailers ask for “donations” at the register, those donations don’t go to the actual charity. In our break room we had a poster for a charity drive we were running. It said the goal was a certain amount of money. But the truth was the store already made a donation slightly smaller than that. And the donations customers gave was the store recouping its loss and then some.
#34
Most apps track way more about you than you’d ever willingly tell another human.
biffbobfred:
Facebook was accused of listening in on microphones. Their defense “ha we weren’t doing that we just know so much about you it can seem like we’re listening to every word”. And somehow this was supposed to make people feel better.
Freak_Among_Men_II:
I hate living in the information age. For all the minor conveniences of modern technology, we are made to surrender our very identities to the endless maw of soulless profit-driven corporations.
#35
Life isn’t always fair, and sometimes bad things happen for no reason. But it makes me appreciate the little moments of kindness and happiness even more.
#36
Phosphate mines will be empty around year 2100, at constant rate of extraction. Our present industrial agriculture, beyond petrol, is using phosphate to fertilize the fields. It will be absolutely impossible to keep doing this if there is no more phosphate to be used, and phosphate isn't something you can synthesize, let alone create ex-nihilo. To put it another way, industrial agriculture based on inputs will be completely impossible and will disappear.
Mycorrhizal fungi are the organisms capable of accessing soil phosphorus when it's in a form that plants cannot assimilate (it always happen at one point or an other). They provide phosphate and other nutrients to the plants in exchange of sugar, as they are unable to do photosynthesis themselves. An agriculture with soils rich in mycorrhizal fungi will be our only option by 2100. This suppose an undisturbed or very seldomly disturbed soil, meaning no-till farming, agroforestry, syntropic agroforestry and so on.
#39
A huge portion of what we treat as “normal life” is actually shaped by economic relations that benefit a tiny minority, while most people don’t realize how much of their daily struggle is structurally produced rather than personal.
#40
The same field that is advocating for your mental health is teaching businesses and AI how to send you predatory advertising based on psychological weakness.
#41
There are tiny bugs living in your eyelashes right now. They’re called demodex, and they eat d**d skin. Most of the time they’re completely harmless and you’d never even notice them, but sometimes you can have an overpopulation of and/or an allergy to them that can cause irritation. I’m not personally disturbed by them (I think of them as my little eyelash friends) but I’m sure that’s horrifying information for some people.
#45
The vast majority of our thoughts, decisions, and actions are controlled by unconscious processes. Our conscious self often only comes up with a logical explanation for what our subconscious has already done after the fact.
#46
That it can take quite a few shocks to bring you back after heart surgery. I read the notes on my last one and it took eleven to bring me back.
#49
The other day, a 4 inch lizard snuck into my house when I was bringing in groceries. I can't find it.
#50
Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride used real skeletons because the artificial ones weren’t scary enough.
Papio_73:
I think it actually had to do with cost: at the time the ride was made human skeletons were cheaper than replicas.
#52
That dentists and traditional medical surgeons will fight over the costs of bodies and in particular the heads of bodies donated to science for teaching purposes. Weirdest meeting of my life.
#53
Horses' legs are built like fingers, meaning they’re basically running around on fingers all the time and that's why they break their legs so easily.
#55
I worked in a plant that makes your pig and poultry food. They are fed straight up plastic before you eat them.
These facilities recycle waste food in to pig and poultry food. So we’d get whole trailers of everything you can think of. Gum, peanut butter, noodles, granola, cereal. It all came in its original packaging and we’d throw it all in to one massive pile of slop. That slop would get ran through a grinder, packaging and all, mixed with different liquid fats and grains to manage nutrition content, and then ran through a dryer. The finished product looks similar to saw dust. But when you pick it up and sift through it, you can see all the bits of micro plastics and packaging material. It gets picked up and brought to factory farms like Jenny O and Gold n Plump.
#56
That just because you do everything right, work hard and try your best; things will still not work out like you imagined.
#57
The chainsaw was originally designed as a medical instrument used in childbirth to widen the birth canal.
There is evidence that some of the Challenger crew survived the initial explosion as several breathing packs were activated before the module hit the water.
#59
That we waste the majority of our life due to worry about money.
Many will [pass] without doing the things they could have or should have done, due to money.
We postponed a lot of things that never got done later. The things we said we’d get to “when things calmed down” quietly slipped through our fingers while we were busy doing life. We never took that cruise in the British Virgin Islands with friends. Sure, you saved the money and got a lot of work done at the office. But now that our health is slipping and friends are [passing away], that extra money seems kinda pointless. We’d much rather have the memories and experiences. At this point you will be making plans to give that extra money away to a charity when we [are gone].
#60
Medical personnel from nurses to pharmacists to doctors make numerous mistakes routinely in hospitals, many of which are potentially harmful to fatal for patients.
#61
There is a lake in northern Oregon not to far from civilization but upstream nonetheless. Recently (within the last 8 years), recreational scuba divers just goofing around. Came across a trove of more than 20, 55 gallon drums with biohazard signs on it and weird army coding which said (2-4D)and (2-4-5-T). After contacting authorities it was determined the containers contained a military defoliant, Agent Orange to be exact. The drum are estimate to be at least 50 years.
They have been considering ways to remove them but they are "so fragile" that they can't. Like I said this has been there for years and one day those bottle will leak and a lot of trees will die, and alot babies will be born deformed.
I have a simple solution, or divert the stream that fills the lake. Drain the lake. Drill in to the top facing side of the drums safely s**k the contents out. Remove the canisters once empty, and do any environmental protection. Practices required due to potential contamination. But, I doubt that idea has even crossed the committees mind.
#62
We are capable of much more than we believe.
numbrate:
This is either a very uplifting statement or an absolutely terrifying one.
#63
I've seen the charts of how many insects are allowed per pound of ground coffee in popular brands.
It's a lot.
#64
I have a regular intruder trespassing in my attic, and there is nothing I can do about it. Rented apartment and landlord will not believe me.
#65
I brewed my coffee like I did any other day, then after my husband and I enjoyed our cups I went to discard the filter and grounds only to discover the boiled corpse of a broad-faced sac spider under the filter.
I now compulsively inspect the coffee machine before brewing.
My husband still doesn't know and I'll be taking this to my grave.
#66
I once saw someone say that many charities for awareness and treatment of mental illnesses like Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder HOPE for a celebrity to come out and admit that they have that condition so it can be more understandable for the common people to see what people with the condition are like.
#67
Bank security can shut your account/freeze it down at any time for essentially no reason if your account activity is perceived to pose a security threat or risk.
#68
You’ve never seen your own face… only reflections and pictures. Everyone else knows what you really look like except you.
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