In a world that’s in a constant state of change, you can never stop learning. That’s why many of us are always hungry for tasty knowledge bites and nibbles of information to help us better navigate our surroundings. However, as much as it is easy to be amazed by what humanity and nature are capable of, there’s also a darker side we often overlook.
So quite recently, Redditor RefrigeratorDry495 decided to learn more about it and reached out to AskReddit to start up a thread about simple yet incredibly disturbing and scary facts. People from far and wide rolled up their sleeves and started typing out responses that really are not for the faint of heart.
From creepy stuff about our past to alarmingly unsettling statistics, we at Bored Panda handpicked some of the most popular answers from the thread. So if you’re ready to witness how real life can be far more terrifying than fiction, continue scrolling and share your thoughts with us in the comments! A small note of warning, though, some of these facts can seem a bit overwhelming, so if you’re in great need of something lighter, take a look at our recent post full of wholesome stories right here.
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Sharks have been around for at least 420 million years, meaning they have survived four of the “big five” mass extinctions. That makes them older than humanity, older than Mount Everest, older than dinosaurs, older even than trees. Yet we could potentially see them extinct in our lifetime
If a biological trait is common in almost every human, then it evolved for a reason. Almost everybody has the same response to the "uncanny valley," or in other words we are made uncomfortable by things that look almost human but not quite. This implies humans once had a reason to fear something that looks human but isn't.
Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British hadn’t eaten most of them.
If there’s one thing that never ceases to amaze us, it's the amount of knowledge in the world. We can spend a lifetime trying to make sense of our surroundings by gathering new information every chance we get. One additional perk is that we get to spice up dull conversations and come up with new brilliant ideas to make this planet just a tad better.
More often than not, however, we applaud and celebrate the technological breakthroughs that we humans manage to create and also the mesmerizing beauty of the natural world. Let’s be honest, the disturbing and scary facts about real life may catch our attention, but they’re bound to send shivers down our spines. Sure, it’s better to be safe than sorry, but who really wants to know about massive super volcanos or missing nuclear weapons that have never been recovered? That's nightmare material right there.
You have no way of really knowing if everyone experiences reality and consciousness the same way you do.
Statistically speaking, if you are a woman and get murdered, it was most likely by a family member, partner or ex-partner, in your own home.
If you are a man and get murdered, it was most likely by an acquaintance or stranger, in a public place.
I watch a lot of true crime, and when a woman gets murdered it's actually surprising when it turns out NOT to be the boyfriend/husband.
Maximum part of oxygen came from sea/oceans. But people always talks about protecting trees not sea/oceans.
If i am not mistaken (correct me if i am) algae and corrals do most of the work converting Carbon dioxide to oxygen
But it looks like turning a blind eye to the uneasy side of life is not that easy. You see, there’s one thing we humans are wired to do — seek out the gloom. As daunting as that may sound, we have this tendency to give more significance to negative thoughts than positive or neutral ones, something the experts call the negativity bias.
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Hardwiring Happiness, explained that humans evolved to be fearful, and it helped keep us alive. "This vulnerability to feeling threatened has effects at many levels, ranging from individuals, couples, and families, to schoolyards, organizations and nations," he wrote and stressed how important it is to be aware of how our brains become wary if we want to regain some amount control in the way we perceive the world.
the world invests more money in viagra and botox than in the study of Alzheimer
Moving back the start time for school in an area resulted in 70% less car accidents.
Similarly at each daylight saving, heart attacks and accidents decrease with an hour of extra sleep and increase with an hour less of sleep.
Sleep is crazy important.
Moving back the start time would mean less sleep though right? ..I'm just confused on that part because it resulted in less accidents when school was earlier but similarly the extra hours sleep meant less heart attacks and accidents..sleep is important but wouldn't you be losing sleep if the school run was earlier ?
Cotard's syndrome, also called "walking corpse syndrome," is a condition wherein the patient believes they are dead, dying, missing parts of their bodies, or don't exist.
Some people with Cotard's syndrome may stop speaking or eating since they believe they're dead.
Hanson stated that the nervous system has been evolving for 600 million years. "Our ancestors had to make a critical decision many times a day: approach a reward or avoid a hazard,” he wrote. People had to find food, have children, and hide from predators to survive and avoid threats.
However, if our ancestors missed out on food one day, they could easily find some more the next. But if they failed to dodge potential dangers, they didn't get the chance to pass on their genes to future generations. "Consequently, your body generally reacts more intensely to negative stimuli than to equally strong positive ones," Hanson explained.
You can condition someone with zero personal/family history of mental illness into having some very severe mental illnesses within about a week.
The entire planet could be immediately destroyed by any one of a number of cosmic events that we have no way of seeing or stopping like rogue black holes.
Worse...there are some events we can very much see coming, but do absolutely nothing about.
Like killing Earth. Last I knew of we can't just move to another planet.
I read somewhere ( don’t remember where) that you are more likely to be bitten by someone in New York than to be bitten by a shark.
"The alarm bell of your brain — the amygdala (you’ve got two of these little almond-shaped regions, one on either side of your head) — uses many of its neurons to look for bad news: it’s primed to go negative in most people," the psychologist continued. "Once it sounds the alarm, negative events and experiences get quickly stored in memory — in contrast to positive events and experiences, which are not prioritized in the same way."
But while this is a great way to pass on gene copies, our quality of life has been improving significantly and proving we don’t actually need to feel afraid or anxious all of the time. To lead a healthy and fulfilling life, we need to better grasp this tendency to focus on the negativities and understand that things are usually not as bad. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the discomforting things around you, try to pay attention to what’s in front of you.
Yellowstone is a giant super volcano. If it blows, things on this planet will go really bad really fast.
Is there any geologist here? How many super volcanoes do exist on the Earth?
Every time you move your eyes from one spot to another, you go blind for the instant your eyes are moving. It’s called “Saccadic masking”, it’s an evolutionary trait to stop us from getting motion sick.
Your brain fills in the blank spot with whatever you end up looking at and context clues. It’s why when you first look at a clock, the second hand seems to take longer to click the first time
Chimps don't attack to kill. Instead they aim for the genitals, face, and fingers and will leave the opponent alive.
There have been many people who have owned chimps who have turned on their owners and left them incredibly disfigured. One case, the chimp ripped a man's junk off. In all cases, faces were mutilated and fingers were chewed off. It's pretty much how they instinctively fight in the wild.
So if you think that chimp is going to be a cute pet, better think twice. Even if you raised it since it was born, they'll turn on you at any second. A disfigurement roulette waiting to happen.
Vile creatures.
I think anyone who keeps a chimp as a pet is rather asking for problems. They aren't meant to be pets!
"Focusing on the things we can control alleviates some of the fear. Change is a part of life. It is in acknowledging this fact that we can live a healthier, less stressful life from day to day," Shari Botwin, LCSW and author of Thriving After Trauma, explained to Bored Panda in an earlier interview.
"It is natural for us to go into flight or fight mode when we feel scared or in danger," she said and added that it’s best to take a minute and assess the situation you are facing. "Ask yourselves, 'Is the fear I am experiencing in my mind and body matching the current situation, or am I also reacting to other events that left me feeling traumatized or stranded in the past?'"
If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood.
Despite literally all war propaganda from every country saying otherwise, you are not going to make an individual impact in glorious battle and die valiantly in a hail of bullets. Statistically, you are overwhelmingly more likely to be killed by an explosive device launched miles away by a vehicle you will never see, long before you ever get a chance to pull the trigger.
And literally EVERY country runs its own propaganda in all wars. That includes OUR side in the Ukraine war. Some things are not reported, some things that are reported are not true and some is exaggeration. Some of it isn't even news but is designed to make you support the war itself. Keep your eyes peeled for it. Harder to do when the propaganda involves limiting the outlets for news to their own side only. You have nothing to compare it to..
idk why this freaks some ppl out, but gelatin is made out of bones. That's right - your melted marshmallow in your hot chocolate is melted animal bone. It's good stuff.
That's why the traditional marshmallows aren't vegan or halal...
The trauma specialist suggested that it is best to respond to your fear with words of reassurance and compassion. "Try and put the fear in perspective. Don't go through these feelings alone. Call a friend or talk to a family member. Process what you are feeling so you can sort through where the fear is coming from. Remind yourselves it is perfectly normal to feel afraid at times. It is an emotion that comes and goes, especially if you have experienced anything that left you feeling afraid," Botwin advised.
If it's sufficiently dark, you will hallucinate your reflection as a different entity and it will appear to start moving on it's own.
A male honey bee's ejaculation is so strong it makes his d**k explode, killing him.
I’m friends with a professor of soil ecology here in the Midwest. She says that if we don’t change our current farming practices, much of the Midwest’s soil will be infertile with one to two generations.
Capgras Syndrome is a mental delusion where you believe that the people closest to you have been replaced by impostors
Squirrels carry all the same diseases as rats but humans don’t mind because their cute.
Your phone is likely spying on you right now as you're reading this
The leap in technological advancement from us to a race that could *actually* traverse the galaxy/universe is astronomically ludicrous. We are absolutely nothing in comparison to any race that has created ways to reach us.
Meaning any race capable of finding us would be so advanced and so much more knowledgeable than us that they could observe us without us ever knowing. They would have technologies, weapons, etc outside our realm of understanding and would be able to annihilate us with ease, just given the fact that their ability to generate/harness power would be unparalleled.
If any alien ever came to earth with hostile tendencies, short of a miracle, we’d be doomed.
Good thing they only come here for the a**l probing. Speaking of which...
Isn’t it funny how the 80’s were full of a**l probing aliens ? I don’t think that happens much anymore ! I guess the 80’s were also full of cocaine benders tho !
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Trouble with OP's statement is that we do not know what we don't know. Any moment a breakthrough could happen that would change everything we know about the universe and space travel. Or it may not. That is why all we can say is that we don't really know much right now. 100 years ago well known scientists were saying traveling to the moon was impossible. There are many theories out there as to how we could travel to other solar systems. They only take the right circumstances to develop one of them.
Didn't they say we were centuries away from heavier than air flight just a couple years before the Wright Brothers first flight?
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If Einstein is right about the speed of light being the maximum possible, and it seems to be so, the chances of anything coming here are zero. Everything simply is too far away.
Physicists are already modeling space-warping travel.
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Pure speculation. Since we don't know how to traverse the galaxy, we don't know just how hard it is. I read a sci-fi story that addressed this. It was actually very simple and we just didn't know how to, through a quirk of history. An alien ship landed and people bearing muskets and lanterns emerged, thinking they had superior tech. It ended badly for them. Now bear in mind, I am not saying that OP is wrong, it's just that we can't know what they think is fact, actually is.
And, if they indeed have all that tech and power, why would they bother with us in the first place?
Slavery, Food (I've heard we taste like pork), having another planet that is able to support life
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Almost all the science fiction movies, TV and books about alien invasion have them using technology that is a small amount beyond ours out of convenience. Where the odds against this being the case are almost infinite, and the resources they would waste coming here with such a low level of technology would be immense and pointless. As poster said, any aliens who reached us would much more likely be so far advanced we wouldn't even begin to comprehend them.
This is kind of proof that aliens have never shown up. Independence Day pretty much had the interstellar travel down pat. If you are going to go all that distance, you're going to kill off the competition and colonize. Just using North America, almost every inch is owned by someone whose colonizers killed the people there before. The Appomattoc tribe was completely killed off by English colonizers in Virginia. The Anasazi people were killed off by the Navajo (Anasazi means ancient enemy in Navajo) when the Navajo came down from Canada. There's strong evidence that Aztec empire conquered by Cortez was less than 100 years old and founded by Nahuatl driven south when the Apaches killed off most of their tribes who did the same thing to the Tolmec people sitting where Mexico City is now. This history doesn't condone or forgive genocide but it shows its how dominant groups have always treated another on first contact. Every organism puts their survival first.
You mean here. You can't really assume everything else is like us.
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What if they haven't heard of war and are just peaceful and people and animals from Earth are the most violent things in the universe?
What do you mean if? Earthlings are horrendous overall. Look what we have done to this planet and to each other. It's so sad.
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they have been here protecting us from ourselves ever since the atom bombs from WW2. They are only interested in keeping us from blowing up the planet.
By definition, a civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel has already set aside their weapons or said civilization would not have lasted long enough to become advanced enough for interstellar travel...
If there is intelligent life out there, they have probably evolved from being murderous annihilators, hence we're still here, plus they may have observed that we are quite capable of doing the job ourselves. .
It is much more likely that "aliens" will arrive in the form of self-replicating and adaptive nanotech with subtle AI to enable traveling across the vast distances of space without the constrictions and frailty of the biological forms that originally created it. Something like... say... DNA for example. Life on earth was possibly seeded from exactly that kind of technology. We (life on earth in general) are possibly the product of an alien tech designed to colonize planets in a manner that would survive and adapt to any conditions over massive amounts of time. The end purpose being to fill the vastness of space with intelligent life.
(I highly recommend reading Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Near", and for fun read the "We Are Legion, We Are Bob" sci-fi trilogy.)
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And they wouldn't be wrong! Look what we have done to Earth and to each other!
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I haven't done that yet, now have I?
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I feel like they would take one look at humans and be like F*CK THAT, we're going somewhere else.
I mean technology is advancing exponentially, and that's just th stuff we know about. And once quantum computing becomes a thing, game on.
Here's a theory: what we're the aliens that we're so afraid of? Like, what if we're the ones that are going to make contact with other life forms, not the other way around?
That's what all those movies are for. They're secretly government plans for the future
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You are imagining that superior race through human standards, saying things like "weapons", "annihilate" and "hostile intentions". I like thinking of extraterrestials as wise, peaceful, helpful and with tentacles.
The only chance I have of getting a functioning body is medically advanced beneficent aliens
They've already observed us and determined we are not threats to them. We're doing a bang up job of destroying ourselves, so they probably have decided not to bother with this planet inhabited by idiots.
Hey now, I've seen movies. We wouldn't need a miracle so much as a Jeff Goldblum/Will Smith combo.
Let, them come cause humans deserve to die, yet one should not equate humans love of hatred, bigotry and racism on to a race that is more superior for their mind set would also be more evolved.
Dunno, there's enough evidence of extraterrestrial visitation in ancient pictures and such that I'm willing to believe at least one race visited, left some tech and some knowledge and saw what humanity did and has since decided to keep away.
Aliens: *heaps a pile of stones together* yep, that will show our technological superiority.
If some civilization is advanced enough for intergalactic/interstellar travel, then they can probably make spacecrafts that don't glow in the sky.
I wish I could remember the name of the book. I once read a story about an alien race that comes to invade but they weren't actually a warrior society. Never developed their technology for weapons, but for space travel, medicine, environmental science, etc. When they get to us we aren't as tech savvy but maximized the killing potential of everything we ever developed. They come off these fantastic ships with muskets basically
Before the wright bros scientists said man could NEVER fly, then scientists after flight said it would be a million years before we get to the moon, it was 66 years. I am not saying we are around the corner from space exploration but advances can happen at any time.
Carl Sagan warned us as we threw our information into the universe: When you make your presence known, you also alert predators. Are we ready for that?
I imagine them touring the solar system. "And to your right ladies and gentleman is the planet Earth. This small orb is inhabited by four limbed creatures of various sizes who walk upright. They are of questionable intelligence".
This is what I have always said. If we have ever been, or are being, visited, it’s alien tourists and anthropologists. They are just a bunch of looky loos, nothing to be worried about.
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Just having drives in the outer solar system means we couldn't fight back and they could drop asteroids on us to their hearts content. (If they have hearts)
They might be wiser, but how their wisdom translates depends on their motives.
Load More Replies...Alligators can climb trees
Thank goodness there are no alligators here in Australia! *crocodile the size of a van appears* D'OH!
6 nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered since the 1950s.
By the time someone thinks to check out the mysterious object stashed under my house, it will be too late to stop me. MWAHAHAHAH!
Your eyes have a seperate immune-system from the rest of your body. Once your body's immune system discovers you have eyes, it will attack and inflame the blood vessels in the back of your eyes. This can lead to your vision decreasing or even going blind.
The odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 107.
Not only that you can die in a car only going 40mph and something like 30-percent of the people driving after 10pm are driving drunk.
Driving is super dangerous and most people take it for granted.
I recently learned of 'floppy' physics which explains the phenomena of drunk drivers escaping from fatal accidents with minimal injuries because the alcohol is a relaxant and stops them reacting and tensing during the crash. Other non-intoxicated occupants/pedestrians are not so lucky
Dell computers were so bad that there was a website where you could click a button and it would show someone's random webcam without them knowing.
If you live in a major city there is a nuke aimed at you
If you have a parasite in your body, there's only a slim chance you'll know about it before it pops out of your skin or leaves through the back door.
Also, some parasites pop out of skin.
I had a nightmare about a worm coming out of my leg when I was like 6 or 7. Still remember it
You can be seriously Injured from a sneeze
I was washing up and had plates in both hands when a sneeze came at me. I didn't want to drop the plates so I braced myself for an uncontrolled sneeze. It put my back out. I thought I had slipped a disc and was bedridden for two weeks! The pain was tremendous and I couldn't walk. I had to crawl to my bed. Beware of sneezes, yes they spread diseases but nobody ever talks about the injuries they cause. Beware.
1/3 of US murders go unsolved.
We have trace amounts of iron, gold, nickel, and silver within our bloodstream which means with enough people you could drain them of their blood, dilute it down to separate it, and eventually be able to make a full ingot of iron, gold, nickel, and silver.
If chronic wasting disease jumps to humans, the Zombie Apocalypse may become a real thing.
Masses of dumb people unable to think for themselves and going after people with brains ... Yeah, think it's already here lol...
If a panda finds a fresh carcass, they'll eat it
Note: this post originally had 43 images. It’s been shortened to the top 39 images based on user votes.
You would think they'd get their s$%t together by now..
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As is the case with all of BP's "facts lists", some of these are questionable to say the least.
Honestly the New York one is pretty believable tbh
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This is a 100% true fact. 97% of the time 72% of people are spending 23% of their attention on made up facts. Like this one.
I'm surprised. I didn't know four of these. I collect factoids so this is up my alley
myself and my brother. yesterday i sneezed 13 times in a row. i never, ever sneeze less than 3 times and sometimes as much as 18. i have had to pull over while driving if they decided to come rapid fire.
Here's one: There are these tiny little creatures called pinworms that infect about 20% of children. Here's the process: 1) A child swallows a pinworm egg. 2) The pinworm hatches and chills out in the child's intestines. 3) The female pinworm exits the child's a*s while they sleep, and lays eggs around it. 4) This itches, so a child will likely scratch their a*s 5) Eventually after that, a child is likely to touch their mouth, getting the eggs back into their digestive tract. This cycle continues forever :D
I'm surprised no one posted about how the human body contains about as many microbial cells as it does actual human cells.
Accurate: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19136#:~:text=It's%20often%20said%20that%20the,to%2Done%2C%20they%20calculate.
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Please, BP, stop with the "unalived" euphemism!!! It trivializes the trauma, plus it's way more jarring than just saying "killed"
Most all of these really bothered me. Hurt my heart. Very sad things here.....
You would think they'd get their s$%t together by now..
Load More Replies... As is the case with all of BP's "facts lists", some of these are questionable to say the least.
Honestly the New York one is pretty believable tbh
Load More Replies... This is a 100% true fact. 97% of the time 72% of people are spending 23% of their attention on made up facts. Like this one.
I'm surprised. I didn't know four of these. I collect factoids so this is up my alley
myself and my brother. yesterday i sneezed 13 times in a row. i never, ever sneeze less than 3 times and sometimes as much as 18. i have had to pull over while driving if they decided to come rapid fire.
Here's one: There are these tiny little creatures called pinworms that infect about 20% of children. Here's the process: 1) A child swallows a pinworm egg. 2) The pinworm hatches and chills out in the child's intestines. 3) The female pinworm exits the child's a*s while they sleep, and lays eggs around it. 4) This itches, so a child will likely scratch their a*s 5) Eventually after that, a child is likely to touch their mouth, getting the eggs back into their digestive tract. This cycle continues forever :D
I'm surprised no one posted about how the human body contains about as many microbial cells as it does actual human cells.
Accurate: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19136#:~:text=It's%20often%20said%20that%20the,to%2Done%2C%20they%20calculate.
Load More Replies... Please, BP, stop with the "unalived" euphemism!!! It trivializes the trauma, plus it's way more jarring than just saying "killed"
Most all of these really bothered me. Hurt my heart. Very sad things here.....
