It may sound counterintuitive that when outside threats decrease, we manipulate ourselves into finding new ones, even if they are completely benign. However, researchers found exactly that; we are often tricked by our own perception and see threats that aren't actually there.
So in an attempt to explore our misconceptions, Reddit user ThexLoneWolf made a post on the platform, asking everyone to list the things that society portrays as dangerous but in reality are pretty safe. From animals to medical procedures, here are some of the most popular replies they've received.
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Vaccines. They are extremely safe and effective despite what a very loud few say.
30 years ago, nobody was afraid of vaccines. So enraging to see erradicated diseases reappearing
Wolves. Wolf attacks on people are so rare they have individual entries on the Wikipedia page.
Foxes. For some reason my local fb group ALWAYS seems to post about when they see a fox in town like “careful on your walks”
Do you think foxes EAT PEOPLE????
basically true, however .... have you ever seen a fox? they run like hell the moment they see you coming. I'd set the risk to 0.00000000000000000001 %
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Ugh.... Every dang spring people claim the foxes and coyotes have mange or rabies. It's getting hot. They are taking off their coats the natural way. It's also not getting dark until 8:30 so, yeah it's fricking light out when you see them. It's gonna be okay.
Back home in PEI in 2016 at the height of Pokémon Go, I went out walking to hatch eggs one night. It was in a rural area and as I was walking down the road (no cars anywhere), a fox was coming up the road towards me on the other side of the road, passing me and not breaking stride. I even said "evening" to him as he walked past. Rude bugger didn't even say hi!
In my country foxes were considered dangerous because of rabies. But recently, AFAIK, the problem is (almost) gone thanks to edible vaccines distibuted in forests.
Now some idiot will claim they became autistic from the vaccine.
Load More Replies... I live in a rural area and a red fox hangs around our barn with the barn cats at night I'm assuming because he feels safe there. Eats with cats, plays with them and kinda just skedaddles if a human approaches.
I love that you wrote this. I am pretty sure foxes will be the next domesticated animals in the same way cats domesticated themselves.
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Foxes are shy and only aggressive if they have young or rabies. In a country where rabies is non-existent, they are harmless.
We have a female fox that lives on our property. She's beautiful and so fun to watch. She just had 3 babies too and likes to bring them in the yard to play. There's a male fox too, who I assume is the daddy. All of them will run away if we happen to cross paths. They are way more scared of people than we should be of them!
Foxes don’t eat people, but they will eat the s**t out of your outdoor cat.
We get that all the time with coyote sightings in Winnipeg. There's been a rapid urban expansion. The animals need to go places, too, and have a home somewhere.
A buddy of mine described foxes as cat software running on dog hardware.
A fox took several of our chickens one night. My sister heard the screaming in the middle of the night and said it was the worst thing she ever heard. But yeah, foxes aren't scary unless you're a chicken. (We don't have rabies here).
Similar to raccoons. Always be careful around wild animals with sharp teeth, especially when that animal is likely to bite you if you startle it by opening a trash bin.
Foxes do not make good pets because they are *loud*. An animal that does zoomies around the house all night every night while screeching at the top of it's lungs is a bad pet.
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Thank you!!! They do the same where I live. Like, have you ever seen a fox? They wont harm you! I have seen plenty of foxes. Both in cities and country side. They never so anything. AND if they look like they have rabies, just stay far away. Not rocket science and they are NOT a danger to humans!
When I was kid, my hometown had 'fox scare', because there was fox infected with rabies. Teachers in school told us that if we see a fox, we should report it and do not touch the fox or go anywhere near it. Thankfully, infected fox was caught very soon.
i live in a very big city but see foxes a lot because i live on the water in a densely populated urban center. the first time i saw one, i was startled, but we both avoided each other while keeping an eye on each other so it was fine. and the dozens of times after that, that i saw foxes. the only time they worry me is when they don't actively put distance between the two of us, or, least don't come closer. i've had a couple that appeared to actually be slowly but surely approaching me even as i slowly but surely tried to veer my trajectory away from them, until i gave a verbal indication that i didn't want that, and then they simply stopped coming closer. but they still did not move away. those couple of times worried me a bit
Every couple of years in my neighborhood we get rabid foxes. They have attacked people and dogs and killed cats that were chilling with their families, on a patio, during a daytime barbecue. Rabid foxes will mess up your pets and it is terrible to hear about.
Red foxes haven't yet been truly domesticated as pets but there have been some generations of breeding what were 'fur' foxes into pets. Coming your way soon.
In Russia they did an experiment where they created a strain of foxes that are completely tame. These foxes are available for sale, but they are neutered beforehand to protect the strain.
Load More Replies... They would eat a small cat, dog, or get into a rabbit hutch or chicken coop. Possibly an infant. (Don’t want a repeat situation similar “a dingo ate my baby!”) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo_ate_my_baby
They don't attack children, dogs or cats. They do attack and eat rabbits and chickens.
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So do dogs, and people don't warn each other each time they see a dog. And there's way more dogs than foxes on our streets...
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Sending your kids outside to play. Go. Outside. It’s good for them.
We weren't allowed back in the house until the streetlights came on!! Exploring the woods, eating fresh vegetables and fruits from gardens and orchards, all the kids in the neighborhood playing (baseball, football, basketball...etc). Something I'd like to bring back from my childhood...... penny candy 100 PIECES OF CANDY FOR ONE DOLLAR!!! Childhood would've been unbearable if I couldn't have spent most of it outdoors!! (Edit for boo-boos)
Quicksand. We were misled by '80s action films. It's pretty hard to actually die in it.
(Conversely, regular old riptides in the ocean are WAY more dangerous than people think).
I do risk assessment for a living.
Humans are terrible at assessing risk, in general.
Being terrible at assessing risk of course carries risks of its own.
Movies really do sharks dirty. Wouldn’t say they’re completely safe, but definitely no where near as dangerous as perceived to be.
Black bears are pretty harmless. They *can* [harm] you, but usually would rather leave you alone.
Using a sharp knife in cooking. It's actually far more dangerous to use a dull knife.
A dull knife is a poor tool as it causes you to apply excessive pressure at improper angles to achieve the desired result and that's how most people end up getting cut
Small bubbles in an IV line aren’t going to [unalive] you like the movies. The amount of panicked patients I’ve had is wild.
When injecting syringes they usually flick at it to remove air bubbles even though they’re relatively harmless because they’re too small to do anything
Bees and wasps. I used to get stung a lot when I was a kid but I learned that if you don't wave your arms like a lunatic they'll leave you a lone. Also don't throw rocks at their nest and you should be okay.
I’m sure other people have said, but trick or treating. Any danger in d***s or razor blades in candy is wildly overblown in actuality I think there have been only one or two instances of someone actually being malicious with their candy handouts.
Flying on a plane. You are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash.
Those are pretty words, until your airplane is the one in bad turbulence
This is kind of a meta answer, but I’ve injured myself a lot more doing stupid projects around the house than I have while on duty in an actual dangerous industrial jobsite. Universally because I didn’t do a proper pre-work analysis and ensure I was using PPE.
Alligators. They are big and look scary but don't generally attack humans and don't consider us prey. Florida has millions of gators but only averages like 8 unprovoked attacks per year with about one fatal death every 3 years. They are dangerous to small pets, however, and I'm pretty sure many of those attacks are from trying to save a pet. But alligators are everywhere is Florida so it's quite surprising how few attacks there are.
A lot of 3rd-world travel destinations; just because a country is poor doesn't mean that the people are robbers/murderers.
My step mom is convinced that if a steak has any pink in the middle (I'm talking about anything less then well done) that its raw and will give you Salmonella.
Chicken is the one you need to cook thoroughly. You can eat beef raw if you like.
Silica packets say ,'Do not eat' on them because they are a choking hazard, not because they're poisonous.
Note that some of them have a coating of cobalt chloride - a moisture indicator that turns from blue to pink when moist - and CoCl2 is toxic and allergenic. However, the concentration is so low that it isn't going to poison you unless you ingest large amounts. You're much more likely to either choke on it, or if it is CoCl2 coated you could get a reaction if you are allergic (it is a surprisingly common allergen).
Nuclear waste, specifically the high-level spent fuel that needs to be dropped in cooling ponds for years. Make no mistake, it can absolutely [unalive] you if you’re exposed to the neutron emissions, but once it’s cooled off, it’s melted down into glass and sealed away in concrete casks. For all intents and purposes, these casks are indestructible; you could hit them with a runaway train and they wouldn’t break open. They can also be sealed away in deep boreholes underground for billions of years, more than enough time for the radioactive elements to decay to harmless amounts. When it’s handled correctly, nuclear waste may be the safest kind of waste there is. Ash from coal power plants emits far more radioactive particles than a nuclear reactor ever will, and it’s handled way less responsibly.
Living in Chicago, I did it for 10 years, still don't own a bulletproof vest.
The conservative media wants everyone to believe that every large city is an urban hellhole where daily life is like mad Max. Crime rates and small towns are basically the same, the keyword is rate instead of total. Of course how seriously can you take a party when they claim to be tough on crime, and then nominates a candidate for president who has 91 felony charges against him.
My dad is an electrician, and he taught me when I was pretty young how to fix electrical things, so I am always amused at how terrified people are by anything to do with electricity.
As the daughter of an electrical engineer, I tend to be amazed by how un-terrified people are by electricity.
Going in the ocean. Talking to those people afraid of seaweed.
Jellyfish, stingrays, saltwater crock's, blue ringed octopus, sharks, megalodon, piranha, alligators, creature from the Black lagoon. This is why hotels have swimming pools 🤣
Anxiety/Panic Attacks. you'll feel like you're having a Medical Emergency, but you're not.
Changing the brakes on your car. They're trivially easy to do, don't require any special tools outside of a torque wrench, and dealer and mechanic prices are outrageous (parts can be found online for a fraction of the dealer price at places like AutoHausAZ, and shop rates for labor are super expensive). It's pretty hard to screw up, and can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Roller Coasters and Amusement Park Rides: While these rides may seem scary, they are designed with strict safety regulations and are statistically very safe.
If it's a permanent park, there are regulations and inspections. If it's a moving fair, there's both wear and tear and less oversight.
Tandem Skydiving - strongest safety statistics of any type of jump, with only 0.003 fatalities per thousand jumps over the past 10 years. You're more likely to be struck by lightning or win the lottery than to die on a tandem skydive. Only done it twice, but such an incredible experience and rush....
Good. So much perceived risk is overstated. And so much real risk is understated.
I have to stress this, unless you are handy with repairwork with vehicles and did extensive research do not mess with the breaks, engine, electrical systems. You will get hurt. Jackstands, proper equipment, do your research and understand that if you screw up you will have to take it by the shop anyways.
A lifetime ago i used to live in low income housing and i did pc repair work for a buddy of mine. Real good guy but he had issues since he was a weed dealer. Had to protect himself. He had an ak behind his door and a pretty big pit. He was like, "normally i don't let people just knock on my door" and his big pit came right over to me and started licking me and quite happy to be around me. He was just shocked and i told him i had no ill will, I'm no cop i just was an ol school pot smoker that wanted to enjoy some extended payed time off. He said, "she's never done that before man... you're cool people". After that we became great friends and he was really trying to turn his life around and to my knowledge he did, has a sweet little girl, the pit is still quite happy and sweet with everyone now and he's actually got a really good job doing something he loves.
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The only thing dangerous about vaccines was that the Fauci-ites thought it made them invincible.
I lost count of the number of idiots I had to tell to back off and get out of my face. "Oh but I had the shot".Yeah, well that doesn't make you bulletproof. Keep your distance.
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Good. So much perceived risk is overstated. And so much real risk is understated.
I have to stress this, unless you are handy with repairwork with vehicles and did extensive research do not mess with the breaks, engine, electrical systems. You will get hurt. Jackstands, proper equipment, do your research and understand that if you screw up you will have to take it by the shop anyways.
A lifetime ago i used to live in low income housing and i did pc repair work for a buddy of mine. Real good guy but he had issues since he was a weed dealer. Had to protect himself. He had an ak behind his door and a pretty big pit. He was like, "normally i don't let people just knock on my door" and his big pit came right over to me and started licking me and quite happy to be around me. He was just shocked and i told him i had no ill will, I'm no cop i just was an ol school pot smoker that wanted to enjoy some extended payed time off. He said, "she's never done that before man... you're cool people". After that we became great friends and he was really trying to turn his life around and to my knowledge he did, has a sweet little girl, the pit is still quite happy and sweet with everyone now and he's actually got a really good job doing something he loves.
Load More Replies... The only thing dangerous about vaccines was that the Fauci-ites thought it made them invincible.
I lost count of the number of idiots I had to tell to back off and get out of my face. "Oh but I had the shot".Yeah, well that doesn't make you bulletproof. Keep your distance.
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