People Share “Dark Stuff Going On Around The World” The General Public Is Likely Not Aware Of, And Here Are 30 Of The Most Eye-Opening Answers
Whether we like it or not, our world is sometimes a daunting, hostile place. It’s largely thanks to the ones who were supposed to love and protect it: yes, I am looking at you, my fellow humans. From ecological catastrophes that have reached the point of no return, to a violent war happening in not some outer corner of our planet, but right there in the center of Europe.
No wonder many of you know how it feels to close your eyes before falling asleep and have all these brutalities viciously run through your mind.
This Reddit thread has taken it a step further and asked people “What is some dark stuff going on around the world right now that the public probably doesn’t know about?” which shows how little we know and think of on the not-so-pretty side of the world. So it’s time to erase that oblivion.
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The “Clients” of Jeffery Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell are still pedophiles, and still free, putting innocent children at risk.
The concentration camps that the Uyghur Muslims are in right now in China. It's devastatingly brutal.
this needs to be higher. the WEST, especially the media, is not talking about this or just briefly skimming over it. China uses the Uyghurs in forced slave labor and most companies that use them turn a blind eye. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party denies all of these.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970.
It would take volumes of books to go into these problematic aspects of our planet deeper, in order to explain and educate why exactly they happened and what to do to be a part of the solution and not a problem.
This time, however, we will be talking about one of the disasters known as ocean pollution which has been caused and escalated by us, humans. In fact, every year, 9 to 14 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the ocean. In order for your to better picture it, let me tell you it is the equivalent of a garbage truck (17 tons) every minute!
Bored Panda reached out to Valérie Amant, the Director of Communication of The SeaCleaners who said that “if no urgent action is taken, the approximately 9-14 million tonnes of plastic that currently enter the ocean each year are expected to triple over the next 20 years.”
People are dying because they can’t afford their over-priced medication. A very easy save… just price gouging and horrible healthcare.
The deforestation of Europe. The last protected ancient forests in Europe (mostly in the east) are cut down by big furniture companies from Finland and Austria. The people trying to protect the forests (activists, journalists, park rangers) are being intimidated, beaten and killed, while the police is looking the other way (or sometimes even participating in the abuse). Basically the same thing like in the Amazon basin, but with a lot less visibility.
Saudi Arabia sentencing to death people who refuse to move out of their homes so that they can build Neom, their new mega city. And their relatives being sentenced to multiple decades of prison time just for protesting or merely posting their support for the cause on social media.
Neom line is doomed to fail. If it ever gets build, it will be marked as one of the biggest fails in history.
Amant explained that this means that between 23 and 37 million tonnes of plastic will enter the ocean each year by 2040. “This is equivalent to 50 kilograms of plastic per meter of coastline worldwide,” she said. Amant encourages people to read the latest report on UNEP right here.
The SeaCleaners believes that action against plastic pollution is possible, and should take place on land and at sea. Amant explained that it should be done “both in a preventive way (to prevent more waste to be discarded into the sea) and in a corrective way (to clean the waste that can be cleaned). There is quite a controversy about why we do need to collect plastic waste at sea. We explain why here.”
California’s water level is very close to the point where we would need to count down the days/months/years of water left
Many say the Water Wars are coming but in some places they are already here
In America there are corporations such as Black Rock buying up tons of houses, whole neighborhoods really. they're paying higher than asking price, they will then be permanently renting them out and it will further destroy the middle class/working class. they will make middle class ppl permanent renters. and our politicians on both sides of the aisle are letting this happen because they take money from these corporations.
Corporatocracy - where corporations run the government - it is happening nearly EVERYWHERE and it needs to END. Yes, most prevalent in the USA, but also many other places.
The extent of fisheries and ocean life's collapse. Alaska just put the emergency brakes on its entire snow crab fishery as the numbers suddenly fell off a cliff. Same for many salmon species, wild fish, etc.
"Plenty of fish in the sea" seems like a saying that will be true forever, but it won't be. I have seen estimates that there would just be NO commercially-viable fishing by 2048.
We are scraping the bottom of the ocean and emptying it of life
The disastrous effects of ocean pollution can be divided between obvious and not so much. First, plastic pollution has a tremendous negative impact on marine animals and marine biodiversity. “Marine animals, marine biodiversity are the most immediate and visible victims of plastic pollution. More than 1.5 million marine animals die every year: strangled, suffocated, starved, and fatally injured. 90% of marine species are impacted by plastic pollution: from plankton to large predators (3,800 species in total),” Amant explained. She added that mortality rates caused by plastic debris can be as high as 22% for cetaceans and almost 50% for sea turtles.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is at an alarming level. There has already been instances of pan antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. This can throw us back to the pre antibiotic era. Which will effectively mean, catch an infection and die.
No big pharma wants to invest in antibiotic research because of the huge R&D cost and relatively meagre return. Although everyone agrees that we desperately need new antibiotics
Also it'll make major surgery basically impossible, because you'll get an infection in the wound site and cark it
I’m a nurse I’m the U.S. the short staffing is worse than you think. People think the healthcare system *will* collapse or is *going to* collapse but it’s not, it already has. Just because you don’t see the hospitals on fire doesn’t mean there isn’t some *severe* staffing and supply shortages
In the UK, we’re missing 25% of our health and social care workforce. Nice one, Brexit. Great. Thanks.
Women going missing from Indian Reservations across some of the US. Many are young women and probably being used for sex trafficking. There are some interesting podcasts on the subject.
Plastic pollution also negatively affects the global economy in numerous ways. Amant said that the cost of plastic pollution to the tourism and fishing industries is estimated at €13 billion each year.
“By 2040, plastic waste is expected to present an annual financial risk of US$670 billion to businesses and governments who will have to bear the costs of managing it at the projected volumes. A 1% to 5% decline in the provision of marine ecosystem services (= all the economic value of the services provided by the sea) due to plastic pollution is equivalent to an annual loss of $500 billion to $2.5 trillion,” she explained.
The drift toward authoritarian rule and the dissolution of democracy.
The USA only has around 65% of their population eligible to vote, yet 100% of the population has an opinion. That’s crazy to me… a country that is so politically obsessed yet chooses not to have a say. That kind of thing leads to a death of democracy. Give your people freedom to choose but almost half don’t use their freedoms, and cry about it instead.
8000 women are burned to death every year over dowry disputes in India. This figure does not count women killed by other means or women who survive the burning or women killed for reasons other than dowry disputes.
70% of the world's Chocolate comes from West Africa
an estimated 1.5 million child slaves are engaged in chocolate production in Ghana and the Ivory coast, alone -- not counting Nigeria and Cameroon
Check out Tony's chocolate bars if you want to support slave free chocolate. They are a little expensive but worth it.
It’s important to note that richer countries produce more plastic waste which is often sent to less developed countries. “The average US citizen produces 8 times more plastic waste than a Chinese citizen,” Amant said. This, in turn, increases social, economic, and health inequality.
Aman explained that in developing countries, local communities do not always have the structures, nor the funding capacity to manage the environmental, health, social and cultural burden of plastic pollution. “Plastic pollution helps to perpetuate these inequalities by jeopardizing access to clean water, pest and disease control.”
The permafrost is thawing in Siberia, Canada and Alaska. The methane release rate and pre-ice age bacteria awakening from hibernation will reek havoc on our world at an unpredictable rate.
I moved to Sydney 2 weeks ago, and can’t believe how many public suicides there are. It’s almost every day someone kills themselves from jumping from a building or in front of a train. I catch the train almost every day and it feels like a matter of time before I see one happen myself.
We’re in a massive mental health crisis right now and it’s extremely hard to get help.
Fast fashion is a human rights and an environmental disaster. There are certain parts of the garment construction process that cannot be mechanized, so humans have to be involved in the production, and the vast majority of them are underpaid. Additionally, fast fashion (especially in women's clothing) isn't made to last, so the fabric and the actual construction is shoddy and the clothes wear out quickly, but fabric recycling is rarely available, so most of those clothes end up in a landfill. Natural fibers release greenhouse gases (ETA: this is an issue in landfills because organic materials decompose in an anaerobic environment in landfills vs an aerobic composting environment which creates more methane as they decompose, and synthetics release chemicals into the water table.
Longer effects of plastic pollution pause even more dangerous threats and they concern human health. Amant explained how that happens: “Marine plastic microparticles enter our food chain. An adult human would ingest and inhale up to 121,000 microparticles of plastic per year. Recent studies have shown that plastics can be found in our lungs, in our brains, and in our bloodstream.”
Moreover, plastic contains additives. “While ‘eating’ and ‘breathing’ plastic, we are exposed to these toxic products, including endocrine disruptors, at all stages of the plastic life cycle. The possible health consequences of daily contact with hormone-active substances in plastic are numerous: cancers, sterility, asthma, embryo development disorder…”
Mass kidnapping of school children in Nigeria and other African nations and the only ones talking about it since 2021 is UNICEF.
Edit: For the record, I'm speaking from an American's perspective who spent the better part of a decade serving in Europe/Asia with the military and can say for certain the only reason I'm aware of it is because of anti human trafficking awareness the US Air Force talks about constantly. I worked directly with NATO and listening to US AFRICOM talk about it daily and yet you NEVER hear about it in the main stream American media.
Propaganda is being used by several countries. Most of the Western countries people forgets that propaganda can be used in a complex context through mass media.
Always think critically and forge your opinions on a subject based on multiple sources and medias around the world.
Meanwhile, every voting ad in the US ever: " This guy hates abortion, this guy does reckless spending, yatta-yatta-yatta. Oh, by the way, vote for this other guy."
According to Amant, the impact of plastic pollution on human health is a recent subject of study, and urgently requires the development of scientific knowledge on their real impacts on our health, our immune, endocrine, and respiratory system, or even our DNA. “However it is very difficult to know precisely the consequences of plastic pollution as it is impossible to have a test group (ie a human group that would not be infected by plastic).” You can find more information about it here.
The troubled teen industry. They’ve been kidnapping and then abusing kids (for money) for the last 30 years, all legally.
TTI Survivor here… 17 years later, the place I was sent gives me nightmares every single night.
How about state-level law enforcement stealing identifiable property out of evidence control to pay snitches with it.
Source: I lost my career over exposing this practice and everyone involved was promoted.
In Africa there is a very real and very extensive slave trade going on right now to say nothing of the other probably 40 million living in bondage.
I've heard this, too, but I'm mindful that the population is also the highest it's ever been, and I wonder if slavery is higher per capita now. If we include wage slavery, then I'm sure of it.
Load More Replies...I keep pointing this out on BoredPanda and elsewhere, that there are over 42m slaves in the world today and it doesn't seem as though anyone cares or is doing anything about it. People are always looking back 200 years, pointing out how awful slavery was back then, but it is far, far worse today. Worse than it ever has been.
It was awful then, and it is awful now. My gripe with slavery back then, is that only one group is blamed for owning and selling slaves, when many groups were guilty of that too!!! Aboriginals here in Australia go off at us and call us "colonists" but they forget that most of the British people who came here, were brought here by boat in chains and away from their home and families, mostly for something like stealing a loaf of bread.
Load More Replies...Meanwhile in US history class: "Remember when slavery was a thing? THANK GOD it's all over, Ha-ha-ha..."
Yeah because only the slavery of one group of people is EVER acknowledged.
Load More Replies...Are you being sarcastic? I have a feeling you are, but it's better to be clear here, before you are down voted into oblivion
Load More Replies...I'm in Mexico right now. Indigenous children are being sold for rape in the state of Guerrero like pieces of meat. Gov't turns a blind eye and civilians are threatened by the cartel. It's messed up.
Female Infanticide, i.e. the deliberate killing of newborn female children, is still happening in rural India. A full term new born baby is buried alive if unfortunate enough to be female. The mother is usually trying to get pregnant right after, until she finally gives birth to the prized male child.
Human trafficking
You can literally be victim of this while visiting other places or on your vacations.
Right now there are thousands of people that are being trafficked as mere objects
Micro plastics being found in breast milk.
How does that work? How does that happen? (I'm not asking out of incredulity but out of curiosity)
Somalia is pretty much gone at this point, facing war and one of its worst famines in ages, it would be a miracle if they make it through
9% of Eritrea's population is slaves
The prevalence of modern-day slavery is way more then people like to talk about
Don't be overwhelmed and lose hope. Find a cause and fight for it. Do whatever you can to make tomorrow better.
I was a political punk activist in the mid 80s, this is the tomorrow we tried to make better..... Sometimes I despair, sometimes it's better to just retreat to the shadows and watch the world burn.... Cause I've watched the same sht happen over and over again for the last 40 yrs! I'm over it, not my future anymore....
Load More Replies...People are garbage. This planet is seriously f****d. The glory days of the late 1980s - 90s are gone. The next gamma ray burst can't come soon enough. Time for another life form to step up.
Lots of these are about human trafficking and I just wanted to tell all the parents out there, IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD. You will not always be able to protect them wherever they are. You hear a few stories on the media about survivors sharing their stories. Those survivors are less than 1% of the trafficked. The other 99% are dead. I grew up in an area where human trafficking as well as rape is common and the police do not care. My innocence was ripped from me at 6 years old and my twin sister who tried a run was murdered. The police knew. They did nothing. That is the world we live in. That is the world YOUR CHILD lives in. In between the ages of 6-15 I was tortured and raped by my own father and his friends. I weighed maybe 65 lbs. And the police knew, I reported multiple times. And they did NOTHING until last year when media outlets caught wind of what was happening. THEN he went to trial. The police do not care what happens to you as long as it is behind closed doors.
Why, Bored Panda, why??!! This is exactly the kind of news I come here to escape!!
Nobody forced you to read the article, and the title was extremely clear as to the contents.
Load More Replies...WHat's sad to me is how unsurprised and unshocked I am. Humans aren't nice creatures. *sigh* I sometimes wonder if a reboot back to the early Stone Age isn't required to remind people what is truly vital. Life. Love. Food. Shelter. Water. That stuff.
Suddenly all those classic villain stories of trying to rule the world or wipe it out doesn't seem as far fetched as it used to.
Load More Replies...That was depressing. And people wonder why my generation (gen Z) doesn’t want kids…
Yeah, if I want a kid, I’m going to adopt. I can’t justify the idea of bringing someone into a dying world, but I can justify giving a home to someone who needs it.
Load More Replies...Holy s**t, so much negativity (truth tho) in one post... I mean I was aware of 2/3 of it already but damn people, we are so f****d it's not even funny.
Wow, is it just me or has BoredPanda taken a really negative and dark slant recently? Yikes, BoredPanda-- this site used to post really quirky and feel-good listicles and art. Now I feel like it is trying to become Buzzfeed.
I have tried posting. People go thru here and downvote for the fun of it. So how many people are blocked from posting articles because of this? The ones I tried posting were upbeat.
Load More Replies...I think it’s fair to say that whomever started the experiment to see how humans would engage with the planet around them has been an unbelievable and absolute failure. I don’t think it’s shown anything that would be classed as a success. I would advise the person to come back and just destroy the whole experiment. It’s the only course of action left at this point.
Surprised to see no mention of global insect populations having plummeted over the past decade, up to 80% drops in some places. This is due to a variety of reasons but primarily the perfect storm of climate change, light pollution, over-development and destruction of habitat, and pesticide accumulation. When the pollinators go bye-bye so will your food supply. Have a nice day.
This planet will not even begin to heal until humans are wiped out.
I'm glad I'll be dead in a couple of decades, and leave no descendants. I'm still going to try and keep doing my part until then of course even though it's really minuscule in the great scheme of things.
When did BP start doom posting so much and can they please stop? People don't come here for "AITA" or "Top 50 reasons the US is a horrible place" or things like this. We come here for cute and funny things.
BoredPanda is going the way of Buzzfeed. This used to be a site that posted a lot of new artwork from up and coming artists and silly articles/listicles from around the world. Now they censor their users and post a lot of Am I The A*****e threads, listicles directly copy-and-pasted from Reddit, and a lot of really negative content. I came to BoredPanda to escape the negativity of Buzzfeed and now its kind of sad to see this happening.
Load More Replies...Most of these are about rape and modern slavery! Wtf is wrong with this world!?!?!?
Yes, this is all very depressing, but in more cheerful news, if you study history, you can see that in the past things were much, much more terrible. Things are terrible now, yes, but less terrible! Things are actually getting better, not worse. We should not turn a blind eye to these terrible things, of course, but don't feel hopeless. The hard work of many, many people has very slowly changed the world for the better. Keep fighting.
1. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population are people over 50 years old. These are people who did work all their lives but didn't earn enough money for retirement. 2. The post-covid evictions are going slowly because of the backlog, but every day more and more people are being evicted because of ever increasing rent. The news chooses to turn a blind eye.
I have now become so very, very sorry that this planet - and our species - ever came to exist...
Don't blame the planet, not her fault we've become a cancerous growth.....
Load More Replies...Most of this stuff is something an individual has no power over, even a million people won't change a thing. This world is doomed. People who bring children here, should realize how worse it's gonna be for them. Even now the situation is terrible.
WTH? I don't take anything as fact until I see a legit source. You click the links and it is click bait to download the Reddit app to view "Adult Material"??? WTH???
I think BoredPanda is now following in the footsteps of Buzzfeed and just reposting popular content from Reddit without fulling reading/editing it.
Load More Replies...Look up the Universe 25 experiment. That is the world we are in. Sometimes a dispassionate weeding is in order.
People are well aware of all of this, as well as the serious overpopulation, at least in the “western” world. Yet people are still reproducing, out of choice, creating more people (who will face living amongst this impending doom). It’s crazy.
Hello, Alien beings; The Project Earth experiment has gone too far..Surely by now you can see that Humans are a complete failure and cannot be left unguided for centuries..
Our only chance is to unite crush the Ruling Class and Break the Chains. So I say a Cry Workers of the World Unite and Break the Chains for Freedom Equality Liberty and Life!
You'll struggle to find any of the above is due to "wokeism".
Load More Replies...Deal with it? Only privileged people make these kind of comments. Deal with what? Slavery? Rape? Exploitation? Life is overrated you said? It must be great putting those big words while you don't have to "deal" any of those issues. Otherwise you wouldn't talk like this.
Load More Replies...Don't be overwhelmed and lose hope. Find a cause and fight for it. Do whatever you can to make tomorrow better.
I was a political punk activist in the mid 80s, this is the tomorrow we tried to make better..... Sometimes I despair, sometimes it's better to just retreat to the shadows and watch the world burn.... Cause I've watched the same sht happen over and over again for the last 40 yrs! I'm over it, not my future anymore....
Load More Replies...People are garbage. This planet is seriously f****d. The glory days of the late 1980s - 90s are gone. The next gamma ray burst can't come soon enough. Time for another life form to step up.
Lots of these are about human trafficking and I just wanted to tell all the parents out there, IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD. You will not always be able to protect them wherever they are. You hear a few stories on the media about survivors sharing their stories. Those survivors are less than 1% of the trafficked. The other 99% are dead. I grew up in an area where human trafficking as well as rape is common and the police do not care. My innocence was ripped from me at 6 years old and my twin sister who tried a run was murdered. The police knew. They did nothing. That is the world we live in. That is the world YOUR CHILD lives in. In between the ages of 6-15 I was tortured and raped by my own father and his friends. I weighed maybe 65 lbs. And the police knew, I reported multiple times. And they did NOTHING until last year when media outlets caught wind of what was happening. THEN he went to trial. The police do not care what happens to you as long as it is behind closed doors.
Why, Bored Panda, why??!! This is exactly the kind of news I come here to escape!!
Nobody forced you to read the article, and the title was extremely clear as to the contents.
Load More Replies...WHat's sad to me is how unsurprised and unshocked I am. Humans aren't nice creatures. *sigh* I sometimes wonder if a reboot back to the early Stone Age isn't required to remind people what is truly vital. Life. Love. Food. Shelter. Water. That stuff.
Suddenly all those classic villain stories of trying to rule the world or wipe it out doesn't seem as far fetched as it used to.
Load More Replies...That was depressing. And people wonder why my generation (gen Z) doesn’t want kids…
Yeah, if I want a kid, I’m going to adopt. I can’t justify the idea of bringing someone into a dying world, but I can justify giving a home to someone who needs it.
Load More Replies...Holy s**t, so much negativity (truth tho) in one post... I mean I was aware of 2/3 of it already but damn people, we are so f****d it's not even funny.
Wow, is it just me or has BoredPanda taken a really negative and dark slant recently? Yikes, BoredPanda-- this site used to post really quirky and feel-good listicles and art. Now I feel like it is trying to become Buzzfeed.
I have tried posting. People go thru here and downvote for the fun of it. So how many people are blocked from posting articles because of this? The ones I tried posting were upbeat.
Load More Replies...I think it’s fair to say that whomever started the experiment to see how humans would engage with the planet around them has been an unbelievable and absolute failure. I don’t think it’s shown anything that would be classed as a success. I would advise the person to come back and just destroy the whole experiment. It’s the only course of action left at this point.
Surprised to see no mention of global insect populations having plummeted over the past decade, up to 80% drops in some places. This is due to a variety of reasons but primarily the perfect storm of climate change, light pollution, over-development and destruction of habitat, and pesticide accumulation. When the pollinators go bye-bye so will your food supply. Have a nice day.
This planet will not even begin to heal until humans are wiped out.
I'm glad I'll be dead in a couple of decades, and leave no descendants. I'm still going to try and keep doing my part until then of course even though it's really minuscule in the great scheme of things.
When did BP start doom posting so much and can they please stop? People don't come here for "AITA" or "Top 50 reasons the US is a horrible place" or things like this. We come here for cute and funny things.
BoredPanda is going the way of Buzzfeed. This used to be a site that posted a lot of new artwork from up and coming artists and silly articles/listicles from around the world. Now they censor their users and post a lot of Am I The A*****e threads, listicles directly copy-and-pasted from Reddit, and a lot of really negative content. I came to BoredPanda to escape the negativity of Buzzfeed and now its kind of sad to see this happening.
Load More Replies...Most of these are about rape and modern slavery! Wtf is wrong with this world!?!?!?
Yes, this is all very depressing, but in more cheerful news, if you study history, you can see that in the past things were much, much more terrible. Things are terrible now, yes, but less terrible! Things are actually getting better, not worse. We should not turn a blind eye to these terrible things, of course, but don't feel hopeless. The hard work of many, many people has very slowly changed the world for the better. Keep fighting.
1. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population are people over 50 years old. These are people who did work all their lives but didn't earn enough money for retirement. 2. The post-covid evictions are going slowly because of the backlog, but every day more and more people are being evicted because of ever increasing rent. The news chooses to turn a blind eye.
I have now become so very, very sorry that this planet - and our species - ever came to exist...
Don't blame the planet, not her fault we've become a cancerous growth.....
Load More Replies...Most of this stuff is something an individual has no power over, even a million people won't change a thing. This world is doomed. People who bring children here, should realize how worse it's gonna be for them. Even now the situation is terrible.
WTH? I don't take anything as fact until I see a legit source. You click the links and it is click bait to download the Reddit app to view "Adult Material"??? WTH???
I think BoredPanda is now following in the footsteps of Buzzfeed and just reposting popular content from Reddit without fulling reading/editing it.
Load More Replies...Look up the Universe 25 experiment. That is the world we are in. Sometimes a dispassionate weeding is in order.
People are well aware of all of this, as well as the serious overpopulation, at least in the “western” world. Yet people are still reproducing, out of choice, creating more people (who will face living amongst this impending doom). It’s crazy.
Hello, Alien beings; The Project Earth experiment has gone too far..Surely by now you can see that Humans are a complete failure and cannot be left unguided for centuries..
Our only chance is to unite crush the Ruling Class and Break the Chains. So I say a Cry Workers of the World Unite and Break the Chains for Freedom Equality Liberty and Life!
You'll struggle to find any of the above is due to "wokeism".
Load More Replies...Deal with it? Only privileged people make these kind of comments. Deal with what? Slavery? Rape? Exploitation? Life is overrated you said? It must be great putting those big words while you don't have to "deal" any of those issues. Otherwise you wouldn't talk like this.
Load More Replies...