30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know

Science can be fascinating and fun. We love to learn new facts about our planet and beyond, like the fact that hippos sweat sunscreen. But it can also be pretty scary at times. I, personally, try not to think about the effect microplastics have on our health or how many times BP has spilled oil into our oceans. There's nothing fun about these kinds of facts.

Perhaps a similar thought brought about the curiosity of this Redditor. Instead of fishing for some fun science facts, the user u/DogeStonks69 asked others, "What's the scariest science fact that the public knows nothing about?" And boy, did the commenters deliver. Be prepared to possibly face some existential dread after going through these entries.

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Scientists were trying to study the effects that microplastics have on the human body and brain but were unable to draw any reasonable conclusions because they **could not find a control group.**.

TheSpaceBornMars , Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

191points

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Lyop 7 months ago

Wow....so its in everyone then.....

84points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know I'm sure there are plenty of people who know this, but personally I find it terrifying af.

If the vacuum of space didn't block sound from reaching us, the sun would be as loud as a jackhammer *everywhere* on Earth. Everywhere, at all times. And because sound travels slower than light, if the sun were to go out it would take eight minutes for the light to stop but 13 years for the sound to stop. So life on a cold, dead Earth for 13 years and still hearing the jackhammer scream of our dead sun.

Traditional_Ad_6801 , Alex Andrews/Pexels Report

Final score:

148points

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Kylie 7 months ago

If the sun died we wouldn't be alive to hear it anyway.

97points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know The greatest chemical contributor to IQ loss and violent behaviour is Lead and it's still in millions of people's piping.

re_artist , Alchemist-hp (talk) (www.pse-mendelejew.de) Report

Final score:

145points

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Bernd Herbert 7 months ago

One of the major contributors was leaded petrol and especially in the US thanks to massive lobbying by the industry

53points

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Let's dissect some of these scary facts. Like the microplastic one. Why are there no control groups to test its effects on? The problem with microplastics is that they're everywhere: in the water, in the earth, and in the air. But what's more concerning is that it is in living tissues, too.

The fact that there are nano and microplastics in our blood, placenta, heart, liver, and bowels alone is enough to scare us. But that's also the reason why scientists can't properly study its effects – there is no place (even in the human body) where they are not present, so we can no longer make comparisons.

What are the potential dangers of having microplastics in our organs? It's possible they make us more susceptible to cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and Alzheimer's disease, and they might even affect our fertility. There is a study where researchers found that microplastics in the brain might correlate with autism-like traits in mice.

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know In Yellowknife, NT Canada, there was a gold mine operating for 54 years, and a byproduct of that mining process was arsenic trioxide... 237,000 tonnes of it, enough to give a death sentece to everything on the planet. They figured the best thing to do was to bury it in permafrost. The problem is, it's starting to get warmer, so they have to figure out what to do with it. It's not a secret. Just no one is talking about it.

Shaveyourbread , Trevor MacInnis Report

Final score:

133points

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David Paterson 7 months ago

There's a huge amount of arsenic in the soil, everywhere. It's one of the most common elements on Earth.

32points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Scientific litterature conclusion on alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in general is that the diseases start decades before the first obvious symptoms and that we need to treat them at this stage. When you exhibit obvious symptoms, it's too late, your brain is already mush.

If you get diagnosed with alzheimer's at 65, you had the disease since your early 40's at least. And you experienced very mild symptoms but didn't notice it. And your brain fought like hell to compensate the deficit. When you get diagnose, your brain is already very severely damaged and will never recover from the deficit.

GotPC , Matthias Zomer/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

129points

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Donkey boi 7 months ago

Around half of Alzheimer's research is in finding a cure, the other half is trying to find an early detection method.

84points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Only my grandma and I know how handsome I am.

mystical_apple05 , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

121points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 7 months ago

31points

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Declining insect population rates are also bad news for us. We often think of insects as nuisances: annoying flies, bloodsuckering mosquitoes, and disgusting roaches. But the reality is that insects, no matter how gross, are extremely important to ecosystems.

Reuters reports that a 2020 study found how Earth has lost 5% to 10% of its insect populations in the last 150 years. That's between 250,000 and 500,000 species total. Another study found that we're losing insect populations at a rate of 1% to 2% per year.

Which species are the most affected? Out of the gross ones, only the beetles, including dung beetles. The insects that have the worst numbers are bees, moths and butterflies, aquatic insects, and those insects that eat other insects, like certain species of ladybugs and ants.

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Brain aneurysms can happen at any time, to anyone. No matter what age you are, or even how healthy you are, if you are currently alive, you have a chance of getting a brain aneurysm. When you do get one, there's a 50 % chance you'll just die immediately. Like, you'd be alive one minute, and then lying on the floor unconscious the next minute. Are the chances of actually getting a brain aneurysm at any random moment low? Yes, but it's still not 0.

Wales_forever , MART PRODUCTION/Pexels Report

Final score:

120points

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Corvus 7 months ago

The only consolation (if we can call it that way) is that you'd probably die so quickly that you won't even realize what's happening... which is a rather merciful way to go.

104points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know There are millions and billions of dollars in research into how to make people buy c**p. The missus took a year of psychology and what they got the most research on is how to manipulate you and me into buying c**p we don't need. Mental illness we know a little about. Making you want the new c**p that you don't need? We know a helluva lot about how that works.

Hattkake , Negative Space/Pexels Report

Final score:

113points

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Verena 7 months ago

And this is why a lot of people unnecessarily struggle with money problems and cluttered houses.

54points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know CO2 levels are causing the pH levels in the ocean to move towards an acidic level. No not like burn yourself acid, but just enough that it's causing an already noticeable impact to microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain. This may eventually lead to a ecological collapse. It seems to be impacting phytoplankton which is responsible for producing a good chunk of the air you breath as well. If the oceans go anaerobic the atmosphere would become toxic. A similar event has occurred during one or two of the past mass extinction events.

CodeMonkeyPhoto , Josh Sorenson/Pexels Report

Final score:

93points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago

The most obvious and observable result is coral bleaching.

51points

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So, what's causing the poor guys to become extinct? Besides the abundance of pesticides, climate change is a big factor. It causes temperature changes and alters seasonal timing.

As temperatures rise, insects may no longer have cooler environments to migrate to. Droughts reduce food availability, and heavy rainfall might even drown them. Extreme weather events might be dangerous directly or destroy their habitats.

#10

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Swimming in freshwater could expose you to Naegleria fowleri — a brain eating amoeba** that is fatal 97% of the time, and is almost impossible to treat effectively.

AdventurouslyYoung , Pixabay/Pexels (Not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

92points

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Huntress of Artemis 7 months ago

I watched a video on this on kurzgesagt.You need to have unsanitised water splashed high up your nose,to contract it.

52points

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#11

We are currently in the sixth major extinction event, where our flora and fauna are being destroyed by human activity at a fast rate. It cannot be completely stopped anymore, only mitigated, and, let’s be real… we as humans have little interest as a whole to do so.

hasturoid Report

Final score:

89points

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Canandelabra 7 months ago

That's unfair! The ones in power are the ones who don't care. Building bunkers with flammable motes for when things collapse is pure psychopathy. Doubt their lined pockets will do them much good if the planet collapses though.

57points

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#12

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Insect population depletion.

abysse , Egor Kamelev/Pexels Report

Final score:

87points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 7 months ago

Well, we haven't seen Headless Roach in forever, so I have to agree with this.

104points

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What exactly would happen in a world without insects? Environmental writer Oliver Milman told Boston public radio WBUR that it might be worse than we think. "It would be an extremely dire place to live in – and certainly not something we should ever aim for."

"You would certainly have mass starvation [and] societal unrest… It'd be a place where there would be rotting feces and corpses everywhere because dung beetles and other insects that break down those materials would be gone."

#13

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know We know that there is a string connection between pregnant mother's having viruses such as the flu during pregnancy and schizophrenia. It will be interesting what we see in 15 years post COVID.

DrAimCaf , Jonathan Borba/Pexels (not the actual phtoo) Report

Final score:

87points

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CP 7 months ago

It will be blamed on the vaccine by too many people.

182points

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#14

The End-Permian mass extinction was the worst in Earth's history. 70-80% of species died. It was caused by volcanic activity in Siberia spewing magma for thousands of years, releasing CO2 and igniting fossil fuel deposits as it bubbled up for good measure, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and acidifying the oceans. Species had a better chance of surviving the asteroid that k***ed the dinosaurs. Today, the global climate is heating up 10x faster than it did at the end of the Permian.

the_hip_o Report

Final score:

82points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago

This is also known as "The Great Dying", and Siberian volcanos is currently the favored theory but it's not the only theory. Data from 250 Mya is a bit sparse.

35points

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#15

People don’t talk enough about the melting permafrost and the associated positive feedback loops that only accelerate what’s already started.

headwaterscarto Report

Final score:

79points

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Corvus 7 months ago

People try to talk about it... and then get accused of being "rabid leftists" or something of the sort. Scientific topics must not be turned into a political thing!

96points

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Pollinators would be perhaps the biggest loss. Pollinating crops by hand is an enormously labor-intensive operation, as China's Sichuan province has already learned. Their project to hand-pollinate orchards only yielded short-term results, prompting the discussion that we need to protect our pollinators even further.

#16

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Take an Astronomy 101 course at your local community college. People have no idea the amount of and variety of things that exist in space, that can and do happen, that would send us back to the Stone Age, or outright annihilate life on Earth. I’m not talking asteroids, comets, and solar flares, everyone knows those, I’m talking supernovas, gamma ray bursts, wandering planets, wandering back holes, and more. And none of it do we have any ounce of control over. The good thing is the galaxy and universe are unbelievably large, so our chances of being affected by these things are, quite literally, astronomically low, but it ain’t zero.

TheMagnuson , Felix Mittermeier/Pexels Report

Final score:

75points

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SBocker78 7 months ago

Or watch the TV series "How the Universe Works".

23points

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#17

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know I'll let the others have the easy ones.

The inevitable displacement of Mexico City due to the abuse and lack of fresh water. It will be an international incident by their own making, displacing roughly 20 million people. Half of their utilities infrastructure is faulty and the current leadership has no viable way to repair and maintain their current system. It's not a matter of if, but when the system collapses. Normal groundwater reserve use is ten percent for any major city and only under dire circumstances should it be used at all. Mexico City uses almost half of their supply from groundwater reserves annually. Current projections show a complete collapse within 15 years.

beanrush , Samad Deldar/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

74points

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Donkey boi 7 months ago

I saw something about this recently. There is a similar problem with their sewage. But they are building some mega tunnels to both bring in water and get the waste to a mega treatment centre.

22points

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#18

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know If you start showing any signs of rabies, you are going to die. Or at least in 99% of cases that happens.

PurahsHero , Pixabay/Pexels Report

Final score:

72points

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Tucker Cahooter 7 months ago

So we have 50 million things that will try to kill you in Australia but at least they won't give you rabies

69points

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#19

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Alcohol increases the permeability of the blood brain barrier by unpredictable factors, which is why people die from overdose on their normal d**g dosages.

desexmachina , Mahrael Boutros/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

71points

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Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 7 months ago

Most prescription d***s (and many over the counter ones too) tell you NOT to take alcohol when using them. People are so stupid sometimes.

35points

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#20

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Your poor posture could lead to incurable chronic pain

sit up straight.

MobPsycho-100 , Kawê Rodrigues/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

71points

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Canandelabra 7 months ago

I choose to can't.

65points

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#21

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know By the time AIDS was first discovered in the United States in 1981, 250,000 Americans were already infected with HIV.

squid_ward_16 , Towfiqu barbhuiya Towfiqu barbhuiya/Pexels Report

Final score:

68points

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Corvus 7 months ago

Sadly, HIV prevention and treatment were hampered for many years by the social stigma the disease carries.

83points

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#22

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Last time i had to go under the knife i mentioned to the anesthesiologist "i read online that no one knows how anesthesia even works" and he kinda just said "yeah....".

SamURLJackson , Anna Shvets/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

68points

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Ace 7 months ago

"Kinda"... What he meant was yeah, we know how it does A, how it does B, how it does C but there's a tiny bit of the mechanism of D that although we know exactly what happens we're not quite sure of why some cells react in a certain way to certain things.

48points

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#23

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Europa even though smaller than earth has more water than all water bodies in the world combined.

terrific_mephit325 , NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill Report

Final score:

64points

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David Paterson 7 months ago

Uranus and Neptune have the most water, hundreds of times as much. Pluto has about as much liquid water as Earth, but it's buried deep.

15points

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#24

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know An Extinction Level asteroid could hit Earth with only a few days notice. Asteroids can appear very quickly from what appears to be nowhere. There is nothing we could do to prevent it from hitting.

markydsade , Alex Andrews/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

59points

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David Paterson 7 months ago

Depends on what you mean by "extinction level". We keep a good watch on asteroids more than 140 metres across. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 10,000 metres across.

35points

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#25

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Our bodies have no way of knowing that we're breathing oxygen. If I could snap my fingers and replace all the oxygen in you room with another inert gas you wouldn't notice. You wouldn't start to choke or struggle. You'd just get sleepier and sleepier until you die. That's why carbon monoxide is so dangerous. If you have any sort of gas appliance in your building, invest in a detector.

Lastalmark , Ivan Samkov/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

56points

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Zedrapazia 7 months ago

Not exactly true. If the CO2 levels in your blood rise, that's what gives you the feeling to suffocate. That means however that the only way your body knows you are suffocating is if your CO2 levels rise. If there's another gas instead and the CO2 levels don't rise, you won't notice until it's too late.

34points

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#26

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Tetraethyl lead raised worldwide lead levels so significantly they had to drill into arctic ice to find an uncontaminated sample.

biohazardmind , stein egil liland/Pexels Report

Final score:

49points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago

The lead lobby had the whole world convinced that Claire Pattinson was a kook and a crank but he proved how lead was destroying the population. In the process he had to build the world's first clean rooms because lead was so ubiquitous in the mid 20th century.

31points

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#27

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Here's something different: Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Mathematics, the very science that we use to build bridges, fly airplanes and operate nuclear power plants, is inherently broken and there's no way it can be fixed.

Gödel himself lost his mind over this.

24benson , Unknown Report

Final score:

47points

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Aberration 7 months ago

Godel died because he was too afraid of poisoning to eat anything that wasn't prepared by his wife. When she was hospitalized, he died of starvation.

45points

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#28

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Earth’s magnetic field started shifting at an accelerated rate in 2000. The earth is long overdue for a magnetic pole swap.

escapingdarwin , Pixabay/Pexels Report

Final score:

44points

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CanadianDimes 7 months ago (edited)

This is a misunderstanding of how magnetic reversals work. There is an *average* frequency with which they happen but not a *regular* frequency. Some periods of reversed magnetic polarity have been relatively short (by geological standards) and some relatively long. We're currently in a long period of magnetic north; that doesn't mean we're overdue for a shift. It's also not bad news because this is just something that happens. From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn't appear to have any impact and isn't linked to mass extinctions or anything like that. It might screw us up with electronic technology - I don't know enough about that to say one way or the other.

56points

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#29

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Gamma Ray Bursts.

If ever one happens to be close enough and aimed exactly at Earth, we're basically all dead.

Wild4fire , NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/ICRAR Report

Final score:

38points

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Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 7 months ago

Or we'll all turn into Hulks (https://www.marvel.com/characters/hulk-bruce-banner)

52points

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#30

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know For two days in September of 1859 a massive solar flare (coronal mass ejection) powerful enough to make hanging telegraph lines burst into flames from the induced current washed over the Earth. Another massive burst in 2012 only just missed Earth, but it's not going to be pretty when our luck runs out on this.

No_MrBond , Pixabay/Pexels Report

Final score:

30points

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Zedrapazia 7 months ago

This b******t again, could we please stop with that topic for once? We don't have the same technology as back then, the worst thing that could happen is that it would disrupt satellite communication systems, power grids and other technologies that rely on precise timing or accurate data temporarily. Please everyone calm down. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/

37points

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Note: this post originally had 50 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

What do you think ?

Poison Ivy/Boo 7 months ago

Aaaand that's enough internet for me today!

Crissy Newbury Premium 6 months ago

Yup. Time for sleep 💤

1point

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DetriMentaL 7 months ago

As of yesterday the Ivory Coast and Ghana has halted all chocolate production due to the high cost of the cocoa bean. The title of the article called it "The Chocpocalypse"

14points

Wintermute 7 months ago

Of course, they could just stop giving all the profit to corporations, middlemen and billionaires who have nothing to do with the production and just pay workers a living wage to produce the beans and everyone would come out better. HAHAHA! Just kidding. Praise be to the billionaires. May they smile benevolently upon us.

11points

John George 7 months ago

I should think it were a *low* cost of cocoa beans that would move them to do so.

3points

Pittsburgh rare 7 months ago

Does that mean l need to start stockpiling?

2points

Cosmikid 7 months ago

So much fun here! People have one fact - and find a way to make it scary! If that's what you want? Here is the ULTIMATE. 100% of Scientific Facts - can be distorted into an Apocalypse! All of them! Just stretch it all the way out, and - everybody dies out there. So. Now, you can all relax. In case you haven't noticed- we're not all dead!

4points

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30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know

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