People Share 30 “Genuinely Terrifying” Facts

The world is a scary place. Beautiful, yes, but take a good look around and you'll definitely notice something that makes you feel uncomfortable. Whether we're talking about spiders, lightning, or social interaction, everyone has their own nightmare fuel.

To find the worst of the worst, Reddit user Misoalgia posted a question on the platform, asking everyone "What is a genuinely terrifying fact?" Immediately, the replies started pouring in and as of now, the post has over 9.9K comments. In order to save you, dear pandas, some time, we scrolled through the entries and hand-picked the most memorable ones.

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People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts The ten hottest years on record have all been since 2010.

We are not only going to see the catastrophic 2 degree warming this century - we're probably going to see more than that.

The absolute worst part? Even with net zero emissions by 2070 we will STILL probably see 2 degree warming. The time for action to prevent catastrophe was over maybe 20 years ago - we are living in a time of disaster management.

mordenty , Chris LeBoutillier Report

Final score:

190points

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That there are people in this world who have absolutely zero support, and absolutely zero people to count on.

auxerre1990 Report

Final score:

182points

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People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts That somebody is out here trafficking humans and then going back to their family while living comfortably in a much nice place than some of us are.

5annex , Tim Marshall Report

Final score:

178points

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The earth was around billions of years before we were, and is indifferent to our survival. There have been multiple mass extinctions in the past and we shouldn't feel any safer. The only difference is we've advanced far enough to the point that we'll probably know in advance when our species is going to go extinct.

jdsizzle1 Report

Final score:

146points

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People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Scurvy at advanced stages can make all of your scars reopen, because maintaining them is an active process that your body does all the time and when it can't produce collagen it stops. Maybe eat some fruit.

Kordwar , Mae Mu Report

Final score:

143points

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People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts One genuinely terrifying fact is the concept of "antibiotic resistance." Bacteria can evolve to become resistant to antibiotics, the drugs we use to treat bacterial infections. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics can speed up this process, making previously treatable diseases difficult or even impossible to cure. According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health today, potentially leading to a future where simple infections could once again become deadly.

0OOO00000OO00O0O0OOO , CDC Report

Final score:

139points

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That we need to work for 11 months to get one month off in a whole year. That most of people need to work at a s****y job until they retire and then struggle to survive on a small retirement. I mean, a bunch of s**t that is terrifying.
Billionaires don't pay taxes etc.

royenyto99 Report

Final score:

128points

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People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow) can lie dormant for more than 50 years, is universally fatal, and is inheritable. There is no cure.

MrDarksCarnival:

My mom passed from this.

Took a healthy energetic 60-year old woman that MAYBE looked 50, and turned her into a semi-vegetative shell of her former self.

It’s destructive. And I have no idea if it’s dormant in me.

Particular-Natural12 , Wikipedia Report

Final score:

121points

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That mankind is the single biggest threat to our own extinction.

CP_DKK Report

Final score:

111points

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#10

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts That brain aneurysms usually does not have symptoms and it can kill you if it ruptures.

Misbrukt , Usman Yousaf Report

Final score:

108points

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#11

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts There are hundreds of unidentified serial killers in America.

Apprehensive_Bee7344 , Wikipedia Report

Final score:

108points

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#12

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts The US military has lost several nuclear weapons and not all of them have been recovered.

umdche , Wikipedia Report

Final score:

105points

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#13

50-70% of people don't have an internal monologue. I can't even imagine that. I can barely turn mine off to sleep. Comments seems split but there are a lot saying they don't experience internal monologue. I read it as monologue. I think some people are confusing it with dialogue. But maybe some experience that too?

VersionNo3770 Report

Final score:

105points

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#14

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts There is a species of caterpillar, big blue out of great Britain I believe, that tricks ants into thinking it's an ant queen in distress. The ants take this caterpillar back to the nest where the caterpillar continues acting like a queen but devouring all the ant larvae. This destroys the ant colony from the inside. There are some studies that can point to this species actively finding which larvae will eventually become the next queen and devour those larvae first.

Blankasbiscuits Report

Final score:

101points

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#15

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Sun eruptions happened before and lead to blackouts across several continents. All fun and games in the 19th century. Today it could easily kill millions. And it could happen any hour.

NotKhad , NASA Report

Final score:

98points

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#16

That Richard Sackler is a free billionare in 2023.

clemenza2821:

CEO of Purdue Pharma, singularly responsible for the opioid epedemic.

Dunderbonk Report

Final score:

95points

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#17

The Permian Extinction was the greatest extinction event in history, the atmosphere was full of CO2 and the oceans warmed so much they held too little oxygen to support most of the life that lived in it.

We are currently recreating these events through climate change.

DasBarenJager Report

Final score:

93points

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#18

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Dementia has no age limit.

PLAmibingusPL , Tim Doerfler Report

Final score:

92points

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#19

The fact that we know more about outer space than our planet's deep oceans is unsettling. There are countless mysteries and potentially terrifying discoveries awaiting beneath the ocean's depths.

Nicaherrera Report

Final score:

92points

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#20

Siberia’s permafrost melting and unleashing a disease humanity isn’t prepared for.

ajoeroganfan Report

Final score:

91points

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#21

Either we're the only sentient species in the whole universe or we are not. Both is equaly terrifying.

Raiyjinn Report

Final score:

85points

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#22

It is physically possible to be so constipated that your stool will back all the way up your digestive tract and you can vomit feces. You're welcome.

Klaus_Heisler87 Report

Final score:

80points

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#23

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts It's a great day. You go for a swim, and then Naegleri fowleri hits you hard. "Naegleri fowleri is an amoeba (brain eating amoeba) that can cause a serious central nervous system infection. The amoeba is found in warm and still fresh water bodies of water and enters a human body through the nose."

instapoppins , Todd Quackenbush Report

Final score:

76points

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#24

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, a baby will just die and we don't know why.

TTheTiny1 , Omar Lopez Report

Final score:

70points

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#25

You can just go to sleep and... never wake up. You might never get to say goodbye, or tell your family you love them.

Pmmasturbatingwomen Report

Final score:

68points

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#26

There is a good to fair chance you’ve met at least 1 murder in your life already.

Ancient_Head_8095 Report

Final score:

61points

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#27

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Some spiders eat snakes.

OkMushroom364 , Markus Blüthner Report

Final score:

60points

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#28

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts There is a white dwarf about 130 light years away from us, and it could explode any time. If it explodes, then it will be a big cosmic firework - and very close, possibly close enough to cause problems. Even it if turns into a neutron star without an explosion, that phenomenon could cause a nasty EMP effect, possibly killing a lot of satellites.

Elvenblood7E7 Report

Final score:

57points

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#29

Hisashi Ouchi Was kept alive (by any means necessary) for 83 days after exposure to fatal levels of radiation.

Smok3dSalmon Report

Final score:

53points

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#30

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts A person eats, on average, “two pounds of flies, maggots and other bugs each year," according to Scientific American.
-A cup of raisins can have up to 33 fruit fly eggs.
-Fig paste is allowed to have up to 13 insect heads in 100 grams.
-Up to five fruit flies is allowed in an 8-ounce cup of canned fruit juice.
+One maggot is allowed in every 250 milliliters of fruit.
+Up to 2,500 aphids are allowed in every 10 grams of hops.
-Spinach can have up to 50 aphids, thrips or mites per 100 grams.
-Broccoli can contain insects fragments and even whole insects.
-Up to a kilogram of insect parts is allowed in 100 kilograms of chocolate.
-Up to 19 maggots and 74 mites are allowed in a 3.5-ounce can of mushrooms.
-Up to 15 fruit fly eggs are allowed in 100 grams of tomato sauce

AeonSophia514 , James Tiono Report

Final score:

49points

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#31

Your hearing is probably the last sense that you lose when you die. Imagine hearing all the people around you…

Svenisko Report

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25points

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#32

Getting less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night f***s up your body much more thoroughly than anyone assumes. It increases the risk of just about any health problem you can imagine, from obesity to Alzheimer’s to heart disease, significantly, and impairs basically everything your brain does. Also, your brain is physically incapable of realizing the extent of sleep deprivation, so if you’re one of those people who can manage on 4 or 5 hours a night, you’re probably not actually.

profuse_wheezing Report

Final score:

25points

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#33

The CIA's Operation Northwoods proposed that CIA operatives should commit acts of terrorism upon the US to blame Fidel Castro for justifying a war against Cuba. This was rejected by JFK. We know about this because this got declassified.

Delevia Report

Final score:

23points

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#34

The last official government execution by GUILLOTINE was 10 September 1977 at 4:40am in Marseille France.

That's . . . during my lifetime.

PhesteringSoars Report

Final score:

23points

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#35

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Assuming you live in a structure that can burn, a fault in your electrical system can burn your house down at any moment. I grew up in a neighborhood of older houses, several of which burned to the ground (usually during the overnight hours). The cause of almost all of them was electrical.

Hungry_Owl_3746 , Chris Karidis Report

Final score:

22points

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#36

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts There are such things as Rogue Planets just flying through space and not orbiting any star. If one were to pass through our solar system it could easily nudge the Earth out of its orbit and we’d either fry or freeze and there’s nothing we could do about it.

InTheFDN , NASA Report

Final score:

20points

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#37

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts You could have rabies right now, you won’t know until you start showing symptoms. Then, it’s too late.

zerbey , Wikipedia Report

Final score:

19points

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#38

You and everything you know is located on a rock going impossibly fast through a void that you can't traverse without specialized equipment. You are trapped, and you have no idea why you are here or why you even exist. The only true escape is death. The most terrifying part is that you are aware and reflective (unlike every other animal) and have no tools to answer, not only why but how.

Honest_Yesterday4435 Report

Final score:

18points

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#39

That blue whales can weigh half a million pounds and can speak to each other from thousands of miles away.

Mobile-Technology-88 Report

Final score:

18points

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#40

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts Some scientists consider flies the most dangerous of all animals because of how easily they spread illnesses.

IllustriousDebt6248 , MOHD AZRIEN AWANG BESAR Report

Final score:

17points

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#41

People Share 30 "Genuinely Terrifying" Facts I know its basic as f**k but death and the very likely chance that everything just ends keeps me up at night. Also the fact that no matter what everyone you love will die. Your parents will die. Your cousins. Your uncles. Your aunties. Idk it's almost comforting that at the end of the day I don't have to worry too much because eventually none of it matters, but idk it scares me.

Gardevoir_is_NOT_hot , Kenny Orr Report

Final score:

17points

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#42

Space is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. One day only our local group of galaxies and celestial bodies will be visible and then one day our galaxy will be all alone in a pitch black void. Any new intelligent life will believe that their own galaxy and all that it encompasses, is the only celestial body to exist is in the vast universe.

Ashtorot Report

Final score:

15points

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#43

Yellowstone National Park is actually a massive caldera volcano which, if an eruption occurs, would cause an extinction level event. We're in its time frame for eruption and it's still growing.

Some interesting things about this, are scientists are able to track growth by tracking lake movement. Because the land is bubbling up at the center of the volcano dome, the lakes are slowly moving away from the center point.

It's also not possible to drill in and slowly relieve pressure as the rock gets too hot and squishy the closer you get as well as the drill hearing up and becoming squishy itself.

There is literally nothing we can do to prevent this. We just have to sit and wait for nature to take its course.

TengamPDX Report

Final score:

15points

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#44

The Appalachian mountains are older than bones.

ghoulierthanthou Report

Final score:

14points

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#45

After a full nuclear exchange, some landmasses will become devoid of life.

The British Isles would depopulate as famine, disease and radiation would kill the remaining survivors.

Sink-Em-Low Report

Final score:

12points

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#46

One genuinely terrifying fact is that there are more bacteria living in and on our bodies than there are human cells.

uLtRaTiNhoYNWA97 Report

Final score:

12points

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#47

If we don't find an optimal way to travel through space, we'll become extinct.

themanwithr Report

Final score:

10points

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#48

It would take months to years for the power grid to recover from a sufficiently strong solar storm.

Guses Report

Final score:

7points

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What do you think ?

Shannon Matthews 1 year ago

I've had two shoulder surgeries for torn rotators; one in July of 2022 and one in January of 2023. I went to get my pre-op last week and my ecg showed that sometime in past, I'd had a heart attack. But I never knew that. Now in past week I've seen a cardiologist and had a NM stress test to ensure that another shoulder surgery will be safe for me. I have no answers yet and my surgery is scheduled for next Wednesday. It's stressful not knowing that I'd had a heart attack because if I didn't know it before then how would I know it next time. I also don't know if my heart is ok; with or without surgery.

8points

Remi Flynne 1 year ago

I'm so sorry you're going through that! I hope you get answers soon.

6points

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Linda Lee 1 year ago

The fastest growing segment of the homeless population are people over 50 years old. These are people who did work, but one car accident, natural disaster, or some other event and they ended up homeless. This is especially scary if you're an adult orphan over age 50.

4points

Poindexter 1 year ago

And I'm willing to gamble that most, if not all of them have no one to advocate for them. We really need to be more supportive of one another – though there are some people who are just unpleasant, don't want to be helped and/or refuse any help …

0points

Bored Potato 1 year ago

How do people KNOW this stuff?

Becky Samuel 1 year ago

Science.

9points

Echo 1 year ago

Science, too much time on our hands, and possibly mild trauma in some cases.

3points

Rostit. . 1 year ago

to be fair, some of it is utter nonsense. but I did enjoy this thread.

2points

michael reid 1 year ago

How does anyone know anything? I knew most of these already. But I don't know hardly anything about economics for example.

1point

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People Share 30 “Genuinely Terrifying” Facts

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