This article is full of disturbing and unnerving theories.
There's a lot of talk about heavy topics like "good" and "bad" ways to die, worldwide catastrophic events, etc.
One Reddit user asked:
What is the scariest theory you know about?
Here are some of the more unnerving responses.
GRB Bye-Bye
I saw one about the potential of a specific type of supernova that would essentially fire out beam of radiation (or some other kind of energy.)
If it hit earth, we would see the entire sky covered with auroras. This is the ozone layer burning off and the last thing we would see before we all die, guess at least we get a pretty lightshow to end on
- grizwa
Astronomer here! You are thinking of a gamma ray burst (GRB).
However, for a star to do this to earth it has to be extremely close to us (within a few thousand light years), a distance within which we can see the bright, almost going supernova stars well, and the beam is just a few degrees wide and has to be directed exactly at us.
As such we don't think there are any GRB-killing potential events near Earth. They're also just so darn rare- we estimate a galaxy our size produces one every million years or so.
Serial Failures
michael c hall dexter GIF by ShowtimeGiphyIt is speculated that there are over 2000 active serial killers in the US alone. It makes you realize that many of the serial killers we know of today--- Bundy, BTK, Gacy, are ultimately failed serial killers.
It's like that Usual Suspects line--- " the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist"
Doesn't help that the entire profile of a serial killer is so well known that any serial killer with half a brain cell would be subverting it intentionally. The only serial killers that fit the standard profile of a serial killer are the most compulsive, incompetent serial killers.
If you're only looking in places where there's a pattern for a serial killer, a serial killer without a pattern is hard to trace. Add in "professional" serial killers like Israel Keyes and you have numerous types under the radar.
Non-Zero
Every year there are a non-zero number of near miss nuclear detonations.
I.e. through faults in the system a nuclear warhead is almost launched/detonated. In 2005 it was reported that Russia had 26 such near miss events.
As far I'm aware no stats have been published since and no info for the US has been made public, however it is believed:
a) the US had a higher number of events in the same year, and
b) as they are typically caused by aging equipment and the numbers were increasing prior to that year, the number of events each year after likely kept increasing.
Never Ending Story
I remember hearing one theory that every time we "die", we instead instantly switch to an near exact universe were we didn't die, as if nothing happened. Other people's death remain the same since it's not yourself.
For example if you were to be hit by a car, in other peoples perspective you die, but in your own instead of dying, its a near miss, or you're injured but don't die.
- Vexilus
What gives me a serious mind f*ck with this theory is that in this situation, you would transport to a universe where you still interact with your friends as if nothing happened but that those same friends are mourning you and go on without you in your previous universe. And what if you live in a universe that is one of your friend's alternative universes that they transported to after they died?
Overall, what if our personal universe is completely based around one person's death and their eventual transfer to the universe you're in? Super weird.
Losing Your Head
That, after decapitation, you may still be conscious and somewhat aware for at least a few seconds.
- Grinnzy
Also time and your perception of it is relative, and I have no idea WHAT it would be relative TO in this situation. So seconds could be soooo much more. ((Shudder))
Believe it's something like 2-28 seconds before you brain looses enough oxygen to fail.
Can't remember who it was but "death by beheading" (think it was using a guillotine) was stopped in the one country because the ruler was present and the guy who lost his head stared and blinked at him for long enough that he decided to stop killing people that way.
- TAOJeff
Selfish, Cowardly, and Scary
That theory about what happened on the missing Malaysian flight.
From looking at the evidence and the most likely scenario, (that being the pilot committing suicide) people have been able to piece together possible scenarios that happened on the plane. One of which is that shortly into the flight, the pilot deoxygenated(?) the plane, and accelerated to a high altitude, killing all on board very quickly.
He then flew for hours and hours south before crashing the plane. It's scary to me because he would have been flying in an isolated part of the Earth, with nothing ahead of him other than the South Pole. That isolated plane, flying in the dark, with hundreds of dead strapped in their seats...
The nearest city, Perth, is still asleep and only beginning to wake up. There is no one, and nothing. To think of that man, flying with all those bodies in the dark to nowhere is very scary.
So selfish, and cowardly, but also very scary.
Permafrost
As Artic permafrost melts, it will release diseases that have been frozen in the ground for thousands or tens of thousands of years, and life on Earth will have no immunity to them.
Wonder how the world will react if a disease suddenly infected the whole world. We're good at following orders and social distancing so it won't spread that fast right
To The Left, To The Left
beyonce queen GIFGiphyThe Great Attractor.
Over the years, scientists and astronomers have charted out space and we have a fairly good understanding of what's out there; planets, moons, stars, space, etc. Gravity plays a big role in showing what is attracted to what, moons around planets, planets around stars, stars around black holes.
But people have began to notice that everything out there in the galaxy, is slowly, SLOWLY but surely, scooting LEFT on our map of the cosmos.
Everything and anything is drifting ever slowly in one united direction and something hidden and astronomically massive is dragging us and all known & unknown matter towards it.
And we have utterly no say or action in the matter.
Carrington
The Carrington Event of 1859 might be something that happens on a natural cycle every 150 - 200 years or so, which means we are due.
A CME (coronal mass ejection) hit the Earth's magnetosphere and caused a giant geomagnetic storm. The entire ionosphere became charged and unstable with massive induced electrical current.
On the good side, such an event causes beautiful aurora ("northern lights") across the majority of the planet. On the bad side it's giant planet-wide solar EMP. It wreaked havok on telegraph systems, but they were about the only electrical equipment at the time.
If a similar event happened today, first the global satellite network would be annihilated, then any radio signals would break up (including your phone going dead), immediately followed by most radio equipment being fried.
Next, the power grids will go; not just a worldwide blackout, but power surges would destroy most of what's connected to the grid, including the chaos of the transformer and substations exploding.
Virtually every vehicle will suddenly shut off, and suddenly being very difficult to control will crash. Some heavily shielded military craft might survive, but in general commercial aircraft will suddenly fall from the sky.
All of this would happen extremely fast; from any one person's point of view it may seem to be instantaneous. If a bit stronger than the Carrington event it may also destroy the backup systems that protect critical infrastructure from disasters.
The Carrington event was over 150 years ago.
Earth been hit by significant (but much smaller) CMEs at least twice since then; they'd be enough to cause quite a bit of damage today, but manageable. A Carrington event sized CME had a near miss with Earth in 2012.
We actually have multiple solar flares hit our magnetosphere every year, just generally not that cause significant issues (though there are predictable events a couple times a year that interfere with some satellites for a couple hours a few days in a row)
Carrington event sized CMEs are common enough that within your lifetime it is pretty much guaranteed to see at least one or two more near miss events.
CMEs can be much stronger though. During certain parts of the 11 year solar cycle the sun regularly emits CMEs large enough that, if they hit Earth, would strip the atmosphere, boil off the oceans, and incinerate everything on the surface, sterilizing the planet.
There would be no real warning; depending where you were on the planet it would either be instantaneous or you'd have just enough time to see a glow in the sky from the wall of fire before it crested the horizon and engulfed you at several times the speed of sound.
GRBs are the only deadlier threat I am aware of.
The Bubble
We don't know whether the universe is in a true vacuum (lowest possible energy state) or a false vacuum (a local low, but not the lowest).
If the universe is a false vacuum, then at any point, at any moment, a quantum tunneling event could occur where that point spontaneously decays to a true vacuum. If that happened, a bubble would expand from that point at the speed of light that radically altered physics, instantly annihilating everything down to the subatomic level.
Since it travels at c, there'd be no warning, no way to see it coming. When it reached us you'd just instantly blink out of existence. Even if we are in a false vacuum, such an event doesn't become likely for at least 10 to the power of 139 years, which is an unimaginably big number - but it could happen at any moment at any point.
It could have already happened and the bubble could be heading straight for us, about to end us at any time. It's a great way to die as far as ways to die go, the scary part is just all planets, stars, and life that are or ever will be just up and disintegrating with no warning.
Not from a "it's bad for me" perspective, but a "everything that ever was or will be is just gone in an instant" perspective.
- fafalone
Reset
This is my theory or at least I haven't seen it before.
What if global warming is just the universe's way of resetting life before it gets too advanced? That's why we haven't met any other civilizations from other planets.
Kinda like a Rust server.
You'll Never Know
We are all strangers, including your family and your best friends.
No matter what.
You may know them, but they're different people truly. You will never really know what they are thinking of you or anyone in general.
They Won't Exist
It freaks me out that things that are so commonplace in nature won't exist by the end of our lifetime.
Eg. I went to Ireland and saw the dark hedges last year and the guide told us those trees are predicted to be gone within 20 years due to changed weather patterns and increased tourism.
Something so small but I remember seeing pictures of them as a kid and wanting to go there. Knowing they just won't exist quite soon is unsettling.
It Really Didn't End Well
GiphyThe Permian Triassic extinction event, also known as 'The Great Dying'.
It was the greatest mass extinction event in history, killing about 80% of all species on the earth.
One theory for how it happened is the Siberian Traps flood basalt erupting onto massive coal deposits, releasing an absurd amount of CO2, and causing catastrophic climate change.
Basically, climate change caused by burning fossil fuels has happened before, and it really didn't end well.
Strange Sludge
Strange matter.
Inside Neutron stars is a kind of quark soup. Strange quarks May naturally occur here which aren't usually likely to form matter. If the neutron starts was to collide with another it would spew out its insides.
Strange matter is perfectly stable and dense, therefore indestructible.
Whatever matter it touches becomes so 'impressed' by its stability, it will become strange matter too. If one of these 'strangelets' hit Earth, everything would just become hot dense strange sludge.
Dust
I have heard of a theory that if enough satellites get stuck in orbit, that if an explosion were to set the satellites in one direction around the planets orbit, that that one satellite would continue to crash into other satellites, causing those them to continue spinning with that force.
This would continue, the satellites breaking apart, becoming smaller and smaller, until the only thing left is a fine dust that is spinning in the planets orbit, causing a cloud to black out the sun.
And as much crap we have in earth's orbit, that genuinely worries me.
I think its called Kesslers Syndrome.
Blue
A Himba Tribe in Africa had a slew of words for the color 'green'... and not one for the word 'blue'. During a color swatch test, members of the tribe could distinguish between subtle shades of green at a glance, but due to a lack of a word for 'blue', could only identify a clearly and distinctly blue swatch half the time during testing. Possible Conclusion: Without a word for something, we might have trouble identifying that thing even if it was right in front of us. One Ref: [https://www.gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-see-colour/]
The Awareness Test: https://youtu.be/Ahg6qcgoay4
The Theory: without a word for a thing, we might not be able to identify or recognize a thing... even if it was right sitting right in front of us. Even if someone pointed it out to us. Even if we were told exactly what to look for.
What are cats staring at, anyway..?
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Companies are typically in business for profit, and very few have the goal of keeping the customer's interests in mind.
But some corporations go even further to get more out of their customer in exchange for their "quality services" and as a result, the line between general business and scam becomes blurred.
Redditor jwwin asked:
"What is a predatory business that shouldn't be legal, but is?"
Students paying an exorbitant amount in tuition in order to seek higher learning should be warned there are additional expenses to cover for.
A Textbook Example
"College textbooks, they will release an 'updated' edition every semester but the information doesn't change. And then after you spent a fortune on the books the places that buy textbooks will give you like 5% of what you paid for the book."
– teethalarm
A "Double Whammy"
"Former Prof here. I talked with a book rep about this once and learned a lot. It is a bit complicated but worth understanding. Book publishers rely on large quantity sales to make any money on a book because the cost of production is so high up front (author, editors, printing, etc.). So, for a book to be profitable, it has to sell a lot of copies to spread the cost of production across all the books. A paperback in the fiction section might sell 100,000 or more. A textbook might sell as few as 1,000. So, the publisher needs everyone to buy the book to break even."
"Now add colleges into the mix. Somewhere in the 1980s (give or take), colleges saw publishers selling books and making larger profits on them than the college bookstore was making per book. So they got the bright idea to start buying used texts and reselling them. Before that, a text would come out and 97% (making the number up but it was close to that) of the students would buy the book in year one, 85% in year two, 75% in year three, 60% in year four and 50% in year five. A $50 dollar book would cost $25 to make (again, making the numbers up), sell to the bookstore for $40 ($15 publisher profit), and be sold to the student for $50 ($10 bookstore profit). Across the five years, the producer would make a profit."
"Then, college bookstores began offering students $25 for a used book and selling it for $40 ($15 profit - $5 higher than that of a new book). Students would then prefer the $40 used book over the $50 new book. But that cut the publisher's sales from 97% to 50% in the first year. Because they could not sell as many books they had to do two things: (1) raise the initial price of the text to cover the production cost in 1-2 years rather than 4-5 years, and (2) cut the cycle down from 4-5 years to 1-2 years to ensure that they got sales of the book. That is a double whammy. Texts that used to cost $50 now cost $300 or more. And they have a new version out every 18 months or so. Students refuse to pay that price and that cuts the sales numbers even further forcing the price up again. And, with new editions out so frequently, it is harder to sell them back to the bookstore."
"That's why you see so many 'course packs' now - where a professor will pick a few pages from a book to give to the students. I went from having nearly every student purchasing a text in my early career to having zero students with a text late in my career. Your professor probably dislikes the state of affairs as much as you do. I cut down what books I would select because I could not justify students paying that much for what they were getting. I would also recommend students look for older editions on Amazon and the like which got me in trouble with my administration because I was not supporting the bookstore. But, it was difficult to teach from a text that no one had or had access to. The University's desire to generate revenue from texts truly was killing the chicken because it was not producing enough eggs."
"So look for an older edition on Chegg, Amazon, or the like and match it up with what your professor is teaching from the new edition. You are right, it probably has not changed. Be careful for the problems at the end of the chapter - that is often where the changes are."
– BewnieBound
These businesses parade as services but they are notorious for taking more than what you're willing to pay for.
For A Future Owner
"Rent to Own (furniture, appliances, TVs, video game systems, etc.) The mark up on the interest over time ends up costing 4 times the purchase - or more."
– PartyAlarmed3796
"Well the trick is to not pay (seems to be what a lot of people do)."
– Expensive_Ad2695
"Which is why those places are so expensive and why they're actually kinda necessary for some people."
"They're taking a pretty big risk on people with no credit, and if a person with shi*ty credit needs a refrigerator or other necessary appliance, there's usually nobody else willing to work with them. Also, most of them report to credit agencies so you can build your credit through them."
"I'm not a fan by any means and I hate that people are buying video game systems and couches through them, but I still think they're filling a need."
– Pitiful-Pension-6535
Money Sucker
"Payday loan companies – they're like financial vampires, sucking the life out of people with high-interest rates."
– neonliolia
"And yet most of them are owned by major banks... hmmmm."
"Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, JP Morgan/Chase collectively all own the largest payday lender companies."
– Bramtyre
"In Canada, there is an effort to turn Canada Post into a kind of bank that offers basic banking services to the most vulnerable. Not sure what happened to that, but it was an alternative to check cashing and payday loan rackets."
– hobbitlover
Greedy Event Vendor
"Ticket Master."
– LTVOLT
"Agreed. We went to a preseason hockey game the other week. Tickets were $5 each but there was around $8 of Ticketmaster fees for each one and you had to use their app to get in the door because the barcodes change like every 30 seconds or something. It's ridiculous."
– darfus1895
Where can citizens turn to receive genuine care without drying up their financial resources?
Big Pharma
"Health Insurance and over priced perscription drugs."
"Wife is type 1 diabetic. Her pump is over $1000 a month WITH 50% coverage. $177 for just the sensor pack. We have the best coverage we can afford."
– Dukeboys_
"US pays the middle man for health care coverage. The middle man and the health care provider come up with "health packages" you can buy into, just in case you get sick. It's just sick how they funnel money from the middle class into this."
– dcoolidge
"Healthcare insurance industry. They can straight up reject claims you should be covered for and make you jump through near endless hoops to get them to pay for the service that is part of your plan."
– ColdHardPocketChange
All Out To Get Ya
"Homeopathic 'medicine' sellers."
"Psychics"
"Domain search engine registration scams (fake emails or physical mail that shows up saying 'your domain search registration is about to expire' and look exactly like warnings that your domain name is about to expire)"
"Fake homeowner warranty/car warranty scams loaded with so many limitations and exclusions they’ll basically never pay out."
"Multilevel marketing systems like Amway."
– 4wqrewtety
Losing Sight Of Kids' Well-Being
"From my experience working in group homes for youth are awful. The owners only want money and the more kids in care the more money."
– OddReputation3765
Going Nowhere Fast
"Car insurance."
"You get penalized for using it. Even just once in some cases."
– Effective_Sundae_839
"1000% agree. I was rear ended by a hit and run driver while i was stopped at a stop sign. Literally came to a stop for 3 seconds max and got destroyed. Car insurance wanted to give me 4k and shut me up. It’s called the nuisance fee. I eventually lawyered up and got 25k out of it. But like wtf. B*tch that’s what we PAY FOR, following renewal of my policy it increased hundreds of dollars a month and that was even after i switched to a different company. 'A claim is a claim regardless who is at fault.'”
– HitBackZach
Businesses taking advantage of their customers should be a crime, yet here we are.
What companies can you think of that legally continue to look after their own profitable interests above providing a decent service?
Just the other evening, I was walking home, and I barely survived.
I tripped on a dead tree branch.
The next thing I knew, I was flying in the air and landing on my back.
My belongings were strewn about.
And my to-go burger was dead.
A simple walk.
A simple dead branch.
And almost lights out.
Redditor Typical_XJW wanted to hear about the times people eluded death, so they asked:
"How did you almost die?"
Don't even get me started on any and every car ride.
We're always moments from the end on highways.
Back in the Day...
Hunger Games Student GIFGiphy"Almost drowned when I was 5 or 6, been hospitalized twice for sepsis between 2016 and 2019, and had a stroke this year. I'm 29."
ChristmasKid88
On the Disk
"MRSA infection in the disk on my lower spine between L5 and S1. Showed up two days after a cortisone shot but the hospital said it was from something else. Was in hospital 25 days multiple emergency surgeries."
EatA**FromBack
"I worked for a doctor who did these in-house and other procedures, and it 100% made me not trust medical facilities, cleanliness, and sterilization procedures. Had about twenty patients all come down with the same gut infection, 'coincidentally,' the same patients who came in for endoscopy procedures the same day."
dimlylit_
Saved
"Saving a younger friend from drowning, he panicked and almost took me out."
loztriforce
"Had that happen with a younger cousin when we were kids. His brother and I went to save him, he climbed on both of us and pushed us under. Lifeguard didn’t even see us until he pulled younger cousin out of the water, then we popped up gasping for air."
coffeejunki
Shucked
"16-year-old farm kid me, stepdad told me to go pick up a load of corn seed for planting. I had gone with him many times before, and driven the truck (full ton dually diesel) and hauled light stuff with it. Nobody told me how different it is to haul 10,000 lbs of seed on a big flatbed trailer on gravel. I had a lot of common sense and was driving slowly and carefully."
"Still… 10,000+ lbs pushed me down a gravel hill skidding, praying to god I stopped before the stop sign at the T intersection to a busy highway. I came to a grinding halt JUST as the front of the truck crossed the plane where the gravel turned to asphalt. A semi was coming from one direction and regular cars from the other. I shudder thinking about what if on that one. Don’t let untrained kids tow potentially deadly, heavy trailers, with zero training."
datnetcoder
Finding Tracks
College Sports Sport GIF by Sealed With A GIFGiphy"Was backwoods camping in Yellowstone and if I hadn’t considered for 30 seconds if I REALLY needed to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would have walked out of my tent headfirst into a brown bear, which I heard before leaving and found tracks of next to my tent in the morning. Spookiest moment of my life in hindsight."
danvo5
Bears are a no go for me.
Camping is an even bigger HECK NO!!
Several Strikes
Reassuring Jimmy Fallon GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonGiphy"Twice. 1. Woke up to my apartment on fire."
"2. Hit head-on by a drunk driver on a small bus, just after everyone got off bus exploded."
lizard_king0000
Oh Barb
"Lmao okay, so I was getting my teeth cleaned, and I got nitrous oxide because I have so many exposed roots. Well, my hygienist at the time was this lovely lady from Minnesota. Kinda flaky, but super sweet, and talked about her family all the time. So I'm in the chair and she hooks up my mask, and away we go. I actually fell asleep! Except not so much."
"Turns out Barb had forgotten to turn the oxygen on and had been feeding me straight nitrous. She only noticed because I started gasping for air while unconscious. So that's how I almost died at the dentist. I never saw Barb again, but I tell you, that was the best nap of my life!"
CharismaticAlbino
Climb Up
"I was snorkeling. I had my other stuff stored on a rock by the water, about 3 meters high. When I got out, I decided to climb straight up. Almost at the top, the rock I was hoisting myself up on came off and I fell back first onto the coral. If a friendly wave hadn’t come in, I would have broken my back, at least."
Yugan-Dali
Blood Loss
"I was diagnosed with a rare fatal blood disorder from birth, doctors projected I’d live till about 6 and then die from massive blood loss. As this was the mid-90s, they tested the idea of using stem cells from my sibling's umbilical cord; administering the first successful stem cell transplant from a sibling donor and I’m still here to tell the tale!"
Material_Cry1697
These were some tremendously close calls.
Do you have any near-death experiences to share? Let us know in the comment below.