People Share The Scariest Facts They Know

Many people chose to share the facts having to do with the surreal, sudden ways we can die. It's always lurking around the corner, and it can take many subtle, yet horrifying, forms.

It Only Takes a Few Minutes 

"A brain aneurysm can hit you any time, any where, with next to no warning."

"Source: Watching my otherwise healthy grandma go from happily singing and making dinner to crying about the worst pain she had ever been in to being a vegetable in less than an hour."

-- KoldGlaze

Under the Surface 

"You can have rabies for years before it even shows symptoms, then one day you get a headache and it's a death sentence from there." -- MonkeyPlower

"Oh god. I found a dead bat in my apartment like 2 years ago. Guess I should go get checked before the paranoia sets in." -- Throwaway47321

"Another one for the hypochondriac headache list"

"Nice" -- lolicvnt

Air Pockets

"Your skin is not 100% attached to your body."

"With enough air pressure beneath the skin, your body will become a balloon with a solid core and it will be excruciating before the embolism kills you."

-- Rusty_Ram

Waking to Death 

"If you have FFI (fatal familial insomnia) you will experience progressively worsening sleeplessness. Your inability to sleep eventually turns into total insomnia at which point you'll die."

"People who have this rare genetic condition will all die. It's inevitable; most people within a year of it's onset... scary to think about."

-- lilredridinghood9

Folded Wrong 

"Prion diseases exist. They're not bacteria or viruses, there isn't an infection, per se, to attack."

"They're basically an alternate form of protein, and we can't stop them." -- balloon99

"Prions are misfolded proteins, which makes them the origami of diseases." -- Harleye

Others also discussed the possibility of sudden death.

These examples, however, dealt with the morbid ways that human beings can directly cause the deaths of one another. Sometimes it's gruesome and purposeful. Sometimes it's a freak accident.

Friends Like These 

"If you will die because of murder, there's 80 percent chance you already know your killer." -- idigit1

"It's horrifying that several potential people just flew through my mind" -- ThatsdumbDoit

"Instinctively looked behind myself." -- Congoods

My Goodness 

"Fun fact! Being flayed (skinned alive)by a skilled torturer meant that you'd be likely to survive the ordeal. Believe it or not dying of shock, or blood loss wasn't guaranteed."

"Often people survived hours, or days with no skin. In these cases what finished them off was hypothermia."

-- Murky-Heart-1844

A Nation's Toll

"80% of Soviet males born in the year 1923 were dead by the end of WWII."

"...extremely high infant mortality, lingering effects from the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian famine, Stalin's purges of the military and government, forced resettlement of ethnic minorities, the Finnish Winter War, and yes, WWII."

-- Lapsed__Pacifist

Slipping Through the Cracks

"If you commit a murder in the United States, the chances that you will be arrested and convicted for it is less than 50%." -- DioHecho

"There was a man who was finger printed as part of a job application with the federal govt. When his prints were captured, they linked it to murder from decades before." -- Esmeraldem

Snap of the Fingers 

"Often all it takes is one random act by one random stranger to ruin your day and have your life taken away from you." -- oldbutnotmad

"I was just thinking about this in relation to drunk drivers" -- motofrommadagascar

Finally, some people decided to turn their gaze to the natural world. These facts are all about the strange creatures and life that populate our planet.

Escaping the Pain 

"There's a plant that grows in Australia called the Gympie-Gympie, touching the plant will result in an unbearable pain because of the small needles on the plant. The pain is so unbearable people and animals killed themselves because of it."

"There's also a plant called Hogweed that can cause severe burns and blisters that can scar you for life."

-- False-Improvement-56

One in a Million

"That a large number of asteroids and comets that could potentially hit Earth directly have not even been discovered as of yet, and our ability to actually stop a large object traveling stupidly fast is much worse than depicted in films."

-- ZootyMudkip

Ending it Early 

"The fact that rabbits eat their babies when they know they won't survive." -- Schopenhauer1788

"Almost all animals do, in a sense it's humane. Cats will just leave their sick babies to the wild to starve to death, rot to death, or get picked apart to death by bugs."

"I'd take the mom doing the deed over hours of ants any day." -- PM_Me_Pikachu_Feet

Cruising Along the Bottom 

"A moose can swim about 16 feet/5 meters underwater, which is why orcas are natural predators of them."

"Imagine you're diving underwater, suddenly there's a moose sitting at the bottom eating sea grass, then it gets eaten by an orca. That would be terrifying."

-- Hazard-Matthews

Caught in the Wave 

"At any second the whole planet could be completely destroyed by x-ray bursts from quasars. So many other scary things have practical solutions for protecting the human race, but there is no defense humanity could conceivably develop against such a massive amount of energy."

"I subscribe to the Star Trek utopian techno future, massive gamma or x-ray burst.. nothing can stop it.. goodbye planet earth."

-- JesusSaidItFirst

Boom, Eggs.

"A botfly can lay an egg in a fraction of a second. Literally swatting the fly can be enough for it to lay an egg which burrows into your flesh and feeds in there until it hatches and matures enough to fly away and start the cycle again."

"It can also happen to an eye. I know this because I'm an eye doctor and I have removed a botfly larva from the INSIDE of an Eyelid (tarsal conjunctival membrane). And yes I have photos. I have posted about it in the past before."

-- OscarDivine

Majestic Vampires 

"Some butterflies drink blood" -- Stormtruper1

"And there's a type of bee that eats decomposing flesh." -- Bedlambiker

"Blood-er-flies." -- BubbaFrink-