They say truth is stranger than fiction. And if you ask me, reality is also scarier than fiction. A horror movie about zombies or monsters will have me yawning, but reframe that same film to feature deadly bacteria or diseases lurking in swimming pools, and I won’t be sleeping for a week. So for all of you pandas out there who are interested in hearing about real-life terrors, we’ve got the perfect list for you.

Below, you'll find some of the scariest things that scientists have proven to be real, that sadistic Reddit users have been kind enough to share. Enjoy freaking yourself out by reading about these things that sound too crazy to be real, and be sure to upvote the responses that make you question whether scientists really need to keep making discoveries…

#1

Nurse here.

COVID.

Now, let me explain what I mean. I am an ICU nurse and I have been in the "front lines" during the worst of the pandemic, first as a nurse manager in elderly homes, and later in Intensive Care Units.

Thing is... I cannot really express how terrifying this disease can be. I have seen young, healthy people dying and not being able to do anything for them. I have seen people that did everything right get the disease and end up under my care for months. Problem is that, no matter how hard I try, if you don't have a basic knowledge of intensive health care, you cannot really make your mind around what the word "critical" actually means.

Let me try to make your mind around this if you don't get what I mean.

Imagine getting sick and rapidly deteriorating to the point you cannot breath on your own. You are taken to ICU, fully analgosedated (so you are asleep and pain free), you get paralising agents (so all your muscles, including breathing, are fully relaxed), get a tube to your lungs, connected to a machine that will breath for you, and having all sorts of medicines whose only job is to keep you alive as your body fights off the disease with the help of different medications.

But then, even so, it is not enough, and you cannot properly oxygenate. So we do "prone" you, that means you be turned upside-down on the bed. But after about 24 hours we need to turn you back again on your back, because being on that position for so long can cause harm. But half an hour after turning you on your back, your blood tests show that you are not breathing properly again, and then we have to prone you again.

Repeat that for days. Weeks. Months.

Add to that that your family cannot get close to you. Maybe they can watch you through a glass door, if available. Add also that if your heart crashes (stops), the nursing & medical teams will be unable to get to you until they are properly dressed.

Did you get a mental image of what all this is? Let me tell you, that is about a 20% of what the word "critical" actually means when we talk about COVID.

PS: If you are a negationist, or anti-vaccines activist or whatever... don't. Just don't. Please.

Image credits: Volgrand

#2

How the brain is literally rewired and chemically altered by childhood neglect and abuse.

Image credits: petalumaisreal

#3

Giant squids. Suddenly the old sailor story's of krakens wrapping tenticles around a ship and pulling it into the ocean doesn't seem like fiction.

Image credits: OneTyler2Many

#4

more like a theory, the “orangutan paradox”, when we film a documentary on orangutans, they can’t realise that we are observing them, yet they are the most intelligent species of their category, so aliens might be watching us and we are as oblivious as an orangutan

Image credits: Time_Succotash

#5

dementia

Image credits: sorrymabad

#6

Ageing. I'm content with death but the idea of my body growing old, frail and eventually falling apart before the end game gives me goosebumps.

Image credits: anon

#7

Some tumors have teeth, hair and even eyes.

Image credits: Twat_Waffle_Stomp

#8

Gamma ray bursts. No warning, no escape, no defense, no survivors.

Image credits: Swampwolf42

#9

That things we thought were stars (or fuzzy stars) a century ago are actually entire galaxies. Who knows who or what the F is out there?

Image credits: OnionTruck

#10

Lead in gasoline may very-well have decreased the human IQ on a global scale while in use.

Image credits: keldoged

#11

brain-eating amoebas

Image credits: dark_n_lovely_qu33n

#12

Finding substances that can change your behaviour, memories and general personality.

Image credits: Puggymon

#13

That we've only explored (numbers might not be quite right) 2% of the oceans and that the oceans makes up 78% of the world. I wonder what's in there

Image credits: OffensiveCabbage

#14

That a person can be killed by organisms so tiny that we can't even see them

Image credits: cold_toast_n_butter

#15

Prions, horrific and totally unpredictable.

Image credits: geordiesteve520

#16

The scariest thing for me, is that we have scientifically mapped human psychology. We know social habits, and evolutionary survival instincts that we've carried over from our ancient past. We have extensive knowledge on how to elicit the exact response out of a human on command. And the scary thing is that corporations use this information to sell things to us.

Everything about a product's design from it's shape, to it's color pallet to it's odor is specifically and intricately designed to hack our brains and trigger the exact specific response that they want from us.

Once you are aware of how much human psychology goes into advertising, you will never look at an add the same way again.

#17

Climate Change

#18

Microplastics found in newborn babies

Image credits: Fuzzwuzzle2

#19

Time, it's not scary until you start thinking about it

#20

How little human scientists actually know relative to the amount of things in the universe

Image credits: FCFirework

#21

cracking your neck could cause you to have a stroke but its rare

Image credits: anon

#22

The capability to harness nuclear explosions

Image credits: MadgoonOfficial

#23

Imo, that statistically, at least based on the Milgram study, about 2/3 of people will obey authority figures who tell them to hurt or even kill an innocent person. Then when you ask them why they did it, they give answers startlingly similar to "I was just following orders".

#24

How human perceptions and values can be so easily hacked by tweaking some chemicals here and there.

#25

Deep time.

The Earth was alive a million years ago. And a million years before that. A thousand million years before that.


Even if our civilization is miraculously successful and we live for 20 thousand more years and colonize thousands of planets like in Dune it's still nothing. A blink of an eye. The Earth would barely notice.

Image credits: Spookd_Moffun

#26

that hearing is the last sense to leave, when dying.

Image credits: ma5terbate

#27

Not the scariest, but thought I should add because it's kinda suspicious.

Many governments are increasingly admitting that UFOs (which means unidentified flying objects, not aliens!) are real. They have been detected by many advanced military systems. They have been observed to seriously outperform our best technology/jets.

Now of course, what's a UFO conversation without bringing in the possibility of extraterrestrials watching us? Creepy but fascinating.

#28

Zombifying fungi as depicted in games like The Last Of Us exist, and are very potentially even scarier than how they appear in there.

The fungi of the genus Condyceps like to infect insects by scattering spores on them. After a while these insects will start to behave erratically. Eventually they try to reach a high place, like a stalk, where they lock their legs and then die. The fungus then sprouts from their body, scattering its spores below to infect the animal's brothers and sisters.

A theory currently is that the fungus doesn't even affect the brain, but rather that it cuts off the brain from the muscles. If this is the case, it means that the brain of the infected animal still functions normally, but its body just doesn't follow its commands, leaving the animal to die a slow but somewhat conscious death in order to infect more of its kind.

#29

Entropy. Time shall consume all things. Inevitable heat death of the universe.

#30

The size of our galaxy, how many *other* galaxies there are and how far away they are. When you can actually see something that incomprehensible..

Image credits: Jfonzy

#31

Toxoplasma gondii. A parasitic organism in cats that causes rats to become attracted to cat urine rather than be repelled. It favors risk taking behavior in humans that have been exposed. How many things have you down because of Toxoplasma gondii?

#32

60% of your poop is made of living and dead gut bacteria. These gut bacteria combine to produce more dopamine and serotonin than your brain can produce. Abundance of these neurotransmitters has a significant affect on the brain. Production of neurotransmitters is far from their only pathway to the brain.

Fecal transplants, used for illnesses, change your eating behavior. Patients who have a healthy weight but receive a transplant from an obese person are highly likely to become obese. Patients who are obese but receive a transplant from a thin person are highly likely to become thin.

In a real sense you can consider yourself to be a servant of your gut bacteria.

#33

The Yellowstone super volcano.

Image credits: overheatbelief

#34

That most people are addicted to technology but have no idea how it works. Instead of making humanity better and more efficient it’s ruining people’s lives. Of f*****g course

#35

The infinite expansion of the universe. Everything in the universe is not only getting farther and farther apart, but accelerating in it's expansion, such that one day in the distant future, whatever creatures are left to look up from their planets and wonder, will see an empty sky devoid of stars and galaxies as they've all expanded beyond the cosmic horizon. All worlds will be alone, drifting in the infinite dark, with no possible way of knowing the scale and beauty of what was.

Image credits: swim4018916044

#36

False vacuum decay.

It's a quantum physics' concept, but essentially it rises the question that there might be a lower energy state to matter as we now it.

There's no way to be sure that it's not the case, and because of quantum fluctuations there's a non-zero chance that somewhere some day, a particule will decay into its "true" lowest energy state.

Depending on how far that "true" vacuum is from the "false" one, the implications could range from a small changes in cosmological constants, to the cessation of all fundamental forces as we know it, i.e. full & immediate destruction of baryonic matter, or even immediate gravitational collapse of the universe.

TL;DR: if the universe quantum-blips in a no-no way we go bye-bye Thanos-snap-style

#37

Lobsters are practically immortal and continue to grow as long as they don't die from disease or killed by predator.

#38

Sun is going to die. It will explode and stop providing energy after 5 billion years. We better find a new star to relocate by then. Nearest star Proxima Centauri is 4.5 light years away from Earth and with current technology we can reach the neighbouring star in 6300 years trip.

#39

The Great Filter.

Essentially, the theory goes that the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life is that life is extremely unlikely. So, that must mean one step in the development of intelligent life is highly unlikely. The Great Filter is that unlikely step. The Great Filter could be in the past, meaning that there was some step in the evolution of life on Earth that was unlikely and we got past it. Or, and here’s the scary part, what if the Great Filter is in the future, and every intelligent civilization is doomed to bring about it’s own destruction?

EDIT: So science hasn’t exactly proved this real, but it’s a worrisome theory nonetheless