Are you brave enough to learn about some of the most alarming events happening in the world today? From rising racial tensions and natural disasters to extreme poverty and political unrest, these are some of the terrifying realities we face daily. Don't be too scared, though; this blog post is here to inform you, not scare you! Join us for an illuminating journey into what's going on around our globe right now—it might just offer a new perspective on life.

1. Birds Are Disappearing

One user posted, “The birds are disappearing. Most likely because the bugs are, too.”

Another Redditor responded, “My yard is overgrown with trumpet vine, thistles, wild raspberries, and a bunch of wildflowers. I spray nothing, just go out and pull out the invasive [stuff] when I see it (I've given up on the trumpet vine). I have many birds, bugs, and rabbits. I leave them… alone except to keep some mason bee houses and maintain a bird bath for the birds.

“It's not enough, but I'm trying. My neighbors probably think [I don't care] about my yard, and honestly? They're not completely wrong. I care about my yard; I just don't [care] if it's perfectly manicured—I'd rather make sure some suburban wildlife gets a break. The birds made three nests on my property this year! That's more than I've ever had! I'm so excited for next year!!!”  

One commenter said, “I transitioned a mowed grass yard into woods years ago. I loved the natural look and seeing all the critters who made it their home too. Today, in my late 60s, I love how low maintenance the yard is—it helps me and my husband age in place.

“Here's how I did it… I had the city dump a few truckloads of leaves (from their fall leaf pick-up), which I spread thickly over swaths of grass and planted tree seedlings in the ‘mulch.' I added a thinner layer of leaves each fall to keep the weeds down until the trees were big enough to shade out the weeds. Then, I let the last batch of leaves decompose and planted woodland plants around the trees. I repeated this until the entire yard was almost entirely wooded. Today, we have paths through the woods that lead to a fire pit, a deck, and the veggie garden – in the only sunny spot left on the property.” 

2. Water Pollution

“Here in the U.K., water companies have been dumping tonnes and tonnes of sewage into our river systems and the sea, making some beaches closed. It is truly disgusting, and the whole water industry is in about £60bn of debt and could collapse,” one user shared.

Another Redditor replied, “…I'm sick and tired of things like recycling being at a consumer level when it should be at a corporate governance level and more globally enforced at the production level rather than us failing to do anything about it at a consumer level…”

One commenter added, “The average consumer can't really do anything because even if you throw that plastic bag in the right bin, it'll still probably end up in a landfill or Indonesia.”

Another user added, “A couple of years ago, Australian ports were getting clogged with shipping containers full of recycling that was meant to go to China. As a nation that likes to offshore all our responsibility, we just send the bulk of our recycling to other nations to handle for us. Well, it turns out we were putting stuff in our recycling that the Chinese companies kept saying they couldn't process.

“Consumers weren't told this, and the recycling depots didn't want to filter it out before shipping… So it just piled up in the dockyards for a long time before anyone realized. I'm actually not sure what has ended up happening. My understanding is for a while, a lot of what we (average consumer) was told was recycling was just getting put in the landfill.”

3. Seals With Avian Flu

One user commented, “The seals dying of Avian flu in Chile.”

Another user responded, “And cats in Poland.”

“Wait, has bird flu jumped the species barrier again?!” one Redditor replied.

Another user warned, “Don't let your dogs and cats put wild birds in their mouths. Especially dead ones”

One commenter added, “Yup, it is going into mammals. Only a matter of time now.”

“Oh well, good thing everyone is currently obsessed with befriending crows and hand-feeding them peanuts,” another user commented. 

4. Viruses Crossing Species Barriers

One user shared, “Pigs and humans can share viruses, and our biochemistries are quite similar. In fact—in the early days, insulin manufactured for diabetics was actually manufactured in pigs… When viruses enter into pigs (which they easily do from birds)—they evolve and take on characteristics to jump to humans—often facilitating human-to-human transmission. In many cases—Avian >>> pig >>> human >>> then jump back to bird with pig/human upgrades and fly globally.

“This is why I always surmised (I have no data on this) that a bad virus hit humanity in the middle east a long, long time ago. Pig farmers died first—allowing folks to jump to the conclusion that pigs were unclean. These stories/songs/folklore eventually recorded as religious law.” 

5. Fires in Canada

One Redditor posted, “My country is on fire. It was also on fire a month ago, but then it stopped for a few weeks.”

Another user replied, “I live on the shores of Lake Michigan. The air is horrible. Visibility is minimal, and I'm not even in the thick of the fires. I've been so worried about our Canadian friends for what seems like WAY too long now. Keep safe.”

“Yesterday was fun. High humidity + smoke + no wind meant a dense fog until about 9 am and average run-of-the-mill fog until 11,” another user commented. 

One commenter posted, “Yep, I'm in N.J., and the U.S. has twice this June had spells of the worst air quality I've ever seen in my life. I'm afraid of this becoming a regular thing for y'all up there and us down here. I try to take comfort that the worst that ever happened was in 1780, and that passed. And they didn't even have info on [what] was happening; it took a couple hundred years to figure that out. We can trace some religious apocalyptic nuttery still ongoing today back to that event. The smoke events lately are bad enough. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have it so bad that the day was like night.”

6. Insect Numbers Plummeting

One Redditor posted, “Insect numbers are absolutely plummeting. There is about a 2.5% loss in terms of mass per year. Without insects, the food chain will collapse—the effects of this are already starting to be seen.”

Another user replied, “As a child, I remember chasing butterflies all over my grandparents' yard. Now I get excited if I see one a week.” 

“We have started reducing our lawn area and replacing non-native plants with natives. In the past two or three years, we have seen a big increase in insect life in our yard: praying mantises, bees of many kinds, beetles, and many butterflies, including Monarchs, fritillaries, and black swallowtails. This is a significant step everyone can take. Insects need a supportive habitat. Homegrown National Park is a good place to start. I also recommend Doug Tallamy's book Bringing Nature Home…,” one commenter added. 

Another user replied, “I had a huge argument with my uncle years ago over pesticides. My grandmother used to have hundreds of peepers around the creek in her yard until my uncle started putting down weed killers and pesticides. Now there isn't a single peeper.”

“People think the environmental collapse will be something big they'll notice from the start. But I think it's already happening, and we already see it but don't recognize it. People say, ‘Oh, you just don't see as many fireflies anymore.' ‘Remember every Christmas we'd get all those brown beetles? I haven't seen one this year.' ‘You used to have to clean your windscreen when you drove at night because of all the moths, but now there's hardly any.'

“All those little noticings, until you notice food prices going up, weather being always terrible, water quality going down—more and more until it snowballs, and by then, it's far too late. We should pay more attention when we notice all those little things,” one Redditor reprimanded.

7. Heatwaves in India

One user posted, “Heatwaves in India killing possibly thousands of people, it's not in the media anywhere and is probably also going on in other countries such as Mexico and the southern U.S. A civil war [is] going on in Sudan right now; no one cares, not even with the potentially thousands or maybe even millions of refugees this creates.

“Possible human health catastrophes were coming with all the poisonous and cancerous chemicals from microplastics, pesticides, and so many other beauty products we use daily, which scientists have warned us about for decades. No one is interviewing these scientists anymore, writing about the problem anywhere, or even trying to find out what kind of actual health hazards will evolve from our careless use of all these chemicals constantly.”

Another user recognized and added, “I've spoken on this topic before, but India is staring down the barrel of what is known as a ‘wet-bulb event' in the very near future. What is a wet-bulb event? It is a situation where a combination of days of high heat and extreme humidity creates a crisis scenario where a perfectly healthy young person can be outside, resting in the shade, with a fan blowing on them and ample access to lukewarm water and they will still quickly overheat and die.

“Your sweat has to be able to evaporate to properly cool you down. If it is hot enough, and the air is already moisture saturated enough, your sweat has nowhere to go. The only way to survive a wet-bulb event is with air conditioning…

“If there is a multi-day wet-bulb event on top of a major power outage, we are talking about tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, will die. There will be no response quick enough to stop it, nothing to be done. It will be absolutely catastrophic on a scale that is rather hard to imagine.”

8. Bacterial Resistance

“Bacterial resistance, due to the overuse of antibiotics and bacterial evolution, bacteria are able to develop themselves and change their DNA and cellular structure to become immune to antibiotics. Now, there are certain infections that can't be treated with the same antibiotics that were effective 10-20 years ago.

“In the near future, we may return to the pre-antibiotic age in which simple lung or urinary infections can kill us simply because we don't have effective antibiotics,” one user shared.

Another user commented, “It's pretty clear we're just going to use evolutionary algorithms to engineer new antibiotics. As fast as bacteria advance, our understanding of biological systems exceeds. I'm not that worried about it, considering that the last 30 years of science have already resulted in xenobiotics.” 

9. Bees are Dying Out

One user shared, “Evidently, the bees are dying out, and once they do, we're all [in trouble]. Not a bee expert, but maybe someone who can explain further. Edit: article explains why honey bees aren't in danger, but other bees are…”

Another user replied, “Bees are making a bit of a comeback, maybe. It's not out of the woods, but there are some promising signs.”

“We planted honeydew melons this year, and the amount of bees we see is crazy! I was just excited to get fresh fruit, but I'm more excited about the bees!” one user commented. 

One Redditor replied, “Not just Bees, all insects. Bees are just the poster boy for insects because of humans' affinity with them for producing honey and because bumble boys are cute. If I'm honest, they get too much attention to the detriment of other species.”

10. Destruction of Coral Reefs

One user raised, “The massive destruction of our coral reefs.”

Another user commented, “Well, the great barrier reef is actually growing back at its best rates in a long time. Now if dumb ass tourists would stop STANDING ON CORAL, I'm sure that would help.”

One user exclaimed, “Standing on corals??…”

Another user added, “You can literally fly like a majestic eagle in the water, and they choose to stand on crunchy rock animals?” 

One Redditor added, “Rocks that shred wet skin and leave micro life in the wounds that you need to firehose with betadine to avoid horrible infections. I grew up along the coast of far North Queensland, and the first thing you learn about swimming near coral is to give it plenty of space and admire the beauty from a distance. Getting dumped while body surfing or getting caught in a rip snorkeling and ending up all scraped up and covered in… betadine and mercurochrome [is just horrible].”

11. Depression is an Epidemic

“Depression has become an epidemic disease,” stated one user.

Another user replied, “The WHO (World Health Organization) declared depression a global health problem. Emergency.”

One commenter added, “That's a sign that something is terribly wrong.”

“This post is a glaring window into why,” one Redditor replied. 

12 The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism

One user shared, “The rise of surveillance capitalism and A.I. Privacy is essentially nonexistent anymore, and it feels like absolutely no one cares. Edit: Wow, I did not expect this to get any attention at all. It's really nice to know that there are at least some people out there that also have some interest in this. Cheers!”

One commenter replied, “Reminds me of the scene in the Superstore episode about an employee-tracking app:

“Garrett: ‘What do you think they're gonna do with that information, anyway?'

“Jonah: ‘A lot. They can track what you do and what you like. They can scan your internet searches for keywords and then just send you ads for things you were talking about.'

“Sandra: ‘That just seems thoughtful.'

“Jonah: ‘Yeah, but then they can just package your data and sell it to other companies.'

“Glenn: ‘And then those companies would give you free help?'

“Jonah: ‘I'm… I'm not doing it justice.'”

A user replied, “The golden age of privacy is dead, and we're entering a far scarier era without it.”

13. Slavery

“Slavery in countries supported by companies and governments,” one Redditor said.

Another user replied, “The environmental and tech industries couldn't exist without enslaving and polluting other countries. Smartphones, computers, solar panels, E.V.s, etc., all depend on materials and labor from places with abysmal human rights and environmental protection records. Definitely a ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' situation.”

14. Slave Mining in Congo

A user shared, “Slave mining in Congo. Taiwan could get bad. S*x trafficking was at an all-time high in Us and was the highest in the world. Slavery is at an all-time high in the world. Shocked that nobody talks about all of the insider trading in Congress from both sides. (Least terrifying I know.) The problem I'm finding is that this information used to be easy to find. Now when I google search, the same things I did years ago are not the same results.”

“It is wild to me how blatant the insider trading is from prominent congresspeople on both sides. The right likes to dig on Pelosi for it, and she's definitely suspicious, but she might not even be top 5 in suspicious earnings. It is complete and obvious dogsh*t that congresspeople can make trades while in office. I'm pretty pro-markets, but it's just [horrible] to see,” one user added. 

15. The Rise of AI

One user posted, “The rise of A.I. It's not that people are ignoring it entirely but ignoring the bad parts, like how dangerous it's going to become very quickly. It will be hard to trust anything you didn't see with your own eyes, even with video or audio of it happening. Think of what a bad actor could do with that, like, for instance, a country at war or just low-level criminals blackmailing people. Deep Fakes are already a problem, and they're only ever going to get better. A.I. voice is already nuts; again, it will only ever get better from here.

Edit: I forgot to include things like ChatGPT being used online for scamming and phishing. We're already at the point it can easily trick most people into thinking they are talking to a real person.”

One user added, “I think this right here is huge, and people keep kinda glossing over it.”

Do you agree with the list above, even though it's a bit scary? Share your thoughts!

Source: Reddit.

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