In a world that’s in a constant state of change, you can never stop learning. That’s why many of us are always hungry for tasty knowledge bites and nibbles of information to help us better navigate our surroundings. However, as much as it is easy to be amazed by what humanity and nature are capable of, there’s also a darker side we often overlook.

So quite recently, Redditor RefrigeratorDry495 decided to learn more about it and reached out to AskReddit to start up a thread about simple yet incredibly disturbing and scary facts. People from far and wide rolled up their sleeves and started typing out responses that really are not for the faint of heart.

From creepy stuff about our past to alarmingly unsettling statistics, we at Bored Panda handpicked some of the most popular answers from the thread. So if you’re ready to witness how real life can be far more terrifying than fiction, continue scrolling and share your thoughts with us in the comments! A small note of warning, though, some of these facts can seem a bit overwhelming, so if you’re in great need of something lighter, take a look at our recent post full of wholesome stories right here.

#1

Sharks have been around for at least 420 million years, meaning they have survived four of the “big five” mass extinctions. That makes them older than humanity, older than Mount Everest, older than dinosaurs, older even than trees. Yet we could potentially see them extinct in our lifetime

Image credits: LfcOsh

#2

Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British hadn’t eaten most of them.

Image credits: Heikold

#3

Cotard’s syndrome, also called “walking corpse syndrome,” is a condition wherein the patient believes they are dead, dying, missing parts of their bodies, or don’t exist.

Some people with Cotard’s syndrome may stop speaking or eating since they believe they’re dead.

Image credits: Back2Bach

#4

Capgras Syndrome is a mental delusion where you believe that the people closest to you have been replaced by impostors

Image credits: KikiKiwii

#5

Statistically speaking, if you are a woman and get murdered, it was most likely by a family member, partner or ex-partner, in your own home.

If you are a man and get murdered, it was most likely by an acquaintance or stranger, in a public place.

Image credits: damnshawtyruokay

#6

Yellowstone is a giant super volcano. If it blows, things on this planet will go really bad really fast.

#7

The entire planet could be immediately destroyed by any one of a number of cosmic events that we have no way of seeing or stopping like rogue black holes.

Worse…there are some events we can very much see coming, but do absolutely nothing about.

#8

Your eyes have a seperate immune-system from the rest of your body. Once your body’s immune system discovers you have eyes, it will attack and inflame the blood vessels in the back of your eyes. This can lead to your vision decreasing or even going blind.

#9

You can condition someone with zero personal/family history of mental illness into having some very severe mental illnesses within about a week.

#10

your phone is likely spying on you right now as you’re reading this

#11

idk why this freaks some ppl out, but gelatin is made out of bones. That’s right – your melted marshmallow in your hot chocolate is melted animal bone. It’s good stuff.

That’s why the traditional marshmallows aren’t vegan or halal…

#12

If you have a parasite in your body, there’s only a slim chance you’ll know about it before it pops out of your skin or leaves through the back door.

Also, some parasites pop out of skin.

#13

6 nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered since the 1950s.

#14

The odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 107.

Not only that you can die in a car only going 40mph and something like 30-percent of the people driving after 10pm are driving drunk.

Driving is super dangerous and most people take it for granted.

#15

Every time you move your eyes from one spot to another, you go blind for the instant your eyes are moving. It’s called “Saccadic masking”, it’s an evolutionary trait to stop us from getting motion sick.

Your brain fills in the blank spot with whatever you end up looking at and context clues. It’s why when you first look at a clock, the second hand seems to take longer to click the first time

#16

If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood.

#17

Maximum part of oxygen came from sea/oceans. But people always talks about protecting trees not sea/oceans.

#18

I read somewhere ( don’t remember where) that you are more likely to be bitten by someone in New York than to be bitten by a shark.

#19

If it’s sufficiently dark, you will hallucinate your reflection as a different entity and it will appear to start moving on it’s own.

#20

Squirrels carry all the same diseases as rats but humans don’t mind because their cute.

#21

We have trace amounts of iron, gold, nickel, and silver within our bloodstream which means with enough people you could drain them of their blood, dilute it down to separate it, and eventually be able to make a full ingot of iron, gold, nickel, and silver.

#22

If a biological trait is common in almost every human, then it evolved for a reason. Almost everybody has the same response to the “uncanny valley,” or in other words we are made uncomfortable by things that look almost human but not quite. This implies humans once had a reason to fear something that looks human but isn’t.

#23

Body integrity disorder. The PubMed.gov website describes it as “the extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis,” adding: “Some of these persons mutilate temselves; others ask surgeons for an amputation or for the transection of their spinal cord. Psychologists and physicians explain this phenomenon in quite different ways, but a successful psychotheraputic or pharmaceutical therapy is not known.”

#24

Despite literally all war propaganda from every country saying otherwise, you are not going to make an individual impact in glorious battle and die valiantly in a hail of bullets. Statistically, you are overwhelmingly more likely to be killed by an explosive device launched miles away by a vehicle you will never see, long before you ever get a chance to pull the trigger.

#25

Alligators can climb trees

#26

NASA simulated the response effort to a killer asteroid and determined they would need a minimum of 5 years notice to have any chance of deflecting it—more realistically 10. We’d basically have to identify the thing leaving the ~~Oort Cloud~~ Kuiper Belt.

#27

the world invests more money in viagra and botox than in the study of Alzheimer

#28

You can be seriously Injured from a sneeze

#29

If a panda finds a fresh carcass, they’ll eat it

#30

A male honey bee’s ejaculation is so strong it makes his d**k explode, killing him.

#31

I’m friends with a professor of soil ecology here in the Midwest. She says that if we don’t change our current farming practices, much of the Midwest’s soil will be infertile with one to two generations.

#32

Moving back the start time for school in an area resulted in 70% less car accidents.

Similarly at each daylight saving, heart attacks and accidents decrease with an hour of extra sleep and increase with an hour less of sleep.

Sleep is crazy important.

#33

If chronic wasting disease jumps to humans, the Zombie Apocalypse may become a real thing.

#34

You have no way of really knowing if everyone experiences reality and consciousness the same way you do.

#35

Dell computers were so bad that there was a website where you could click a button and it would show someone random’s webcam without them knowing.

#36

Chimps don’t attack to kill. Instead they aim for the genitals, face, and fingers and will leave the opponent alive.

There have been many people who have owned chimps who have turned on their owners and left them incredibly disfigured. One case, the chimp ripped a man’s junk off. In all cases, faces were mutilated and fingers were chewed off. It’s pretty much how they instinctively fight in the wild.

So if you think that chimp is going to be a cute pet, better think twice. Even if you raised it since it was born, they’ll turn on you at any second. A disfigurement roulette waiting to happen.

Vile creatures.

#37

Hippos can’t swim. (I was disturbed)

#38

Unit 731 existed

That is fact

#39

The leap in technological advancement from us to a race that could *actually* traverse the galaxy/universe is astronomically ludicrous. We are absolutely nothing in comparison to any race that has created ways to reach us.

Meaning any race capable of finding us would be so advanced and so much more knowledgeable than us that they could observe us without us ever knowing. They would have technologies, weapons, etc outside our realm of understanding and would be able to annihilate us with ease, just given the fact that their ability to generate/harness power would be unparalleled.

If any alien ever came to earth with hostile tendencies, short of a miracle, we’d be doomed.

#40

1 to 3 percent of your mass is made up of bacteria.

#41

If you live in a major city there is a nuke aimed at you

#42

Bored ducklings can become cannibals!

#43

1/3 of US murders go unsolved.

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