35 People Talk About The One Fact That Would Terrify The Average Person

The world is only 3 hungry days away from total anarchy.

Updated 3 years ago, August 5, 2021

AskRedditors talk about the one fact terrifying fact that most people likely have no idea about.

1. Just A Month From Destitution

Most people are only 2 paychecks away from sleeping in a cardboard box on the street.

2. Only A Week From Starving

How “just-in-time” your food supply is. Most people don’t have more than about 3-4 days of non-perishable food on-hand at any one time. Supermarkets could not handle a crush of people getting food, as they operate a just-in-time inventory system for fresh fruits and vegetables.

Edit: Yes, I realize “just-in-time” is an intentional process. See username.

Edit 2: Food, Water and Electricity are all JIT.

3. Cities Can’t Feed Themselves

I’ll add to that……if transcontinental trucking gets fucked up, enormous parts of our country will starve because there is not enough food grown in them to feed their residents.

There is flat out not even close to enough food in the Northeast to feed the Northeast, for example. If it can’t come from the midwest, THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE.

4. Aneurysms, The Unpredictable Killer

You could die of an aneurysm at any moment, without any warning whatsoever.

EDIT: I didn’t realize that so many people on here have lost loved ones from this. I’m sorry for all of your losses :(

5. Powerless Against Algae

Currently living in the toledo area so I’m gonna go with the fact that a tiny simple algae has the power to completely flip our life upside down. Not being able to drink the water sucks and I feel like no one saw this coming

6. Preventable Disasters Go Unprevented

People definitely saw it coming, unfortunately nobody in power cared. I graduated from the environmental science program at UT and did research on a method to prevent this algae bloom. We presented info to Ohio State officials and basically got an “oh that’s interesting” response.

7. People You Come Into Contact With Die All The Time

Somebody reading this post will be dead by next year.

8. Dead Sharks Everywhere

Humans kill 100 million sharks annually. That’s over 11,000 sharks PER HOUR. If we keep these rates up, sharks will be extinct in 30 years. The sad thing is, most people don’t understand how crucial sharks are for our own ecosystem! Here’s a simple explanation of it.

The same thing goes for rhinos as well :(

9. Cocaine + Alcohol Is Extremely Dangerous

When consuming cocaine and alcohol at the same time, a highly toxic chemical is made called cocaethylene, which can cause massive heart and liver problems. If no one is going to stop you from partying, at least do one at a time for your own sake.

10. Driving Is Basically A Giant Trust Fall

Every time that you get in your car, you are going out driving with thousands of other people that could kill you instantly with just one small mistake. Inversely, YOU could kill someone ever so easily with just one small mistake as well.

Driving is trusting everyone, without knowing anyone, with your life.

11. You Have A Mortgage But No Job

That we have a whole generation of people with student loan debt the size of mortgages, and they can’t even get basic jobs.

This mainly applies to the US.

12. Lab Rats Don’t Follow The Rules

I do clinical trials for a living. Sort of like a human lab rat. You’d be shocked at how many of us don’t follow the rules and lie to get into the study in the first place. This highly screws up the data they get about the research drug.

13. If SkyNet Goes Down, We’re Hosed

Something everybody knows, if they give it a moment thought, but most people don’t realize, in everyday life:

how everything is computerized, nowadays. An entire society can be paralysed by just shutting down main networks. Hospitals, water supply, electricity: it’s not just flipping an actual switch anymore, but it’s communicating with the ‘switch’ through networks.

I suffer from several chronic illnesses, and am a regular visitor at hospitals, doctor’s offices, pharmacies and such. There’s no paper, no old fashioned folders with all your data. Everything medical there is to know about me is on a computer; and usually not even the actual individual computer but on an external server. It’s terrifying to think what could happen if the computers would shut down..

* * *

Edit: I used medical stuff as an example. But it’s everything. Hypothetically: if a country at war would manage to sabotage the complete national network of the other country, the war would basically be won. If only for the fact that all of our communication is done through some form of electronic ‘intervention’; even old fashioned ‘snail mail’. Without computers, there’d be utter chaos and it would take a long time to re-establish, to ‘re-find the old ways’, so to speak. We’ve become completely dependant on computers, in every aspect of life.

14. There Is No Privacy. Share This To Facebook

How much of their personal and sensitive information they are putting on the internet. Not to mention leaving a trail of what they were doing at what time where – geo-tagging photos and what not. People have willingly given up on their privacy and it can’t end well.

Also, how much google knows about me. It has my mails, chats, photos, details of where I log in from, information on what I do on the internet. Shit.

15. 3 Days Without Food And It’s Over

We are always 9 missed meals away from complete and total anarchy.

It’s scary to think about that all that we have accomplished, all that we have done, all that we plan to do can completely break down at any point in time if enough people just can’t eat.

16. Life Is Surprisingly Fickle

You are alive by complete and total chance and you are not guaranteed a single second on this earth. Something as climactic as the sun deciding to implode, down to a small virus. Everything in the universe can probably kill you. You are alive on a whim and it could be gone tomorrow.

I feel if more people believed that they would treat each other better.

17. And It’s Overdue By 5,000 Years

Yellowstone is a huge Super Volcano that could erupt at any time and wipe out half of the US.

18. Remember That Nuclear Reactor Meltdown In Japan?

If an earthquake hits Fukushima in the next year and the current preparations of the ‘Ice Wall’ are not complete, a huge pool of nuclear waste, currently suspended 4 stories in the air and part of a crumbling structure, will collapse to the ground. If this happens and it is no longer being controlled and cooled, it will start a nuclear fire that we have no idea how to contain. It could burn for hundreds of years and the nuclear particles that will be thrown into the air will contaminate most of the northern hemisphere and effectively destroy the oceans for consumable life.

Edit: I feel the need to add, because of some of the responses I’m getting- my username is not supposed to indicate that this is a novelty account. This is a real risk and I regret having this as my username today.

The risk: Here.

Ice Wall currently being built: Here.

Progress as of may 10th: Here.

There are more up-to-date sources that you can find if you research it yourself, but I’m currently in a country that I’m not too keen on doing deeper research in right now.

19. Las Vegas Has An Expiration Date

Las Vegas will run out of water by 2038. That’s 2 million people that will be displaced. Unless the surrounding states agree to give up some of their share of the Colorado river, lake Mead will run dry. The city tried to get permission to drain a nearby aquifer, but a federal judge stopped it because it would have been terrible for the environment and just prolong the inevitable.

20. Poop Is Everywhere

No matter what you do to prevent it. Closing the lid on the toilet, putting a protective cover on your toothbrush. Anything. There will always be little particles of poo on your tooth brush. It is just in the air.

21. Your Cheese Is Covered In Bugs

Cheese mites. If you like cheese and don’t know what cheese mites are, keep it that way.

22. Doesn’t Even Need To Be All Of Them

Honey Bee Colony Collapse Syndrome.

Wave goodbye to nearly the entire food supply if all the honey bees die off.

23. Da Poors Get Paid Last. You Are Da Poors.

We think of putting our money in a bank as safe. Legally, when we put our money in a bank it is considered an “unsecured” loan, much like a personal loan. The bank can fail to repay your loan to them and default on the loan and the only things you can do about it are report them to the credit agencies to lower their credit score and try to sue them. If you’re in the US the FDIC says that it’ll secure your money in the event of a bank failure event, up to $250,000. The reality is that individuals are so far down on the list of priorities that the funds that the FDIC has set aside will be used up long before you or I see it.

24. The Entire Food Supply Is Based On Oil

Modern agriculture is currently completely dependent on petroleum. Industrial farming essentially converts petroleum into food (which is why corn ethanol is not really sustainable).

25. The Useable Life Of Antibiotics Is Increasingly Short

We are just one or two antibiotics away from losing the ability to do surgery, chemo, organ transplant, and most other medical interventions that separate us from 1800’s medicine. But let’s pump our livestock full of antibiotics, it makes them grow up big so we can get more meat per cow!

26. Water Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink

How little fresh water there is in the world.

In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet’s water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people

There are also more statistics about the freshwater crisis here.

27. The Illuminati Is Hidden In Plain Sight

How the top 1% of the wealthiest are connected to one another. the weird cult like clubs they have. Even amongst presidents. Sure some of its common knowledge by now but the more you research into it the creepier it gets.

28. Mommy?

That at least one person who reads this thread was accidentally given to the wrong parents as a newborn.

29. There’s Food Enough For All

That there’s enough wealth in the world to feed and clothe every man, woman, and child, with leftovers and yet most struggle to make a living or spend their lives in servitude of a job they hate.

30. When Seconds Count, The Police Are Only Minutes Away

The average police response time to a 911 call in the United States is 11 minutes. I woke up with someone outside trying to get in through my bedroom window, yelled that I had a gun, and he ran off. I called the police, and they arrived in 18 minutes.

When shit goes down you’re on your own.

31. 2,053 Nukes

This video blew me away when i first learned that 2053 nukes have been detonated from 1944-1999

32. Experts Usually Aren’t

A frightening majority giving authority to what they believe to be experts on a variety of topics without merit. Very few people investigate the credibility of information before they spread it around and then you get widely accepted “truths” that are not based on facts whatsoever.

Essentially, nothing disturbs me more than the propagation of misinformation and the easiest identifiable source of this is lousy access to and of education.

33. GPS, It’s More Than Just Finding That Restaurant

Surprised not to see this one: how totally reliant our modern world is on GPS. If those suckers happened to go down, communication and commerce would come to a complete standstill. Globally.

(I mean all GPS systems, including GLONASS)