People Who Were Traumatized After Learning These 39 Facts Shared Them In This Online Thread

In 1977, the average life expectancy in Cambodia was 18.91 years.

RedundantOxymoron:

That's because the Khmer Rouge [ended] anyone who wore glasses, because that meant they knew how to read and therefore were a bad intellectual.

X0AN:

To save on ammunition Khmer Rouge used to m****r babies by grabbing them by there feet and repeatedly smashing their heads into a tree.
Parents were made to watch this.
If you go to any k**ling field there's always a tree that was the baby k**ling tree. Longest time I've ever spent just staring at a tree.

I think it might be a decently common fact but it disturbs me so much that I’m gonna say it anyway: less than 5% of the ocean has been explored by humans.

Anon:

The ocean legit FASCINATES me. We've been to the freakin' moon and are exploring space but we have no idea what truly resides at the bottom of the ocean.

Daddy__Boi:

I think there’s a fair chance those sea monsters from movies and tales actually exist in those undiscovered depths. Well, least a variation of them.

As a cancer researcher, I was fascinated to learn that the most common cancer is lung cancer. The majority of the patients were, of course, smokers. But that's not the worst part. The second biggest cause was second hand smoking, usually from a close relative or spouse who is a smoker.

So millions of people are unknowingly leading their relatives, children and spouse towards death because of their smoking habits.

Anon:

My father was (and still is) a heavy smoker when I was growing up, despite multiple doctors telling him not to smoke around his kids. All three of us have asthma, and I have a form of COPD that was exacerbated by his smoking. Thanks, Dad.

Due to fresh drinking water being so scarce on the Galápagos Islands, some bird species, such as the Galapagos Hawk, have adapted by drinking the blood of other animals.

dustinem09:

Wild cats get most of their moisture from their prey and rarely drink water.

If you get bitten by a human, you absolutely have to go to the hospital right away because the amount of deadly bacteria in any given person's mouth could actually k**l you if it enters your blood stream.

Anon:

Yup. Basically no part of dealing with being bitten by a human is fun.
I got bitten at a Cradle of Filth concert back in April of this year. Drunk chick was trying to push her way to the front, and when I wouldn't let her by, she decided to chomp on my left bicep. Broke the skin, bleeding pretty good. I'm a clean cut kinda guy, and this chick was pretty trashy looking, drunk, and cussing me out in what I think was Spanish, so I was like 'Oh what fresh f**king hell is this?'
So after cleaning the wound out with Purell (that f**king sucked) and slapping a bandage on it (like hell I was leaving after paying for the Meet N' Greet), I got to the hospital where they put me on a 10 day course of extremely heavy duty antibiotics as well as a 30 day course of 2 prophylactic medications in case this chick had HIV/AIDS. Oh, and a tetanus shot, since my last one was 11 year previous. EDIT: Oh yeah and my family Doc wants me to do an HIV/AIDS test in a year or so, even though my first one came back negative. Ain't life grand?
Those meds f**king sucked.

A toddler's adult teeth are right below their eyes.

fishintheboat:

Had a 3D scan done of my son at an orthodontist and he was shocked to see his face full of teeth.

There's over 200 dead bodies on Mt. Everest and they're used as waypoints for other climbers.

PianoManGidley:

And human waste. There's so much human waste from people climbing Everest that it's tainted the local water supply of villages at the base of the mountain.

Lockwood85:

I've always been so weirded out by this, like those climbers are literally frozen in time. Green Boots for example, who very clearly has 90s era gear on.

Organophosphates, including the chemical weapon Sarin Gas, work by inhibiting your muscle's ability to relax. Your muscles basically constrict and can't unconstrict, causing what feels like a muscle cramp through your entire body - your arms, your chest, your eyes, your tongue, everything. It most frequently kills via asphyxiation, because you can't exhale. Surviving means a permanent, irrecoverable loss of motor function, even with rapid medical treatment.

I_Automate:

Also originally discovered while chemists were trying to make a more effective insecticide.
I'd say they succeeded.

UptownShenanigans:

Don't forget that while this is happening, you will also be p*ssing and s**tting yourself while vomiting
The way we are taught to remember the toxidrome (collection of poison symptoms) of organophosphates is SLUDGE
Salvation, Lacrimation (crying), Urination, Diaphoresis (sweating), GI upset (s**tting yourself), Emesis (vomiting).
All of these body functions are controlled by muscarinic receptors. These little guys receive signals from the brain to do all the stuff I mentioned - except in a controlled fashion. Organophosphates just turn off the the stop control.

A vitamin D deficiency can make you su*****l, and deficiencies among adults is very common. Like more than 50% of the population in the US.

iBad:

My vitamin D number was single digit when I went to see my doctor because I felt depressed. I now take a big weekly dose along with diet change and sunlight to feel “normal”. If I hadn’t gone to the doctor when I did I might not have been able to face another winter.

You are more likely to die on your way to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.

There are 8 nukes that are missing all around the world.

anevar:

Oh that’s actually not all of them! There’s a grand total of 51 nuclear weapons lost in the world, 40 Russian, 11 American. One of them is apparently half a mile off the coast of Georgia, and the city of Savannah is within its blast radius.

If pigs get fed meat, they start to cannibalize and eat each other, had to 'harvest' them early one year because of it.

Mtcowbou:

Pigs are actually omnivores. Feral pigs in the southeast are actually causing massive depopulation of snakes leading to increased rodents. Feral pigs also have had the remains of deer, calves, lambs and other animals found in their stomachs. Not to mention how much damage they do by constantly rooting, they can destroy wetlands, pastures and crops.

Ants farm aphids like we farm cows. They protect them from predators and then eat a few every now and then.

There is a type of mushroom that can grow on small bugs and control them.

Anon:

Cordyceps.
It has hundreds of strains , including ones that can hijack ants, small spiders and even tarantulas. If it’s any consolation, mammal bodies are far too hostile for cordyceps to survive in, although most insects and other non mammalian smaller animals are vulnerable to cordyceps, although it would have to have an adapted strain to be able to incubate in its non native animal of choice.

Owls can’t be choked. Which means that someone had to try and choke an owl on more than one occasion and fail.

DrNerdfighte:

They don’t choke on their food, but they can be strangled.

Diamonds are extremely common just every diamond mine know to man is privately owned and they keep them in vaults and only let small amounts out at a time.

There are strains of CRE bacteria that are resistant to all known antibiotics.

Anon:

If it makes you feel better, Phage Therapy has been making good progress with clinical trails. While some bacteria are becoming immune to antibiotics, they can still be destroyed with designated bacteriophage.

The dolphin who played Flipper committed s*****e.

If you were to put the entire lifespan of the universe, from the Big Bang to the final heat death, onto a twenty-four hour clock, at the universes current age (est. 13.8 billion years) we would not have reached the end of the first thirty seconds.

If you were to go into the far future, past the point where there are no more solar systems (the planets have either been destroyed or become rogue planets), where there are no more galaxies (everything either being swallowed up by black holes or being ejected from the galaxy), no more anything of normal matter due to proton decay, and no more black holes due to Hawking radiation, even here at this point, you would not have reached 12 o’clock/noon on our universe clock.

The universe will spend most of its life as a dark, cold, empty void (you would be unlikely to find a single surviving sub-atomic particle in an area the size of the current observable universe [est. 98 billion light-years across]) until the background temperature reaches -460°F/-273°C/0 Kelvin, at which point entropy wins, time becomes meaningless and the universe remains in a cold, dead state for all eternity.

Even if there are intelligent aliens, the universe is so massive and vast that due to the speed of light and physical limits the human race will most likely die alone.