History is full of bleak moments. And while it’s perfectly natural to be patriotic about your home country, there are probably a few moments from your nation’s history that you’re not particularly proud of. Whether it’s because of the government’s actions, the people’s actions, or another nation’s actions on your soil, I’m sure you have some unfortunate stories to tell.
Sometimes, there’s even photographic evidence of the events. People from all over the world have been sharing the most dystopian images from their nations’ history on Reddit, so we’ve compiled a list of them below. This may not be the most uplifting read, but we hope it teaches you something new about the past.
#1 Australia

The Stolen Generation.
The Australian government enacted a policy to take all indigenous children from their families in an attempt to erase their culture. 1910's to 1970's.
The Australian government enacted a policy to take all indigenous children from their families in an attempt to erase their culture. 1910's to 1970's.
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42points
#3 Bosnia And Herzegovina

Srebrenica Memorial Centre. Where around 7000 men and boys remains are buried, with many more still not found over 30 years later.
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36points
#4 United States of America

They're bison skulls from massive slaughter of the animals in the US, leading to their drastic decline and near extinction.
35points
#5 Australia

2019-2020 NSW bushfires.
Lurker-Forever-986:
It’s wild that the rest of the world forgot about almost all of Austrailia catching fire because the COVID lockdowns happened immediately after.
Lurker-Forever-986:
It’s wild that the rest of the world forgot about almost all of Austrailia catching fire because the COVID lockdowns happened immediately after.
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35points
#6 United States Of America

The Passenger pigeon, the heath hen were hunted to extinction. Which makes me sad everytime I think about it. The last passenger pigeon died in a zoo in 1914. The heath hen was 1934. Habitat loss was also in factory in both too.
35points
#7 Canada

Basically every first nations (indigenous community) with a boil water advisory.
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35points
#8 Spain

It's the map of mass graves found (by the moment) of nearly 40 years of fascist dictatorship in Spain.
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34points
#9 Austria

Some of our people have built piles. One was made of human hair. Not our greatest moment in history...
Fufflin:
For me it was the pile of luggage and suitcases with victims names on them.
Just...all their memories and lives contained in small cases. Only thing that remains was their tombstone.
Fufflin:
For me it was the pile of luggage and suitcases with victims names on them.
Just...all their memories and lives contained in small cases. Only thing that remains was their tombstone.
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32points
#10 Chile

We have a territorial designation in Chile called 'Sacrifice Zones', areas where environmental destruction is accepted as the price of industrial development. Quintero is emblematic of this.
The population of Quintero suffered massive chemical poisoning in 2018 (approximately 1,700 residents, including many children, over a three month period).
Since then, little has changed. Besides high cancer rates, people living there keep falling ill from acute poisoning. Sometimes doctors cannot diagnose those affected by the toxic environment with any known illness. The surrounding industries have faced minimal to no consequences. Although the Ventanas copper refinery plant was ordered to close its smelting operations during President Boric's administration, the facility kept its electrolytic refinery running, a compromise reached amid the debate between environmental safety and job preservation.
There are probably other images from my country's history, but this one remains an open wound.
The population of Quintero suffered massive chemical poisoning in 2018 (approximately 1,700 residents, including many children, over a three month period).
Since then, little has changed. Besides high cancer rates, people living there keep falling ill from acute poisoning. Sometimes doctors cannot diagnose those affected by the toxic environment with any known illness. The surrounding industries have faced minimal to no consequences. Although the Ventanas copper refinery plant was ordered to close its smelting operations during President Boric's administration, the facility kept its electrolytic refinery running, a compromise reached amid the debate between environmental safety and job preservation.
There are probably other images from my country's history, but this one remains an open wound.
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32points
#11 Greenland

Authorities took 22 young children from their families in 1951. They sent them to Denmark to learn Danish and adopt a new culture. The plan aimed to create an educated elite. Most of these children lost their ability to speak Kalaallisut entirely. Many never returned to their original families.
30points
#13 Canada

This photo needs some context:
Canada is a contender for the "Country with the worst history ever" award thanks to the oh so wonderful residential schools.
These were basically concentration camps for indigenous children. Colonists would forcefully steal first nation children away from their families, and put them in these schools where they would:
* Be stripped of everything that connected them to their heritage, including given a christian name, cutting their hair, forcing them to eat certain foods, etc.
* Be a****d and beaten when they disobeyed the nuns and priests who ran the schools. This includes being physically beaten, bloodied knuckles with a reed, locked in cages, starved and refused meals, and have any belongings destroyed in front of them.
* Very often Died due to the awful conditions, disease, and while unconfirmed, there are stories they were k****d outright for disobedience. And very recently it was discovered that several of these schools had Mass graves containing hundreds of children's bodies.
The worst part though, was this was all government sanctioned, and there were over 130 government backed schools, with an unknown number more without federal backing.
All of this was to assimilate the first nations into the colonists society. This wasn't just assimilation though, this was a purge, and eviceration of their culture by flaying it from their children
Canada is a contender for the "Country with the worst history ever" award thanks to the oh so wonderful residential schools.
These were basically concentration camps for indigenous children. Colonists would forcefully steal first nation children away from their families, and put them in these schools where they would:
* Be stripped of everything that connected them to their heritage, including given a christian name, cutting their hair, forcing them to eat certain foods, etc.
* Be a****d and beaten when they disobeyed the nuns and priests who ran the schools. This includes being physically beaten, bloodied knuckles with a reed, locked in cages, starved and refused meals, and have any belongings destroyed in front of them.
* Very often Died due to the awful conditions, disease, and while unconfirmed, there are stories they were k****d outright for disobedience. And very recently it was discovered that several of these schools had Mass graves containing hundreds of children's bodies.
The worst part though, was this was all government sanctioned, and there were over 130 government backed schools, with an unknown number more without federal backing.
All of this was to assimilate the first nations into the colonists society. This wasn't just assimilation though, this was a purge, and eviceration of their culture by flaying it from their children
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29points
#14 Northern Ireland

Omagh Bombing, 15th August 1998. This photograph was taken moments before the explosion. The bomb was hidden inside the red Vauxhall Cavalier in this image. 29 people died and around 300 were injured.
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28points
#15 Venezuela

Vargas tragedy, was one of the biggest mudslides in history if not the biggest, death toll was around 10k and 30k.
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28points
#16 Poland

Hardly most dystopian, but hits hard. This freaking castle hotel build in the middle of national park that some disgusting corrupted jerks allowed to be build.
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26points
#17 Poland

I didn’t want to go to WW2 related pictures from Poland. But for dystopian irony I’d go with this. After the introduction of martial law by the communist regime in th 80s, military was omni present on the streets. Thus leasing to troops boeing deployed in front of Cinema Moscow which just started to screen Apocalypse Now (that’s „The time of Apocalypse” - that’s the sign and of course Moscow is also ironic). All this during a harsh winter.
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26points
#18 Australia

Thousands of tons of blue asbestos tailings at Wittenoom, a town removed from road signs, maps and even Google Earth.
Illegal to go there, the blue asbestos fibres are incredibly dangerous.
IncredibleBackpain93:
Mount Cancer.
Illegal to go there, the blue asbestos fibres are incredibly dangerous.
IncredibleBackpain93:
Mount Cancer.
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23points
#20 Australia

Between 1952 and 1963 Britain conducted 12 major trials of nuclear weapons in Australia (and over 200 minor tests). Most of these were at Maralinga in South Australia. Some mushroom clouds reached 47 thousand feet into the atmosphere. Radioactive fallout was measured as far away as Townsville.
Australian authorities supposedly did not discover the extent of the contamination at Maralinga until 1984, just before the land was to be returned to its Aboriginal owners.
Plutonium-239 has a radioactive half-life of more than 24,000 years.
Australian authorities supposedly did not discover the extent of the contamination at Maralinga until 1984, just before the land was to be returned to its Aboriginal owners.
Plutonium-239 has a radioactive half-life of more than 24,000 years.
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22points






