“Completely Lost To Time”: 65 Scary And Depressing Science Facts You Might Wish You Could Forget

Despite all of our knowledge and technology, our entire existence depends on 15cm of topsoil and the fact that it rains sometimes.

Large parts of many countries will be fully underwater, or at very high flood risk, well within the life of a mortgage.

We are surrounded by poisons: radon gas, micro-plastics, PFOAs, pesticides, fertilizers, food additives, car exhaust, ... There is no knowing what we are doing to ourselves and the planet.

Toxoplasma Gondii it is a single cell parasite that lives in the neurons in the brain. In mice it makes them not afraid of cats, the cat catches the mice and eats them and the parasite is where it wants to be. So what's scary about that? Over 1/3 of the human population has this parasite. In humans, if you are healthy, the parasite is dormant however if there is a compromised immunity in a person the parasite alters dopamine levels causing risky behavior and slower reaction time and a high number with Schizophrenia has this parasite.

Most geologic features are trauma scars from unknown periods.

Iceland, for instance, is believed to have mostly formed from one giant flood of lava. The Great Plains was once the ocean floor until the mantle lifted it straight up for unknown reasons. The Hawaiian islands line up with a mantle plume that's shifted underground with time. And one entire bay in Italy is a volcanic crater.

If you climb Mt Everest without an oxygen tank. You get to an altitude where the oxygen is so thin your body can't sustain life any longer. You are [passing away] as you climb.

Technically a summit attempt without oxygen is a race against time. If you twist an ankle and can’t get yourself down, you will run out of time and [pass away] on the mountain.

Once you do [pass], it’s almost impossible to bring your corpse back. Many bodies get left on the mountain, frozen for decades. Some bodies that are still on Everest are even used as navigational waypoints by other climbers (look up “Green Boots Guy” ).

We don’t have any idea how to program a benevolent super-intelligent AI. There are good reasons to expect these AI companies to create something that kills all humans. The founders recognize this, but the money and power and race dynamics make them neglect the most important problem in history.

The big anticipated west coast USA earthquake isn't LA but Seattle. There's a major fault that runs right through the city and kicks off every few hundred years or so. The last one was in the 1700s. The Japanese have records of that and earlier because the tsunamis were powerful enough to hit them. The next one will basically break off a huge part of the washington coastline and Seattle.

If you go googling, you'll find the dhs paper written about it 10-20 years back.

Diphtheria bacteria can cause a pseudomembrane to grow over the throat, block the airways and suffocate a person to.

Ebola was the big scary before covid came onto the scene.

The US has had several Ebola outbreaks that have burned themselves out before becoming part of the zeitgeist in the way covid has, though they have still have had an impact. Personally I am infinitely more terrified of Ebola mutating and resurging than I am of another Covid mutation.

Scarily, the reason why they haven't had an impact in the media is because the disease just flat out kills through hemorrhaging without going through the pneumatic processes covid travels through before becoming fatal.

The balance maintained by the wastewater treatment plants in highly populated areas is often tenuous. It was less than 75 years ago that all of Seattle was just dumping their waste directly into Lake Washington.

It is easier to prove that there are extraterrestrial life out there than to prove there isn't.

Reason being is that to prove there are aliens, we only need to stumble upon one. But to prove there isn't, we need to scour the entire universe.

Pre-atomic age metals are fairly rare but needed in scientific research equipment. After the first atomic testing all metals being smelted were infused with increased levels of unnatural radioactivity. Old train tracks, boilers, and steamer ships are a key source of pre-atomic age steel that must be carefully smelted without being exposed to the earth's, now unnaturally radioactive, atmosphere. Test equipment used in space exploration can be extremely sensitive to background radiation especially.

The “big one.” It’s considered an even that will happen within the next 50 years. The Cascadia subduction zone is a faultline off the Pacific northwest coast. Scientists are predicting that it’s overdue for a major earthquake that could produce tsunamis and reach > 9 magnitude. This could essentially destroy Seattle. Much of the infrastructure would not be able to withstand the force.

Forever chemicals like teflon. I watched a bbc documentary on them (that dupont had taken down so you won’t find it on their regular channel) and it truly shook me to my core.

Oranges are [vanishing] from a bacteria infection and we can't feasibly stop it. Because of this, orange production in the U.S. is down 90%.

There is no center of the universe.

The pole shift takes between 1000 and 10000 years. during that time the poles drift over the equator with moments where the magnetic donut has it's donut hole looking straight at the sun. that generates immense concentrations of solar winds and areas where charged particles hit the size of cities.
We don't know the exact effects but we assume it's not going to be pretty.

Our galaxy and Andromeda are gonna collide one day.

You don’t actually see the present, your brain shows you a slightly delayed version of reality (about 80–100 milliseconds old) and then fills in the gaps to make it feel instant.