Ever take a look online?
It certainly feels like everything about the world, as of writing, is awful, terrible, and just downright no good. While there's positives out there to be found, don't purposefully overlook the subjectively bad stuff.
There's knowledge to be gained from this practice, so be sure to look at the dark and bleak facts of the world.
Reddit user, RefrigeratorDry495, wanted to hear some truly awful things when they asked:
"What are some simple yet incredibly disturbing/scary facts?"
The Stats Change On How Many Years It Takes To Solve
"1/3 of US murders go unsolved."
– jdward01
"That’s a relief."
– Lazerith22
"On average since 1965, sure, but in 2019 the solve rate was 58%. In 2020 it was 50%."
– ak_doug
*peaks out the window
"If you live in a major city there is a nuke aimed at you"
– Copious-GTea
"I live on the outskirts of a city in the top 100 American targets. Out of morbid curiosity I looked some blast radius maps when Putin said to get them ready. Anything smaller than the largest theoretical nuke ever designed (never built) puts me squarely in the "everything will be on fire but you'll probably survive the initial blast with severe burns if you're inside when it happens" so that was a fun night"
– DontBotherNoResponse
On Your Feet, Soldiers
"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."
– grumpy_hedgehog
"Which, relatively, is such a new human experience. To quote Dan Carlin (Hardcore History) "I am fascinated by the extremes of the human experience."
"It used to be that a single, well trained, well armed soldier on a battlefield, who is physically imposing could single handedly turn the tide of a battle. The Romans used to fear the Gallic tribes to the north, because while the average Roman soldier was around 5'3-5'5, the average Gallic warrior was more like 5'10 to 6'. That used to mean something, EVERYTHING. I mean, I myself am 5'8, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to fight hand-to-hand combat with someone 6 inches taller and at least 30 pounds heavier than me if I was given the choice."
"In the modern era, it means jack sh-t. A 6 foot 200 pound soldier goes down to bullets and artillery all the same as his 5'6 comrades. Infantry combat from the American Civil War onward is just a glorified meat grinder. The winning side is the one with the most expendable soldiers, and no individual can change that anymore, at least not on a battlefield. Today, it's more about the technology than ever before, since the most technologically advanced countries are nearing being able to fight, and win, a war without ever having any actual boots on the ground. It's fascinating how far we've come in just a couple thousand years"
– ItsDrap
In Short Supply Of Iron
"If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood."
– Didsterchap11
Meat Is Good. Hard To Argue With That.
"Bored ducklings can become cannibals!"
– nova777666
"The amount of animals that are opportunistic cannibals or even carnivores would shock some people."
– Beezo514
"Yeah, there aren't a whole lot of actual herbivores in nature. Deer, horses, cows, and most other 'herbivores' love eating insects and other small animals when the opportunity presents itself."
– Traditional-Ad3161
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Back In The Water
"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"
– LfcOsh
Reading This Late At Night? Go To Sleep.
"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."
– JamieBensteedo
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.
– Back2Bach
I would like to add its extremely rare and that most medical professionals will never encounter it.
– SoulParamedic
When You Can't Trust The People In Front Of You
"Capgras Syndrome is a mental delusion where you believe that the people closest to you have been replaced by impostors"
– KikiKiwii
"This will probably get buried in the amogus spam but the theory behind how it works is actually super fascinating, basically it turns out that there are two independent facial recognition processes instead of one, where one is subconscious and emotional and the other is conscious and objective; This is evidenced by research showing that people who developed facial blindness (a really interesting subject in its own right) due to brain damage would still subconsciously react to faces of people they had been familiar with before their condition, so essentially in FB the conscious level of facial recognition breaks down even if the subconscious level doesn't, but Capgras is the inverse of that where the conscious level remains intact but the subconscious level breaks down so you recognize that they're physically indistinguishable from the person you know but that emotional and familial connection with them that tells you that they are who they are just stops firing."
– N0thingtosee
Maybe Humanity Was A Mistake
"Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British hadn’t eaten most of them."
– Heikold
"Wow, that was something I never knew or imagined. Thank you. History of Eating Corpses as Medicine"
– NiccoMachi
Mmwah! Good Night, Everybody.
"You have no way of really knowing if everyone experiences reality and consciousness the same way you do."
– catomi01
"You really have no way of knowing if you are experiencing "reality" at all. You could be a brain in a box, a delusional god, an alien's computer science experiment for their 4th grade science fair..."
– Spong_Durnflungle
I Didn't Need To Know That
"There is a chance that you will walk past at least 3 murderers in your life."
– _cloudy_demon_
How Do We Taste?
"Butterflies taste through their feet so if they land on you they're just getting a quick taste test Yaaayyyy.......... "
– SavageKitsune762
I Can't See!
"Your immune system does not know your eyes exist if it ever find out it will just basically attack it as a bacteria or some sort of virus in short you will basically blind yourself"
– kidsforsaleoff
I Dream Of You
"Everyone in your dreams are based of a real person as you are unable to make up a face"
– username087544
This Is Why I Hate Coconuts
"Coconuts kill more people then sharks kill people."
– SelfApprehensive853
Glad The Crabs Are Okay With It
"Crabs are aware that we eat them and even eat each other to prevent over population."
– StableMable8008135
I Will Never Forget This One
"Most laugh tracks were recorded in the 1950s, you’re hearing dead people laugh"
– Greatest-Memelord
Won't We All?
"Rabbits can scream, but will only do so if they think they're about to die."
– guywithnolife69420
Eight Extra Minutes Of Life
"if the sun exploded, you would be unaware of it for 8 minutes"
– Gold_Army_2889
Don't let facts like this get you down. There is, you just have to go find it.