25 Facts That Sound Comforting At First, But Are Pretty Disturbing

Our brains love little facts that give us insight into the world and the more unique the fact is the better impact it has on us and the better we retain that information for later.

The community members of r/AskReddit recently got online to discuss those little facts that sound quite comforting on the surface but when you think on it a little further, you realise that it actually has a rather disturbing element to it.

#1 That there is enough food and water to feed everyone on the planet for free. But a small group of world owners governs it, plays monetary games, and uses it to control the masses.

#2 I was at a bbq yesterday and my uncle told me “think about it one day you went outside to play with your friends for the last time and didn’t even know it”.

#3 You’ve never actually seen your face. Only pictures or reflections.

#4 Either alien life exists, or we are totally alone in the universe.

#5 You might be just like your parents when you have kids.

#6 When you’re sick, you’re supposed to do drugs and stay out of school.

#7 There are hundreds if not thousands of versions of you in the minds of other people. Depending on how many people you have met in your life.

#8 The average age of empires is 250 years.

#9 Hippos and coconuts kill more people than sharks each year.

#10 My husband has worked in elderly care for over 10 years. He can attest that even without dementia, older people tend to loose their ability to taste. It’s like weakening eye sight but with flavor. He’s always getting complaints that the food is too bland but it’s so full of salt substitute it’s almost inedible to everyone else.

#11 When you give birth, your body produces hormones and your brain forgets a lot of the trauma you experience so that you’ll be willing to have more children in the future. So whenever you look back on childbirth, your memory of it will likely be way less awful than it actually was.

#12 Death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you.

#13 One day you’ll never feel pain again.

#14 Even if 99% of the population finds you unattractive, around 78 million people still find you attractive. Idk this just really creeps me out.

#15 While we’re losing a lot of forests in the tropics due to climate change, we’re actually gaining a lot of forest in the northern latitudes, and into formerly grassland areas as more available CO2 allows them to grow in more arid regions. And everyone loves trees, right?

The problem is the climate crisis is also a biodiversity crisis, and habitat loss – like grasslands or tundra becoming forest – is arguably even harder on species than changes in weather patterns.

#16 People think about you far less than you actually believe they do.

#17 You’re statistically more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport than you are in a plane crash.

#18 There will be a point in time where humans go extinct. We won’t experience it but imagine our future generations will see the “end of the world”.

#19 The idea that who we are is not who we used to be, nor who we will be. Both literally and figuratively, considering our cells are constantly dying and recycling so every 7ish years you have a “new” body and because our minds are ever expanding and learning new things.

Another one is the fact that who you are is not who others perceive you to be, since no one can ever truly know who you are and how you think, to the point that if you ever lost your memories, no one would be able to describe you fully to you.

#20 You walk by at least 10 murderers in your life time without even knowing it.

#21 The most peaceful way to die is in your sleep, but you’ll go to sleep not knowing you’ll never see anything ever again.

#22

Your really really sick, you have no energy, no appetite, and just the will to do nothing at all. Let’s say this is your grandpa in this situation. All the sudden grandpa calls you and says he wants to eat so much that it hurts and he wants to go do some fun projects, this sudden burst of energy kinda thing. Well you drive to the hospital to find that your grandpa has just died minutes after he called you. The nurse will then explain to you that this is very common when people are dying to just have a sudden burst of energy.

#23 Most people don’t die of old age.

#24 If you don’t have children you end a several hundred year long bloodline.

#25 You never truly know what anyone really thinks about you

Edit: I mean this like super literally. Like you never know if your spouse is planning on [hurting] you, you never know if a stranger is keeping an eye on you thinking about assaulting you. Several possibilities that you could never know.

Shanilou Perera

Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.