People Explain Which Discontinued Foods They Wish Would Make A Comeback

Growing up, I was convinced Vienetta cakes were the absolute height of fancy-time. In my kid-brain, each layer meant a level of formality or celebration and since there were clearly a bazillion layers in this thing, it had to be the fanciest dessert of all time.

They discontinued it when I was relatively young, so the impression just sort of stuck. Recently, they made a comeback and honestly, I would rather have kept the memory.

I miss the way kid-me saw things, you know?

Recently, reddit user PixelPervert asked: 

“What discontinued food do you wish was brought back?”

My experience with a food being brought back might be a bitter-sweet one, but that doesn’t mean people can’t dream their own delicious dreams. Here’s what they had to say.

The Flintstones Diet

“Flintstones Push-Up Pops”

– Rose_de_MaiTai

“This brought back something from the deepest corner of my brain.”

“Also brings the question why were the Flintstones such an integral part of our childhood and diet? Push ups, fruity pebbles, vitamins. What else am I missing from the Flintstones?”

– Question_aire

“Until now I kind of half-wondered if my memory of these was just some weird fever dream or something, because no one seems to remember them. Thank you for validating my childhood memories”

– winonachey

Sour Fruit Is A Thing

“Altoid fruit sours. Apparently, we can ask for it back.”

– lirio2u

“The tangerine ones were my favorite! I can recall the taste exactly, even down to little salivary tingly feeling I got right before having one. Those were amazing and should be brought back.”

– MestizaWontons

“Just looked these up on ebay and unopened tins have actually sold for $200+!”

– BobsicleSmith

Taco Bell Trauma

“The Mexican Pizza at Taco Bell.”

“Maybe I should be thanking them for getting rid of it because I have no reason to go to Taco Bell now.”

– GotMoFans

“That’s me and Double Decker Taco Supremes.”

– LakeLov3r

“RIP meximelt and nachos supreme.”

– hesaysitsfine

“Last time I went to taco bell, I sat in the drive thru for a minute looking at the menu. Then I just went to Wendy’s.”

“Taco bell has gotten really bad.”

– Faye_dunwoody

“I had ONE apple empanada from taco bell before I went into labor and it was mind altering – the bubbley texture of the dough and the gooey sweet of the filling.”

“Four days later when I was released from the hospital with my perfect little newborn, ALL I could ask for in the world was a goddamn apple empanada.”

“Little did I know that during my four days hospital stay, the world of apple empanadas had ended.”

– schmoob

Worth Getting Into Trouble For

“Philadelphia snack bars the strawberry cheesecake ones ….so good!”

– kikorellia

“Oh my god the strawberry cheesecake snack bars were that fire. I used to get in trouble by sneaking them because they were my moms favorite sweet.” 

– DeCodurr

“Are you me?! I tell my wife about this all the time.”

“My mom would come back from a 12 hour shift at the hospital just wanting a cheesecake bar… and I’d have eaten a whole box in one night like an animal.”

“I distinctly remember getting my game boy taken away right before a game tournament run because of those things. Worth it.”

– jkennah

No New Recipe, Please!

“Butterfinger BB’s with the Simpsons characters on the package.”

– Harmelion

“I feel like Butterfingers in general don’t taste like they used to.”

“As a kid I remember them being flaky and almost falling apart when you bit into them and now every time I’ve decided to give one a shot they’re not flaky at all and they stick to my teeth something fierce.”

– Imitation88

“I would pay dearly for ANY Butterfinger as long as it is the old Butterfinger by Nestle, because the new company SCREWED IT UP and now it’s nasty.”

“The base has been confectioners cornflakes since I was a kid. Now it’s not. You can’t change a main ingredient like that and then expect it to do well. So I don’t buy them anymore.”

– skpicky

It’s Not Banana Quick

“Nestle Banana Quik.”

“They have Strawberry Banana still, and it’s okay I suppose, but pure Banana Quik was so much better.”

“There’s a way to kinda sorta replicate it – but you need a bottle of “Torani” brand Banana flavoring to mix into your milk. Winco grocery stores sometimes has the Banana stuff, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Also Soylent makes a Banana flavored “meal drink” – it’s good, I also like their Mint Chocolate version.”

“None of that is Banana Quik, though.”

– Fluffy_Little_Fox

Before Hostess Went Bankrupt

“Ding dongs. They still make them, but they were better before Hostess went bankrupt and was bought out.”

– queen_ofmoons

“I’m a fat bastard that loves snack cakes, pies and anything similar to that. I did notice that something has been off about Hostess snacks since they went bankrupt and subsequently revived however many years ago.”

“I remember Twinkies being so good and delicious, and now they’re just…not, for some reason. I don’t know why though. I can’t tell if it’s something with the ingredients they use now or a change in recipe but it tastes off nowadays.”

“Regarding the Ding Dongs, I personally taste tested and compared Ding Dongs to Drake’s version, Ring Dings. The Drake’s stuff was so much better.”

“Again, I don’t know what changed exactly. But nonetheless I don’t buy Hostess stuff anymore and go for either Drake’s or Tastykake.”

– Mercurydriver

Cheesecake For One

“Maybe this was a dream, but I remember Philadelphia Cream Cheese made single size cheesecakes that I would always see at convenience stores.”

“I finally got the courage to ask my grandma to buy me one and it was my first cheesecake experience…so delicious!!!”

– mossybuttz

“They were real. They were delicious. I miss them.”

“These were complete 2 bite mini cheesecakes. They were just incredible and missed.”

– SouthDakotaGirl

“In college someone ordered a huge box of them and we ate them all year (we froze them). So good lol. It was like a box of 400 or something insane it took up the entire freezer.”

– Rambles_Off_Topics

Taste-bud Tragedies

“My family actually has a running joke when it comes to me and discontinued foods. It seems whenever I start to like something it goes away.”

“A few notable examples have been, Eggo Muffin Tops, Taco Bell’s beefy frito burritos, and, not a lot of people know about this one, but a carbonated yogurt called fizzix that I believe was from gogurt.”

“Now my family won’t let me eat stuff that they like because they’re afraid I’ll like it and it’ll go away.”

– Available_Motor5980

“That’s a thing. It’s called being a Harbinger of failure.”

– batoosie

There we have it, a list of all the deliciousness that Reddit can’t get off of its collective mind.

Someone from Taco Bell seriously needs to get on the apple empanada thing—that was kind of heartbreaking.

Chefs Share The Best Cooking Tips All Amateur Cooks Should Know

If you’re anything like us, this pandemic means you’ve had a sharp spike in your cooking show viewership.

We’ve spent the last year and change being baking champions, totally nailing things, chopping our way through challenges, and scoffing at everyone who tries to make a risotto in round one (that rice is totally going to be undercooked!).

For most of us, our culinary training consists of sitting on our couches munching on grown-up lunchables while we “learn” from TV chefs. There are, however, some brave souls among us who have actual kitchen experience and real room to talk… and they’d probably tell you not to try a risotto in round one.

Reddit user BigBadWolf44 asked: 

“Chefs of Reddit, what’s one rule of cooking amateurs need to know?”

Risky risotto aside, chefs have tons of cooking tips and tricks to share with we mere mortals. So let’s put down the remote, pick up a pan, and get this party started.

First put on pants, though.

Safety over everything—nobody likes burned bits.

Hold The Salt 

“A lot of the time when people add salt to a dish because they think it tastes flat, what it really needs is an acid like lemon juice or vinegar” 

– Vexvertigo

“Agreed. These are what I sometimes use to add acid depending on the recipe:”

“white/red/rice/malt vinegar, some chilli sauces, lemon or lime, wine, sherry, dry vermouth, preserved lemon.” 

– MayaSummerX

“Ah the discovery of citrus and vinegar was a great turning point in my cooking. I always call it the ‘tang,’ so I’ll hit it with a splash of vinegar/citrus and it just brightens up the flavors.”

“This was very important when trying to achieve proper Asian and Latin flavors.”

– Sheruk

We Like To Call It “Smaste” 

“Smell is very similar to taste, and if you’re not sure about combining various spices, open the bottles and smell them all together.”

– SuddenSenseOfSonder

“Smell literally is taste because of retronasal olfaction. The receptors on your tongue can only do the 5 basic flavors: sweet, salty, umami, bitter, sour”

– ChonglerV

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense!”

“I cook for myself with no training, but whenever I’m seasoning anything I always judge what to add based on how it smells. People often think I’m weird for it, but it always turns out pretty good.”

– AerialSnack

“WHAT? ITS THAT EASY?! IMA TRY THAT WHEN MY ROOMMATES ARE UP NORTH!”

“Its cookin time. I’m gonna make hella snacks.”

– Zenketski

“I’ve cooked professionally for years and I still do this.”

“If I’m not sure what a soup or dish needs, I take a bit of said soup to the spice rack and take a small taste, then smell a spice, seasoning or what have you.”

“Go down the line tasting and smelling til you find a combination that makes you go ‘mmmmmmm.’ “

– disgruntledcabdriver

Subtraction Isn’t A Thing, Unless You’re Adding

“You can always add, but you cannot take away.”

– El_Duende666

“I decided to put a couple globs of Mad Dog 357 in a pasta sauce. It’s like 300k something scoville but figured in a crock pot worth of sauce it won’t be too bad and add a little spice.”

“Made about 15 mason jars of sauce.”

“I regretted that decision. You cannot make something not spicy if you make it too spicy.”

“I made another pasta sauce but kept the mason jars from the other one too since I don’t like to waste. Now it’s Russian roulette every time I decide to eat pasta.”

– RedSquirrelFtw

“To build on that – when cooking, you must add to take away.”

“Say for example you add too much salt. Not to worry, just double everything else in the recipe and you’ve now halved the salt content.”

– MayaSummerX

And While We’re Talking About Too Much v. Too Little…

“Chill out with the flames.”

“If you’re not ready for high-heat, cooking many things at once, or if you simply can’t imagine staying by the stove for a long time to give the food your FULL attention then please, for the love of salt, turn the burner down!”

“You can always cook it more, you can’t un-burn it.”

– Lett3rsandnum8er5

“You can also always add more heat, but it is impossible to uncook something that is overcooked.”

– ForgettableUsername

“For grilling, I’ve always said you can undercook, then cook more, but can never uncook.”

– facelesspirit

On Fumbling A Knife

“Not really a cooking tip, but a law of the kitchen: A falling knife has no handle. Meaning don’t try to catch it, there is no safe way.” 

– wooddog

“I’m always so proud of my reflexes for NOT kicking in when I fumble a knife.”

“If I drop anything else, my stupid hands are all over themselves trying to catch it (and often failing).”

“But with a knife the hardwired automatic reaction is jump back immediately. Fingers out of the way, feet out of the way, everything out of the way.”

“Good lookin out, cerebellum!”

– sonyka

“Speaking of KICKING in…”

“On my first full time cooking job I had a knife spin and fall off the counter. My (stupid) reflex was to put my foot under it like a damn hacky sack to keep it from hitting the ground.”

“I’m insanely lucky; the blade went through the shoe, somehow between my toes, and into the sole somehow without cutting me.”

“Lessons learned: (1) let it fall; (2) never set a knife down close to the edge or with the handle sticking out; (3) hacky sack is not nearly as cool as it could be.”

– AdjNounNumbers

The Critical Click

“When you grab a pair of tongs, click them a few times to make sure they are tongs.”

– Kolshdaddy

“People really overlook this one. You’ve gotta tong the tongs a minimum of 3 times to make sure they tong, or else it can ruin the whole dish.”

– BigTimeBobbyB

“It’s also critical that you giggle and call yourself a crab when you do it.”

– CommodoreCliche

“It’s also good practice to sing ‘tong t-tong tong tongs’ a la Sisqo’s ‘Thong Song.’ It helps cement the idea that you are holding tongs.”

– larj_Brest

You’re Probably Making Veggies Wrong

“Really think about what size you’re cutting your vegetables in relation to cook time.”

“It’s better to have a perfectly cooked larger vegetable that you have to use fork and knife a bit to eat at the table than a bunch of overcooked, mushy bite sized pieces.”

“Generally speaking, the best simple preparation of cooking a vegetable is usually roasted on a sheet pan with olive oil, S&P.”

“And for god’s sakes, make your own salad dressings fresh!”

“It takes no time, you likely have what you already need in your pantry, and it tastes 10x as good as the crap in the bottle. You’ll be surprised even how much better Ranch dressing tastes if you get the dry seasoning packets and mix it with some fresh milk and mayo and let it set for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.”

– JasonK87919
“Roasted vegetables are great. I used to hate them, and my problem was I wasn’t roasting them long enough.”

“They’d either be hard and undercooked, or mushy. The key for me was to cook them past the mushiness stage to get them to where a lot of moisture is out of them and they have browned a bit (or more!).”

– putsch80

“One of the main reasons people saying they don’t like roasted veggies is not fully preheating their oven before putting the sheet pan in.”

“Yeah you put your timer on for the right time, but the first 5 maybe 10 minutes don’t really count. Now everything is just weird.”

– wickedzeus

… um, okay yeah that last comment might have hit a little too close to home. I promise from now on to actually wait for the pre-heat to be over before I put things in the oven.

Or at least to TRY and wait.

And to sigh and go “Reddit was right” every time I forget and my veggies come out gummy.

It’s the least I can do.

People Break Down The Best Free Things On The Internet Not Enough People Know About

Fact: People love free… and also people are suspicious of it.

We’re all so used to getting spammed, ending up in a time-share meeting, or getting added to yet another call list when we hear “free” we kind of cringe.

The up-side of that caution is only getting five calls about your car’s extended warranty this week, not the 20 that your friend got.

The down-side of avoiding anything that claims to be free is that you’re missing out on some legitimate internet awesomeness!

Reddit user MuddiDK asked: 

“What is something free from the internet, which everyone should take advantage of?”

So get ready to take some screenshots (they work better if you actually use them) so we can get you ballin’ on a budget.

We’re talking intellectual ballin’, creative ballin’, career ballin’—the internet is seriously FILLED with free ways to upgrade yourself.

You Want Books? You Got Books. 

“There are tons and tons of free ebooks available online, a huge variety of stuff. Even free audiobooks.”

“I created r/FreeEBOOKS to help people find stuff they can get for free and am including some lists I’ve compiled by topic below:”

“These lists are from Project Gutenberg which is a great source for free ebooks in the public domain on a wide variety of topics. If you want other stuff check out r/FreeEBOOKS :)”

250+ books by or about US Presidents

300 science fictions short stories

200 more science fiction short stories

50 free books on etiquette

115 free fairy tale books

100 free mythology books

250 free kids and YA books

200 free sci-fi books

100 free classics

100 free Christmas ebooks

100 free poetry ebooks

100 free history ebooks

100 free memoirs and autobiographies

50 free mysteries

100 free books about pirates

70 books about space and astronomy

200 books about cooking and housekeeping

50 historical books about childbirth and sexual health

175 medical books

50 free craft books

100 free gardening books

Free assigned summer reading books

60 free ebooks about adventure and exploration in the Arctic and at the South Pole

100 free books of ghost stories

100 more free mythology ebooks

50 free horror books

30 free Arthurian legends

180 free Christmas ebooks

100 free books of essays

50 free ebooks about inventions and inventors

100 unusual or very specific history books

250 books by or about US presidents

“Free audiobook collections from Librivox:”

50 free classic audiobooks

50 more free classic audiobooksChtorr

All This Stuff

“Audacity -A powerful audio editor, ideal for music and podcasts.”

“Autodesk Fusion 360 -CAuD/CAM software.”

“Bit Warden -Open-source password management service.”

“Blender – Free and open source 3D creation suite.”

“Cake Walk – music production software”

“Dark Table – Open-source photography workflow application and raw developer.”

“Dashlane -Cross-platform subscription-based password manager and digital wallet application.”

“DaVinci Resolve -Color correction and non-linear video editing application.”

“FreeCAD -open-source general-purpose parametric 3D computer-aided design modeler.”

“GIMP -A powerful open source photo and image editing tool.”

“Godot Engine -a 2D and 3D, cross-platform, free and open-source game engine released under the MIT license.”

“Glitch – Build fast, full-stack web apps in your browser.”

“Glimpse Image Editor – A photo editor for everyone.”

“Greenshot -A free screenshot tool optimized for productivity.”

“Handbrake -the open source video transcoder”

“Honey -a browser extension that aggregates and automatically applies online coupons on eCommerce websites.”

“Hitfilm-Express -Video editing software with professional-grade VFX tools.”

“Inkscape – Free and open-source vector graphics editor.”

“KDEnLive -open-source video editing software based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt.”

“Keepass -free and open-source password manager primarily for Windows.”

“Krita -Free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation.”

“Open Broadcaster Software(OBS) – open-source software for video recording and live streaming.”

“LibreOffice -Open-source office suite.”

“LMMS -a digital audio workstation application program.”

“MagicaVoxel -A free lightweight GPU-based voxel art editor and interactive path tracing renderer.”

“MediBang Paint Pro -FREE digital painting and comic creation software.”

“Musescore -Create, play and print beautiful sheet music”

“Ocenaudio – Easy, fast, and powerful audio editor.”

“Opentoonz – animation production software.”

“Paint.NET -a freeware raster graphics editor program for Microsoft Windows developed on the .NET Framework”

“Photopea -Web-based raster and vector graphics editor.”

“Pixlr – Feature-packed online photo editor.”

“QGIS -open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system application”

“Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe.”

“RawTherapee – free, cross-platform raw image processing program”

“Reaper -Digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer software”

“ShareX -Screen capture, file sharing and productivity tool.”

“Shotcut -A slick open source program for advanced video editing.”

“SlidesGo -Free Google Slides and PowerPoint templates.”

“Switch -Convert and encode sound files quickly.”

“The Noun Project – Icons for everything.”

“TurboTax Sucks Ass – website that makes it easy to file your taxes.”

“Unity -cross-platform game engine.”

“Unreal Engine – the most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool.”

“Unsplash – Beautiful free images and pictures.”

“VLC media player -open-source portable cross-platform media player software and streaming media server”

“VS Code -free source-code editor.”

“Waveform – fully featured, completely unlimited free DAW for all music creators.”

“Wavepad -Audio and music editor for Windows and Mac.”

“Wcostream – anime and animated Tv-show/movie site with dubs and subs.”

“7-Zip – file archiver with a high compression ratio”

“> Some learning material:”

“Codecademy – free sessions and exercises for any coding language.”

“Coursera – Online courses & Certifications.( Not all courses/certifications are free, but worth it)”

“Cybrary – The Cybersecurity and IT Career Development Platform”

“Edx – Online courses & Certifications.( Not all courses/certifications are free, but worth it)”

“FreeCodeCamp – Learn to code at home.”

“Goal Kicker – Free programming books in any language.”

“Khan Academy -a non-profit educational organization.”

“Learn with Google – Courses and certifications from Google.”

“Learn with Microsoft on Edx (Free) – Courses from Microsoft.”

“MDN Web Docs – Resources for developers, by developers.”

“MIT courses -MIT’s OpenCourseware.”

“Octave -software featuring a high-level programming language, primarily intended for numerical computations. Basically free MatLab Alternative”

“R- programming language -free software environment for statistical computing and graphics”

“Repl.it – Code and collaborate, without friction.”beef_boss_

This Cure For Calculus

“Wolfram Alpha.”

“I don’t know if it’s already been said, but Wolfram Alpha was a lifesaver for checking answers when taking Calculus 1-3 in college.”

“It’s definitely useful for all sorts of answers, but specifically when it comes to answers for science and math questions, it’s great.”xSlippyFistx

“I owe a good amount of my engineering degree to this platform right here. Our school even had the premium version for students.”AFB27

“Yes! I use it with my students. Such a great resource.”RustedRelics

Scholarly Sources

“Google Scholar.”

“If you type that in and then look up any thing you want the results are all scholarly work.”

“For example, if you type in volcanos you will get an absolute ton of scientific documents about volcanos, any research that is being done on them, any papers that have been written about them and any data you might want. It’s all right there.”

“While it is true that some sources require payment, if you’re a college student and you have a student email you should be able to access a lot of the information. Next time you write a paper for a science class check out google scholar!”Objective_Reality232

WikiWiki

“Wikipedia. We take that site for granted, big time.”

“There are few things in this world that do NOT have a Wikipedia page at this point. People have dedicated hours, days, even their entire lives, to filling the site up with all the knowledge one could ever need.”

“All that information is free!” 

“Want to learn about the history of the escalator? Wikipedia has it.”

“Interested in the Civil War? You bet you can find it on Wikipedia.”

“Wikipedia will not be around forever, folks. Use it while you have it.”

“Read random articles. It’s fun.”[Reddit]

Learn Stuff!

“Online courses and guides. The fact that you can learn anything for FREE at home, is amazing.”

“Like 40 years ago, you had to actually pay for lessons and go away from your home. Nowadays you can do everything online.”

“Want to learn knitting: You got it!”

“Want to learn to speak a foreign language: You got that too!”

“Want to study for an upcoming test: You can, but you probably won’t!”

“Isn’t the internet just amazing!”WitheredGone

You’re Entitled To Your History

“I found out I have confederate ancestors through findagrave, and have used it to build a family tree going back to the 1700s.”

“Pro Tip: African Americans get discouraged when building family trees because of the perceived lack of records, but please use:”

“censusrecords.com”

“findagrave.com.”

“and the national parks civil war veterans registry.”

“Black confederate veteran’s pension records will be kept at the state archives, and are not attached to the national registration, which gives branch, regiment, company, and state.”

“Confederatevets.org, might have clearer information. Black confederates will have less clear records than black Union veterans.”

“You’re working your way backwards with names, states/counties, dates, and other criteria. Please know that the 1850 and 1860 census contain slave schedules, wherein many people find their last name is linked to that of a slave owner, or through an illegal interracial marriage.”

“At that point, much of what remains is diary scraps, ship records, and newspaper scraps such as those found for free on the Chronicling America Project by the Library of Congress.”

“Chronicling America allows sorting by keywords, state, and year range, but be aware a lot of state archives contain out of state papers, and desired papers might need unorthodox searches.”

“As a rule the term ‘negro’, ‘sale’, and the surname of a buyer, owner, auctioneer/seller will offer a trail to a port, or at least a county within a state.” 

“Take screenshots and write things down on physical paper for the best clarity.”

“While local heritage museums might have plantation or ship records (you’ll have to email/phone multiple in a multiple-county area to know) don’t count on these records surviving the city torchings done through the war years.”

“Don’t feel discouraged, because everyone hits a wall eventually when searching through their ancestry.”

“The European wall is about 1550 or later, when last names became common. It’s very common for misspellings, and pre-national language regional languages to muddle names (eg. German v Dutch, Irish v Scottish, Vietnamese v Laotian).”

“The black wall is 1850 much of the time.”

“If your goal is to find African nation ancestry, it’s ultra rare to find it. However, language studies have found that the vast bulk of African diaspora in the New World are from the far western African coastal nations.”

“The dashiki, much of voudoo, Creoles, Ananzi the spider, the roots of soul food, and other legacy practices come from this small-ish region. So Liberia, to the Ivory Coast, Ghana, to Seira Leone, and the northern half of the Congo coast is the ancestral origin point, if that’s your goal.”

“Bantu and French are the cheif languages to look at (not Swahili). If you try to find a specific tribal group or nation, you’re likely not seeing the forest for all the trees.”

“You are entitled to history. It’s yours, take it.”crumpledcactus

Visualize Your Characters

“Art Breeder. You’re able to mix images together to create something new and keep tweaking it until you get something you like.”

“Personally, I like using it to create characters that look similar to the ones in my head–useful for story writing.” 

“The free version has a limit of five or so images if you want to upload your own, but there’s a huge library of images for browsing through. I like typing in keywords and seeing what comes up and combining those.”

“You just type in whatever keyword you want (or pick one of the ones there), select a photo, then click cross-breed and repeat with another keyword.”iridescenttropy

So what are you doing in here still reading?

You should be playing with all the free stuff you now know about.

Go! Get your free on!

People Share Little-Known Survival Tips That Could Save Your Life

In a perfect world, none of us would need to know or use any of the information we’re about to go over.

We don’t live in anything remotely close to a perfect world.

Tragedies happen, accidents occur, life gets heavy. In those moments, the thing that tips the scales might be something as seemingly unimportant as “that random factoid I read on the internet.”

Reddit user GlumExcitement9 asked: 

“People of Reddit, what is a surprisingly unknown survival fact that everyone should know?” 

So listen, we sincerely hope you never need this stuff.

We hope you never find yourself waiting to be rescued, facing down a person determined to hurt you, or falling off of a ship in the middle of the open ocean.

But just in case …

Whistle While You Wait

“Pack a whistle.”

“There’s no chance your voice will hold out yelling at the top of your lungs, and whistles carry long distances. Especially handy if you’ve injured yourself, and need to rely on others finding you.”

“SOS in Morse code is … – – – …”

“So three short blasts, three longer ones, three short, pause….and repeat.”

“This is an especially handy and harmless device to give kids that are along for a hike (along with, ‘if you get separated, stop walking and blow the whistle lots, and we’ll come to you’).”Bubbafett33

Don’t Climb

“Contractor and someone who has designed quite a few subway and stations here.”

“Here’s something we’re taught during the first day of security clearance classes and this is how we design stations as a standard feature on every new platform being built. Older platforms may not have this or will have some other safety feature.”

“Having said that – many subway platforms have a space big enough for a person to fit under in case they fall onto the subways tracks.”

“So if you fall off the edge of the platform and onto the tracks and there’s a train coming, roll to the side. There’s likely a gap you can fit in.”

“It might be tight, and you’ll certainly get dirty, but better than standing up, scrambling to try and climb out, and dying.”IndianInferno

“I work for NYCT. There are niches you can stand that are safe if you fall.”

“As long as there isn’t a red and white stripped board, you’re good.”

“Another fatal and idiotic piece of advice I hear a lot is to lie down flat between the running rails. This may work in a few stations and in specific spots in those stations but do not try this!”

“Just look along the wall for niches and flatten yourself against the wall in there. If there’s no wall then stand next to a column and hold onto it with one hand.”

“Then just try to stand flush with the column.”CrankBar

Self Defense Is Cowardly

“My family runs self-defense classes. They include multiple black belts and lawyers.”

“In terms of ‘fights’ – bar brawls, people in the street, muggings, etc.:”

“- If they have a weapon, any weapon, run. Seriously, you will die, no matter how good you think you are or how many test-disarms you’ve done in a dojo.”

“Run like f*ck and be prepared to kill if cornered.”

“We’ve witnessed experienced black-belts hurt themselves with a real knife (after signing disclaimers!) so badly that they were hospitalized when they were JUST SPARRING, not fighting for real.”

“It’s just not worth it.”

“- If the fight is just ‘brewing’, repeatedly announce that you don’t want to fight them (attracts help, shows you’re not trying to one-up them, covers you legally, and doesn’t prepare them if you do fight).”

‘ Say things like ‘Nah, man, I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to fight you. Look, I don’t want to fight you. Whatever, man, I don’t want to fight. I’m just gonna walk away, alright, I don’t wanna fight you’.” 

“- If it’s not immediately life-threatening and you can avoid it, try not to throw the first punch. Again, legal coverage, but also means you’re not the guy who gets into something they didn’t want to.”

“The first punch is the trigger for everything to kick off. Up until that point you can still defuse everything back to harsh words and idle threats.”

“Once a punch is thrown, someone’s getting really hurt and you literally have no idea if the other guy is more experienced or better at it that you. No matter who you are.”

“However, you can *react* to anything that appears to come towards you perfectly legitimately… if he’s “faking out” a punch, you have no idea of that but can act as if it was real.”

“- If you’re surprised, ‘attacked’, etc… without warning… it’s no holds barred.”

“Literally, who cares about his eyesight, his future fatherhood prospects, whether his kneecaps will ever work again or if he can breathe.”

“You can’t afford to end up on the floor, be incapacitated yourself, stunned, reeling, unconscious, for him to summon aid, or even just to fall to the ground awkwardly.”

“And YES, that guy could stab you and you wouldn’t know until after he walked away, things are really that quick!”

“Your brain doesn’t notice some subtle movements, your body won’t scream out in pain because of the adrenaline, and someone who knows what they’re doing will not attract attention to the weapon until it’s in you, etc…”

“You can’t take that risk.”

“Once it gets physical, don’t stop until you’re sure he’s not able to harm you, and then run away anyway for good measure (legal hint: report to the police at the first opportunity, don’t wait).”

“Once they have shown they have an intention to hurt you, and they’ve started to act on it – nothing is out of line.”

“And to quote the legal people in our clubs who were always asked the questions: If you feel your life is genuinely in danger, you can do almost anything to protect it until the point it’s no longer in danger. Worry about the legalities later.”

“But if your life is in danger, you would act to protect.”

“Going back in for another kick, or using a weapon when he’s already down and you could run, or anything else? Yeah, that’s not self-defense.”

“You’re not *defending* yourself by walking back into a fight you could have easily escaped.”

“Victims who ‘just tried to punch him once, but he punched back, so I shot him’ are also often harder to take seriously for self-defense than ‘he was three times my size, I was on my own, he attacked, I was in a struggle for my life at that point’.”

“That’s especially true if they were heard trying to stop the fight from happening, ran away immediately when they could, and called the police as they ran.”

“You can also act in defense of others, but again – you are defending. You’re giving them time to run away – wife, child, friend, whoever.”

“If there’s a threat, that’s what you’re giving them; the opportunity to escape the threat.”

“But there’s literally nothing wrong with breaking the guy’s knee as your first action (kick it so it goes sideways) – in fact, from a self-defense point of view, it’s perfectly legitimate. It’s a perfect way to prevent pursuit and allow you to escape.”

“Self-defense is cowardly, at its heart.”

“Do everything you can to capitulate, avoid the fight, etc… but if it escalates, take the quickest, most effective way to incapacitate them and then run away.” ledow

You Vs. The Ocean

“If you are ever caught in a rip current, swim perpendicular to it. If you swim into it, you will die.”

“If you let it carry you out to sea and aren’t a strong swimmer, you will die.”[Reddit]

“I’ve been caught in a rip current. This advice is incredibly useful to know, because without it you’re also going to panic real hard when swimming towards the shore doesn’t work.”homarjr

“I was caught in one, too, during my freshman year of college. I almost died.”

“I would have if it weren’t for my friend, who was a lifeguard, that was nearby. I tried the whole swimming parallel to the beach method, but what everyone conveniently forgets to mention is that you STILL have to swim back to shore.”

“This task is seriously exhausting. If you’re not VERY in shape, you’re pretty much f*cked if you’re caught in a rip current with no one out there to help rescue you.”enginerd12

“Been a sailing merchant for 12 years. If you ever fall off a ship/ferry at sea and you’re lucky enough to be spotted – don’t try to swim your way to safety. The ocean will win.”

“The more you try to swim, the lesser your chances of survival. Just try to keep afloat and conserve energy (and body heat) while rescue team do what they’re supposed to.”

“Unless you are in hypothermic waters, the best bet always is to stay afloat without trying to swim to somewhere.”trendz19

Snakebite Position

“Lead the pack if you’re scared of snakes. You’ll disturb them but the person behind you is more likely to get bitten.”knittingtaco

“Mountain biker from southern Arizona here.”

“In the summer, we trail ride at night to avoid the heat. When on single track, whoever is behind the guy in front is in ‘snakebite’ position.”

“We’ve all at one time or another had to bunnyhop a rattlesnake”tucsonyeti

The Star

“Elevator stuff: The STAR symbol on the elevator panel indicates the floor that is the most direct route to outside. It’s not always the first floor.”AtopMountEmotion

Leave It To The Professionals

“Don’t f*ck with garage door springs.”SpitefulShrimp

“Used to work on commercial and residential doors and openers. Seen a broken spring go through a cinderblock wall.”

“The main thing to look for are the red bolts.(assuming the door was installed correctly.) Those are the ones holding tension on the springs/lines.”

“Screw with something else you might break it. Screw with the reds they might break you.”ThePrevailer

“THIS is what almost killed me!”

“I was trying to fix a gap in my garage door a couple of years ago and started to unscrew a couple of bolts with the door closed.”

“One of them flew right by my face. I almost pissed my pants and couldn’t sleep that night just thinking about how I almost won a Darwin award.”Lapare

Sure, some of this is stuff we’re not really likely to use, but how many elevators have you been in.

Did you know what that star was for?

Had you even noticed it?

Exactly.

People Share The Absolute Scariest Space Facts They Know

For some, outerspace represents a sense of hope and advancement.

For others, the cosmos has more of that whole “terrifying hellscape” thing going on.

This article is probably going to vibe a bit more with group 2 than the “space, the final frontier” set.

Reddit user Zjaf asked:

“What’s the scariest space fact/mystery in your opinion?”

Who’s ready to get plunged into some fact-based existential dread? Let’s get into it. These are the space-facts that people find the most unsettling.

It’s HUGE.

“The sheer distance between things. It’s scary and somewhat depressing.” – regretfulbastard

“Definitely scary on the existential dread scale.”

“Even better, the scale is only increasing faster. Short of developing faster than light travel or the expansion of the universe slowing down, eventually the only things lighting up the night sky where humans once roamed will be our own galaxy and our nearest galactic neighbors.”

“All those other galaxies spotted by Hubble will be beyond the distance that we will ever see light from them again. The entire Milky Way will be in quarantine with just a few family members to call company for the remainder of the universe existing.”desolation0

“If Einstein is correct (every experience so far has proved that he is, unfortunately), space isn’t meant for us.”

“Even if we manage to reach to build a near light speed spacecraft, it would take years to reach the nearest star systems – but time would seem to go by faster to everyone aboard the ship.”

“But it gets worse: any communication is also bound by the speed of light. Even if we create an outpost on Proxima Centauri b, it would take at least 8.5 YEARS to get an answer to any communication. And it’s the nearest planet. Any kind of united civilization is utterly impossible in these conditions.”asshai

A Single Destructive Event

“The Kessler Effect is the theory that a single destructive event in Low earth orbit could create a cascade where satellites break up into tiny fragments.”

“Those tiny fragments would then go about taking out other satellites, breaking THEM up into smaller fragments and so on, until the earth is completely surrounded by a massive cloud of tiny flying death shrapnel which would make leaving this planet almost impossible.”

“If you look up how much space debris there is already up there and how many satellites currently orbit, plus the continued growth of the commercial space industry… I think about it a lot.”sosogos

“A large volcano eruption has the capacity to knock out enough communication for long enough to trigger such an event. The fact that magma below the earth surface has the capacity to takeout satellites blows my mind.”a55per

The Void

“The Bootes void.”

“An area of space where there should be 50,000 or so galaxies (compared to other areas of the same size) but there’s only about 60.”

“Could just be empty space for some unknown reason, or it could be an ever expanding intergalactic empire using Dyson spheres. Also I think it appears to be growing but that could just be galaxies moving away from the void”nazi_marxist

“It’s 330,000,000 light years in diameter. You could travel at the speed of light for literally 330,000,000 years and see absolutely nothing.”r0b0tMark

We’re Stuck Here

This visual that either shows how slow light speed is or how vast space is, depending on which way you look at it.”

“I’ve seen videos showing the scale of the universe before, but this one really hit home for some reason. The speed of light, the fastest speed possible, looks painfully slow when you look at it in the context of even a fraction of our solar system.”

“We’re stuck here, aren’t we?”[Reddit]

“This is the first time I was able to actually GRASP the scale of the universe. Holy sh*t is space huge…”Cringetorics

What’s Beyond The Sphere?

“I can’t accept the fact that there is no end in space. But if there is indeed an end, then… what’s beyond it?”

“I’m stucked in the absurdity.”

“In the numerous answers I’ve received, the one that seems to come back the most is ‘the universe is curved, you would end up back where you started.’”

“Seems fair enough… Then again, that wouldn’t mean there is no limit.”

“On the contrary, that would just mean we are trapped in (or on the surface of) a sphere.”

“There is still a limit to a sphere. So the question remains… what’s beyond it?”tartokwetsh

Way Overdue

“The earth is way overdue for a civilization/all life ending event.”

“Meteors and asteroids didn’t just stop hitting earth. Will it happen in my lifetime, my kids or my grandkids lifetimes? Or 1000 years from now?”

“Humans have only been here for a minute amount of time over the course of earths complete history and many things have happened to completely wipe out almost all life as we know it.”tonkajoe6646

Brain Soup

“The Boltzmann Brain”

“The most likely ending to our universe will be all stars and black holes exploding and eventually the universe becomes a completely even soup of particles for all eternity.”

“In this theory, the Big Bang was actually a cosmic coincidence, in which enough of those base particles (literally every one that currently exists) collided in the even soup of a PAST universe. This collision caused the big bang to occur, thrusting into motion the energies that run our current universe.”

“Such an occurrence in the soup of infinite is INCREDIBLY unlikely.”

“What, instead, is far more likely is that just enough base particles came together in the exact right way as to create a literal floating brain in the infinite soup that has all of your memories and experiences up to the current moment.”

“Statistically speaking, it is unfathomably MORE likely that nothing you’ve ever perceived exists and, instead, you are merely a floating brain in an endless expanse of nothing, imagining the universe and doomed to return to the soup from whence you came, none the wiser.”Snaz5

ISS Lifeguards?

“There is a section of ocean where the closest help at any time is 250ish miles straight up. On the International Space Station.” – Overly-mannly-mann

Point Nemo is the most isolated (from land) point on earth. Due to the isolation and low shipping lane traffic in this part of the world, the nearest humans to someone at point Nemo would be those astronauts on the ISS.” – ViperSRT3g

From An Astronomer’s Perspective

“Astronomer here! There are a lot of things posted here that are not really likely to happen any time soon or affect your life on Earth much. So, if you want something to worry about, may I introduce you to the Carrington Event of 1859.

“Basically Carrington was a scientist who noticed a flash from a huge cluster of sunspots, which was the biggest coronal mass ejection from the sun ever recorded (aka a ton of material ejected from the sun at high speeds). It hit Earth within a day- aurora were seen as far south as Hawaii, wires on telephone poles burst into flame, and telegraph operators even reported contacting each other when not connected.”

“If a similar event were to strike Earth today, it would cause billions of dollars in damage, because blown transformers are super hard to replace and a lot of satellites wouldn’t be able to handle it (and it goes without saying you’d have a serious radio blackout for a bit until it ended on a ton of essential frequencies).”

“Electronics would be fried, batteries wiped, etc. Some scientists think it could zap us ‘back to the dark ages.’ “

“The crazy thing about the Carrington event though is we really have no idea how often such events happen. But we do know that in 2012 there was a Carrington-level solar flare that barely missed Earth…

“We do know these biggest flares happen during solar maximum- the sun has an 11 year cycle of sunspots and the period with the most is solar maximum. The next max would be 2025-2026 or so.”

“However we really don’t know how common these big flares are. Interestingly data from other stars shows they seem to be much more common around other stars than our own, with huge implications for life in some cases.”Andromeda321

It Might Be Up To Us

“You know those classic utopian sci-fi stories, where benevolent aliens come down and end all the wars and uplift them to super-intellects and give everyone miraculous technology and immortality and welcome them into a peaceful galactic union and everything?”

“Ever wonder why, if aliens are roaming around faster than light, they haven’t swung by us yet?”

“One of the answers to that question: We might be the first. Depending on how long it takes life to develop, we might be the first to evolve to a point where we could plausibly make that happen without nuking ourselves into oblivion or destroying our atmosphere or what have you.”

“It might be up to us whether we make it or not as an interstellar species. We have the responsibility of getting our sh*t together, because it may well be up to us to save everyone else.”

“Uncountable genocides, wars, famines, death on a scale larger than our species have ever understood. Literally the fate of the universe might depend on us.”

“I look around at us now, and that’s what scares me.”sirblastalot

OK honestly?

That last one is the one that freaks us out most.