It takes a lot to impress people with all the information we’re bombarded with on a daily basis.
But our fact sets have gained a reputation as solid, interesting, and dependable because we do our best to cultivate the most interesting things out there.
We love to give you the good stuff!
And here’s another set of facts that we’re confident will impress you mightily.
Enjoy these 10 facts and feel free to share them with your family and friends!
Sometimes, the best innovations come out of nowhere. In the case of the N95 mask, that’s exactly what happened.
This particle-filtering mask has become even more popular due to the coronavirus pandemic. Due to its ability to block out 95 percent of airborne particles, it’s a staple in surgeries and other medical areas.
Turnbull worked for the 3M company back in the late 1950s. During that time, she worked with Shapeen, which is a non-woven material made of polymers typically used for decorative ribbons. She utilized this material to create the first-ever pre-made bows used for wrapping gifts during the holidays.
A true innovator, Turnbull came up with a ridiculous number of ideas. She presented 3M executives with a lengthy overview of her lineup. They liked her work enough to get Turnbull started on designing a molded bra cup.
However, with three sick family members, Turnbull spent a ton of time in medical environments. She realized that medical workers needed a better solution than the thin masks they often worked with.
By 1961, they introduced a non-woven lightweight medical mask based on her concept, with elastic bands instead of strings, an aluminum nose clip, and a form-fitting “bubble” shape. (The bra patent was approved in 1962.)
Though innovative, the mask couldn’t block pathogens for medical use and was marketed for dust filtration instead. An improved respirator hit the market in 1972 that was suitable for other industrial purposes. As the mask’s filtration evolved, so did its usefulness.
In 1995, the N95 respirator was introduced in the health care field, fulfilling Turnbull’s original ambition.
Sara Little Turnbull passed away in 2015. But during her lifetime, she proved to be a creative thinker who inspired a key piece of protective gear utilized more than ever today.
If you could create a new design to help fix a problem, what would it be? Tell us about your creative ideas in the comments below!
I used to work a job with a crazy schedule. Once, we worked five days a week from noon until 6 a.m. for FIVE WEEKS. That’s 18 hours a day for those of you keeping track…
As you can imagine, it was totally exhausting and sometimes by the time I was heading home when the sun was coming up, I feel like I started seeing things and my reaction time was slowed WAY down.
I can’t really say I was hallucinating, but it was probably the closest I’ve ever come to it.
In this AskReddit article, people talk about what happened when they were so sleep-deprived that they hallucinated.
Buckle up!
1. Time to make the donuts.
“In college, I tried to hold down a donut delivery job while taking a full credit load.
I got up at 4:30 AM to deliver, and often was up until midnight or even later. After a particularly busy week with almost no sleep, I hallucinated a man crossing the street right in front of me while delivering and I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting him.
When I realized that there was no one in the crosswalk — and no one anywhere in sight — I finished my deliveries and immediately quit my job.”
2. Don’t do meth.
“I had a meth problem several years ago. I think my longest stretch was 4 days.
Past a certain point you just don’t know which way is up. Sure meth can make you weird, but in my experience I think the sleep deprivation is actually what makes you lose your marbles after long enough. When I made sure I slept and ate regularly, it was almost like an energy drink. But when I binged and had my junkie weeks, oof.
Once I thought I was hearing music playing loudly somewhere outside. I was convinced it was a soundtrack to a big music festival I had attended a few weeks before that someone had also attended, and was now playing loudly in the middle of the night. (The whole musics festival? Multiple bands had a soundtrack? Bruh.) I couldn’t hear it when I listened for it, but while distracted I could plainly hear it. Dead of the night and no music was playing.
Another time I was sketching in my room at like 3am. I had a friend over who was just chilling with me, asking questions every so often that would lead to discussions. Slowly they responded less and less until I looked at them and they were just looking at me. Asked what was wrong, looked down, looked up waiting for the answer, and they were gone. Never there. They hadn’t talked to me in months after they found out I was using.
So many shadow people. And those took a long time to go away after sobering up.
Whispers, hearing someone talking to me, my name being called, hearing someone talking about me. Even though I was by myself lol.
Sometimes I’d be driving and cars would suddenly be coming straight at me, lights blinding and everything, only to sort of “come to” and realize I’m driving on a back road and I’m the only car for miles.
By no means am I saying any weird mental shit had nothing to do with the meth. But in my experience not sleeping for days had a much more horrifying effect.”
3. Pills are bad, too.
“One time I stayed up for 2 days straight off some pills that mixed with meth. By the second night I wanted to go to sleep so I took unisoms to see if it would help. I started hallucinating an hour after taking it and was seeing people and things with my eyes that weren’t there in reality.
It was a strangest feeling in the world knowing what I was seeing wasn’t real but not being able unsee. For example, I was looking out my window at my car. I visually saw three men next to my car.
I would turn my head away, say it wasn’t real and look back only to see the men differently positioned. I visualized them popping my hood, removing my headlamps, and opening my doors. But none of it was real.
Trippy.”
4. In the desert.
“Very calm as far as hallucinations go.
I had driven for 20+ hours and was in the Arizona/California desert. It was the middle of the night, it had been dark for hours and only other car lights and stars where visible. Started seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, just kind of objects off a distance on the side of the road. Then it was things in the road ahead. T
hat got my attention. After a bit I started seeing fantastic meteor/light showers in the sky. Wasn’t scary or anything, didn’t stop driving.
To be young, dumb, and invincible again.”
5. Tunnel vision.
“I drove across country from NY to California when I was 18. I was on a 2 lane highway in Kansas and got bad tunnel vision. But the thing about tunnel vision is you don’t know it’s happening when it’s happening. The road was straight, flat, and there were no cars going by me, in front of me, or behind me.
I ended up getting pulled over. When I saw the flashing lights behind me I pulled over immediately but wasn’t sure how fast I was going or even if I was being pulled over for speeding. The first thing the officer asked me was why it took me so long to pull over.
This was confusing since I pulled over right away. He told me he had been following me for almost 5 minutes with his lights and sirens on and that I had been going well over 100 mph.
He checked out my info, didn’t give me a ticket. Told me to stay more alert, take frequent breaks, and to slow down.”
6. Is this real?
“While deployed overseas with lack of sleep for like 70+ hours, I would black out and re-experience/dream completely different scenarios that happened days prior. It was crazy. Like Deja Vu, but for like an hour.
I’d snap out of it and be completely confused for like 30 seconds, wondering which experience was real.”
7. No sleep at all.
“When I was in university, immediately after my father died (OD’d on Christmas Eve after I threw him out), I pretty much quit sleeping. Maybe 3-4 hours a night. Went through lots of counselling, lots of medication (7 different sedatives and SSRI’s) but basically just couldn’t sleep.
We had a home birth for my niece so even when the grief wasn’t overwhelming, the newborn baby kept me up.
Anyways, I knew it got bad when I started microsleeping. I’d be in class listening to a lecture, blink and police officers would be standing beside me explaining what had transpired, then blink and I’d be back listening to class. Maybe mentally be out of it for 5-10 seconds but felt entirely lucid other than time dilation.
The psychiatrist at the time said I was dropping into REM because I was so sleep deprived. Happens with new moms when babies are cluster feeding. I wasn’t driving or anything so not dangerous that way but honestly lived in a fog for years.
Just like snap of the finger – perfectly lucid horrible moment of my life – snap of the finger back.
During this period I had a thing where I quit talking to people at school to see how long they would go without chatting to me. Literally had week stretches where not a word was said. Then came finals, started vomitting with anxiety when I tried to enter the exam rooms which was an autofail for my classes.
So academic probation, the opportunity to protest if I would speak in front of the university Senate, which I clearly couldn’t do, and eventual complete failure. There were times where I was hitting the student food bank after hours because I literally couldn’t walk into a grocery store because my anxiety was so severe.
So definitely can happen but for me was pretty extreme situation.”
8. Back to reality.
“It was the weirdest thing.
I was taking notes on an extremely boring video in theology but then words started appearing on their own without me writing anything. They were dancing around for a bit and I found it completely normal for a bit but then I realized that words aren’t suppose to dance.
Then I snapped back to reality with nothing on my paper.”
9. Sounds rough.
“For context, this happened during some military training. Laying down in the woods desperately trying to stay awake, usually the plants turn into people. Like you’ll see a figure walking around out in front of you, and then “come to” and realize it was just a sapling or a bush or something.
Happened surprisingly more during the day than the night.”
10. Is that a vending machine?
“Favorite Ranger School story: two dudes pulling security in a patrol base. B
een going for days on end with no more than two hours of sleep a night. One of them stands up out of nowhere, starts walking into the woods. The one still on the ground asks the dude walking off where he’s going. The guy points out into the woods and says, “Vending machine. Gonna get some Doritos.”
His buddy on the ground thinks for a minute and replies, “Get me a Snickers, man, I’ll cover you!”
Both of them were so loopy that the one guy was seeing a vending machine out in the middle of the woods, and the other guy didn’t even question the logic of the scenario, he immediately jumped to what he wanted out of the vending machine.”
11. Overworked.
“Used to overwork myself to the point of hallucinations fairly regularly.
Most were auditory; I’d hear someone talking nearby (usually saying my name or just a couple of muffled syllables), bits of songs; like having an ear worm except louder, lol. A distant ringing telephone was also common. Less commonly I’d hear something loudly falling somewhere.
Visually, I’d mostly see flashes of color or blackness in the periphery of my vision. Like when someone walks by and you just barely see them out of the corner of your eye. Tall figures in the room (such as a coat on a rack) would also briefly appear to be a person standing there.
Those were probably the most startling to me.”
12. My bad…
“When I had a new baby, I was in target with the baby and got a call from an officer.
Turns out I had left every single door of my car open. He thought it was a break in.
It was not… just me sleep deprived!!”
13. Scary stuff.
“It’s honestly scary, like one time I was on the verge of falling asleep and I thought I felt somebody run their finger across my cheek.
When i snapped upright into a sitting position, nobody was there. I live alone btw. I’m sure I hallucinated it but that shit is scary regardless.”
14. Didn’t really happen…
“I used to have episodes of insomnia as a teenager. Once, while walking home from school, I saw a car driving in my direction. It suddenly veered onto the sidewalk, continued toward me, and swerved back onto the road moments before hitting me.
I thought it was real, but I was so out of it from exhaustion that I didn’t even flinch. I realized a few days later that the curb of the sidewalk was too high for a car to have possibly driven over.”
15. Hearing things…
“They were auditory, but I heard sirens in the distance and just kind of weird sounds, not really voices or anything distinguishable.”
Ugh…for me personally, being extremely overtired makes me the most miserable person on the planet.
How about you?
Have you ever been so tired that you actually hallucinated?
This seems like common sense to me – if you buy into the idea of evolution and selecting offspring based on what traits best help them survive to procreate themselves, then of course the eggs of biological females have the ability to choose “better” sperm, right?
Well, now there’s a study and evidence and stuff to back up what seems like the obvious.
New research out of Stockholm University found that eggs emit different chemical signals that attract the sort of sperm they want to partner with to create a human.
Said John Fitzpatrick, one of the professors involved in the study…
“Human eggs release chemicals called chemoattractants that attract sperm to unfertilized eggs.
We wanted to know if eggs use these chemical signals to pick which sperm they attract.”
Non-human animals have been observed picking up on an array of visual, acoustic, and chemical signals that help them choose the best mate, but this is the first study that’s really shown that our bodies can continue to accept or reject those advances after sex is over.
Scientists haven’t yet learned how the process actually works, only that it does.
The researchers examined how sperm responds to follicular fluid, which surrounds eggs and contains chemoattractants for sperm. The samples were obtained from couples undergoing IVF, and sperm was tested against follicular fluid from both partners and non-partners to see how it would respond.
“Follicular fluid from one female was better at attracting sperm from one male, while follicular fluid from another female was better at attracting sperm from a different male.
This shows that interactions between human eggs and sperm depend on the specific identity of the women and men involved.”
Basically, eggs from a female do not always attract their partner’s sperm, and it has little or nothing to do with the sperm being capable of fertilizing an egg.
“Research on the way eggs and sperm interact will advance fertility treatments and may eventually help us understand some of the currently ‘unexplained’ causes of infertility in couples,” said Professor Daniel Brison, the scientific director of the Department of Reproductive Medicine at Saint Marys’ Hospital.
This is all brand new information, so expect more research to come. If it holds up, this could change the way doctors approach infertility in couples, and hopefully lead to more people getting those babies they’re dying to hold.
As a woman, it is kind of cool to realize that perhaps our eggs have had some say in it all along – and those babies that came so easily are just really happy genetic matches, maybe.
Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the most awful illnesses that families go through – you’re often forced to mourn the loss of your loved one while they’re still alive, and to steel yourself to go into a room with a parent, aunt, grandparent, who no longer knows you from Adam or Eve.
The good news is that the disease has a decent amount of funding and research, and this most recent study things they may have a lead on what makes people more susceptible.
The research concludes that persistent worrying about the future, or an inability to let go of past regrets, can have a detrimental effect on cognition of all types later in life – including an increased risk for dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists largely accept the idea that our thoughts can and do influence our physical health, even though there’s little understanding as to how and why. Still, the Cognitive Debt hypothesis, which states that certain negative thoughts and mental states somehow contribute to the risk of cognitive decline and dementia, exists for a reason.
Researchers conducting this most recent study spent two years analyzing the mental states of 360 people over the age of 55, mostly following their tendency to fall into repetitive negative thinking (RNT). They were also screened for depression and anxiety.
High levels of RNT were strongly associated with cognitive decline in a wide range of areas, including episodic memory and global cognition, which are two big predictors of a person’s likelihood to develop Alzheimer’s.
In the patients who consented to brain scans, a harmful buildup of protein plaques in the brain was also associated with high levels of RNT – more specifically, a protein called tau was increasing in the entorhinal cortex, which also is an early indicator of dementia.
Another protein, amyloid-beta, was found to present in higher amounts in the brains of people who tended to have negative thought patterns; it’s strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, especially.
Author Natalie Marchant clarified their findings in a statement.
“Chronic negative thinking patterns over a long period of time could increase the risk of dementia.
We do not think the evidence suggests that short-term setbacks would increase one’s risk of dementia.”
There’s no concrete evidence as to how repetitive negative thought patterns can damage cognition so thoroughly, though they posit that high stress levels could be to blame. High blood pressure and the repetitive release of hormones like cortisol have been shown previously to stimulate creation of the harmful proteins.
Basically, maybe your hippie yoga friends are really onto something – some meditation and yoga might be just what the doctor ordered.
Therapy is also awesome, I’ve heard, or just a stiff drink now and then.
Pick your poison, as they say. But it looks like it’s in your best interest to choose one that helps you chill the eff out.
There’s a fairly common saying: history is written by the victors.
Well, as a historian in another life, I can tell you that not only is it written by the victors, but it’s also almost always written by the rich and the European (in the case of Western history) – the traditionally educated, basically. The people who were allowed to read and wrte.
This means that, the farther back you go, the harder you have to dig to find the stories about people of color, women, indigenous people, enslaved people, et al who, in another world, would have dominated the history books.
Even so, there are surely hundreds, thousands of stunning stories that have probably been lost forever.
One story that I’m so glad has survived belongs to one Benjamin Banneker, a highly accomplished mathematician, astronomer, and scholar who was also Black at a time in America when it was quite dangerous to be born that way.
Washington D.C. was styled after famous European locales first by architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant, then completely by Andrew Elliot after L’Enfant was fired in 1792. Sometime after, a Black man stepped up and forced even the likes of Thomas Jefferson to recognize that he had something to say.
According to oral histories that are much-debated, both sides of the Banneker family suffered under enslavement in the pre-United States. Most believe that Benjamin’s maternal grandmother, a woman named Molly Welsh, was (possibly falsely) convicted of theft in England and banished to the servitude in the fledgling colonies. She landed in Maryland, earned her freedom, rented land in Baltimore County, and purchased two slaves to farm it.
Several years later, after she’d established herself in the farming business, she freed both men – one of whom was said to have been abducted from a royal African family earlier in his life. His name was either Bannake or Bankka, and he and Welsh married despite the laws that forbade it. Their daughter Mary and her husband (also a freed slave baptized as Robert) adopted the surname Banneker and purchased a 100-acre farm.
Benjamin was their son, and grew up as one of only 200 free African-American people in Baltimore County. He attended a one-room, mixed-race Quaker schoolhouse and, with his doting grandmother Molly’s help, learned to read. At an early age he began to excel in mathematics and mechanics, spending time crafting experiments on his own.
In his mid-twenties he was forced by his father’s death to focus on the family farm, but even there, he put his brain to work. Their farm employed crop rotation and irrigation techniques that didn’t widely catch on in the States for many decades, and managed to grow a profitable tobacco crop that he swapped out for wheat when American soldiers needed food during the revolution.
He still found time to read and continue his education, becoming well-versed in topics that ranged the science and humanities, a man regarded as one always soaking in knowledge from watching those around him.
This 1979 journal entry is a sample of those thoughts:
“Standing at my door I heard the discharge of a gun, and in four or five seconds of time, after the discharge, the small shot came rattling about me, one or two of which struck the house; which plainly demonstrates that the velocity of sound is greater than that of a cannon bullet.”
He was a capable astronomer, but math was where he really shined – and, according to a 1912 article, what he was known for in the region. Benjamin traded problems with other mathematicians, near and far, and maintained a constant correspondence.
In 1772, a Quaker family, the Ellicotts, bought the land next door and built gristmill facilities. Fascination with the mechanisms led Banneker to visit often, and the Quaker tradition of believing in racial equality led to Benjamin and George Ellicott becoming friends.
Ellicott was also a student of astronomy, and he and Banneker shared resources, tools, and deep conversations on the topic for years. Banneker predicted a near-solar eclipse in 1789 and began writing technical treatises and building atlases of his own.
In 1789 he was thrust onto the national stage when George Elicotts cousin, Major Andrew Ellicott, needed help with a new job – surveying land along the Potomac River that would become the nation’s new capital.
L’Enfant, as previously mentioned, planned and laid out the city, but he took those plans with him after he was fired over a lack of progress in 1792.
At least, that’s what some believe. Others believe that he continued to work with both Banneker and the Ellicotts as they took over the project – which was unnecessary if you also believe Banneker had the city’s layout completely committed to memory.
The “Georgetown Weekly Ledger” noted Banneker’s achievements and contributions, pointing out that as “an Ethiopian whose abilities as a surveyor, and an astronomer, clearly prove that Mr. Jefferson’s concluding that race of men were void of mental endowments, was without foundation.”
In a 1791 letter, Banneker challenged Jefferson’s beliefs directly, after he had completed a table of the position of the celestial bodies for publication.
“Sir, I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every individual … might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof, neither could you rest satisfied [short of] their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.
Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race … and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the supreme ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not under the state of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity to which many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty, with which you are favored, and which, I hope you will willingly allow, you have received from the immediate hand of that being … [and] that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of heaven.”
Jefferson responded, though probably not exactly as Banneker would have hoped:
“SIR, I THANK you, sincerely, for your letter of the 19th instant, and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men ; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.
I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condozett, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedient Humble Servant,
THOMAS JEFFERSON.”
Banneker never shied away from defending the others in his race from the assumptions and cruelty that resulted from those assumptions in America.
He appears to have been the pioneer in the movement in this part of the world, toward the improvement of his race; at a period of our history when the negro occupied almost the lowest possible grade in the scale of human beings, Banneker had struck out for himself a course, hitherto untravelled by men of his class, and had already earned a respectable position amongst men of science.
Banneker himself surely suffered discriminated in his life, having his great achievements dismissed and belittled by people who couldn’t probably have understood them but still considered themselves superior because of the color of their skin.
All records indicate, however, that Banneker never let them get him down.
“His equilibrium was seldom disturbed by the petty jealousies and inequalities of temper of the ignorant people,”A Sketch of the Life of Benjamin Banneker notes, “with whom his situation obliged him frequently to come in contact.”
Benjamin Ellicott, who knew him personally, remembered him similarly in a letter:
Although his mode of life was regular and extremely retired, living alone, having never married,–cooking his own victuals and washing his own clothes, and scarcely ever being absent from home, yet there was nothing misanthropic in his character … [He was known as] kind, generous, hospitable, humane, dignified and pleasant, abounding in information on all the various subjects and incidents of the day; very modest and unassuming, and delighting in society at his own home.
If he could visit one place named for him today, though, he might choose Maryland’s Banneker Planetarium, where he could once again muse about those celestial bodies hanging in the heavens.
The next time you and your family visit D.C., check out one or more of these places that celebrate a man without whom the city under your feet might not have existed in its intended form at all.
Nursing is a thankless profession that is mostly filled by people who truly feel called to the job – why else, honestly, would you deal with the public day in and day out – and not only that, but deal with things that come out of the public day in and day out?
As with everyone who has the pleasure of interacting with “regular folk” as part of their job, there are some conversations you’ll just never forget.
Here are 16 times nurses stopped and thought “omg I can’t believe I have to explain this to an adult person.”
16. She could not have been serious.
Got a phonecall in the ER from a diabetic who said her sugar was reading “high” (that typically means over 400 or 500) and I told her she should come to the ER asap, and she asked “Should I drink some sweet tea until then?”
NO
15. That’s one of those moments you have no idea what to say.
Oh man, I had a lady set up an online appointment for vaccines and she signed up for literal every vaccine available online. Yellow fever, polio, Hep A/B, Japanese encephalitis, rabies, EVERYTHING.
I saw those standard travel vaccines (yellow fever, rabies) and when the lady came in, I asked where she was traveling. I wanted to make sure she would get all her vaccines in time and that her doctor was sending in prescriptions for malaria/polio prophylaxis if needed.
She responded with “I’m not traveling anywhere, I just wanted to get updated on everything before I lose my Medicaid”.
And then refused to get her flu shot because “that makes you sick”.
14. Those poor ladies.
Painkilling suppositories come in individual foil packets.
After my c-section, the nurse handed me one and said “Don’t forget to take the foil off.” I looked at her and went “… nooooooooo! Somebody did that?”.
She gave me this really tired look and nodded.
Ouch.
13. Laughing at her wondering specifically about her neck.
Was giving a grown patient IV Benadryl for a rash and itching on the upper body.
The IV was in the right arm so I started to give the medication into the right arm. The patient panicked when I said I was done. “What do you mean you’re done? You only put it in my right arm my left is itching too!”
I calmly explained that putting medication in the IV sends it to the whole body.
She exclaimed “you mean it even goes to my neck?” I said yes and she said wow.
12. These are the people who should definitely be wearing condoms.
I’m not a nurse but i was in the Navy and i had to explain to a guy that having sex in hot tubs does not prevent std’s. also i once had to explain to a group of sailors that sharing a pocket pussy is why they all had the same std.
11. You just can’t make some things compute.
Spent WAY too long having to explain to a celiac patient that white bread was still made out of wheat and that’s why she was still sick. Nutritionist had already been over it several times and then called me in to try to convince her.
10. It’s either starve or die, you choose.
I used to work on a cardiology unit and we often would get patients that had surgery either later in the day or be next day.
I was a nurse assistant and would constantly be arguing with patients because they think we are evil for not letting them eat. “I HAVEN’T EATEN IN 15 HOURS”
I’m like I’m sorry dude but either you don’t eat or this process will begin again because these doctors don’t want to possibly kill you.
9. Now he/she has seen too much.
Not a nurse but my wife is about to get her tubes tied.
She had to sign a document stating that she would be rendered infertile after the procedure.
We laughed and the doc straight said “I used to think it was funny too.”
8. I don’t even know how to handle this information.
Did labor and delivery for awhile. We typically inserted catheters after the epidural. A lot of women would ask how they could push the baby out if something was in that hole…had to explain to many ADULT women the urethra and vagina are, in fact, not the same hole.
Also had a couple where the husband fucked the wife’s stoma and it got a gnarly infection. Explaining that you should not ever put your dick directly into someone’s stoma was a hoowee of a conversation
7. Maybe he has a thing for the shock.
Had to explain to a patient, and his family, multiple times that although he does have a defibrillator now he still needs to take his heart medicine …. a real headache of a conversation
6. I blame his stupid family, really.
I’m a neuro nurse. I once had a patient who was going into surgery the next morning, meaning they couldn’t have anything to eat or drink after midnight.
Well at 4am I go in there to check on him and he’s drinking a cup of milk and eating cookies that his family had brought him. I asked him why he was eating because he had surgery in a few short hours and his reply was that he has a bowel movement every morning so he figured we would be okay to eat because it would be out of his system before surgery.
That’s not how this works grandpa!!! ugh surgery canceled.
5. Oh my goodness and these people were procreating.
Working at ob/gyn clinic.
Had to explain to a concerned husband that his pregnant wife will not strangle the fetus if she eats spaghetti.
That’s a completely different system of organs.
4. There’s something that’s hard to believe.
Not a nurse, but I work in healthcare.
I had to listen to a dialysis patient explain to me very seriously that he had gained 6 kilos of water weight in 2 days because he had “sat in the tub for too long” and had magically absorbed over 13 lbs of fluid.
That was not a fun conversation.
3. I mean. He/she tried.
Oh man, not a nurse but I work in pharmacy.
Had a guy come who wanted malaria tablets but wasn’t sure what area of the country he would be traveling in.
Rural he would need them but the cities he wouldn’t.
He said “what’s the worst that could happen?”
“You could get malaria.”
“Yeah, but how bad can that be?”
“Dead. The worst it can be is death.”
He left the shop anyway.
2. Come on, that had to be a prank.
I, a male nurse, had to explain to a 25 year old female what her period was. She came to the ED and was concerned she had cramping and vaginal bleeding monthly.
Thought for sure I was being pranked by co-workers.
Nope.
1. Did she think someone was going to come and do it for her?
Got a call from a discharged patient.
“So I’m wearing these depends…”
“…okay.”
“Do I need to change them everyday?”
“Uhh yeah… or when they’re soiled.”
“Okay and should I clean myself up after that?”
“Yes. Yes, please.”
We thought we were being punked.
I’m dying, y’all, but not a bit surprised.
If you’re a nurse (or work in a similar profession) please share your own stories!
It’s very unpleasant to think about death, extinction, or the world coming to an end, but I will say that it definitely makes for some good conversation.
Will it be a nuclear war? A plague? An asteroid that hits Earth and wipes us all out?
“I have a feeling we’re eventually headed towards nuclear fallout or chemical destruction.
I believe it is inevitably China Vs the United States (and allies like Australia).
I also believe Putin is sitting back with the popcorn at the moment.”
2. Sickness spreads…
“I think it will be a pandemic, much like we are having now, only more lethal.
I’ve heard several people say that COVID isn’t the big one, but it’s going to expose how unprepared the world is for the big one.”
3. Poetic justice.
“Because the majority of the population choose to believe oil CEOs with everything to lose instead of scientists with no reason to lie.
Pretty fitting way to go honestly, I hope the climate change deniers keep on denying it up til the very end, that’d be poetic justice for humanity.”
4. Inching closer to it.
“Depletion of resources, destruction of the environment, and the wars that will result from those things.
I don’t think humanity will ever get to a sci-fi future where we’re exploring the stars and colonizing other planets. The resources on this planet are very finite and they will not last thousands of years at the rate we’re using them. Even 10,000 years is less than a blink of an eye on a cosmic scale.
I think the next 100, maybe 200 years are going to be the peak for our civilization. As the critical resources necessary for technological advancements dry up and environmental destruction creates refugees/migration/starvation on a global scale, we’ll basically destroy ourselves in the resulting wars.
We might not actually go extinct until many millennia after that, but civilization as we know it will be over.”
5. All kinds of calamities.
“Absolutely we will go extinct.
Rising temperatures will eventually push many places around the earth to be uninhabitable. Combine that with the decreased ability to grow grains at scale needed to sustain the over-bloated human population, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Eventually large wars will break out over the very scarce resources that the earth is able to provide.
It’s called loss of habitat due to resource exhaustion. Many species experience it and it leads to their extinction, and humans are just another species.”
6. Poisoning ourselves.
“Pollution.
Especially the hormone disruptive ones. They won’t kill us instantly, but each generation will be more affected by them than the last, making it harder and harder to reproduce.
Might not happen this century or even the next few centuries, as there’s still plenty of people to reproduce, even at a lower rate. But it’s already affecting people , and the problem will worsen generation by generation.”
7. A simple act.
“Through some act of stupidity in all honesty.
With all the dangerous diseases and viruses various governments all over the world are experimenting with at any given moment, all it takes is one screw up to have some catastrophic results
And the current pandemic has shown that the general population is either unable or unwilling to respond to a disease or virus of significance.”
8. The crazies.
“Most likely nuclear war or some other form of military action.
Mutual assured destruction only applies to people who are afraid to die.
Once the crazies figure out how to build something extremely destructive, they will set of a chain of events that can’t be undone.”
9. Stupidity.
“Our own stupidity (in America anyway).
Too many think covid-19 is a hoax by (all?) The government(s) to remove our freedoms….the whole world is going through this, idiots, not just one country.
America’s President didn’t get with all the leaders of the world and convince them to shut down absolutely everything worldwide just to take American freedoms.
But yes, some of our rights are being trodden on, I’m not saying its not happening, but it’s a side effect, not the cause.”
10. Hell hole.
“Overpopulation, honestly.
The insane amount of people will outnumber the amount of food the earth can produce and it will become a hell hole.”
11. Keep an eye on it.
“Let’s watch out for South Korea.
They made a study and it says Korean people will be extinct in 300 years because newer generations ditch marriage and having a family.”
12. Scary scenarios.
“We will either kill ourselves in war or burn out the Earth’s resources and cause such heavy global warming and pollution that life at our level cannot physically survive anymore.
Slowly, people will be unable to successfully raise children until we all filter out.”
13. Could happen…
“Unpopular opinion: I don’t think it‘s gonna be our fault.
More something like a comet hitting us, the sun exploding or something like that.”
14. Uh oh…
“Genetic manipulation will become popular in the future and we accidentally or purposefully create a new species that is better than humans.
I expect it will be a human that makes the modification to themselves to create the new species.”
15. The end of days.
“It will probably not be war because we are to smart for that so maybe something from space like a huge meteor or the sun turning into a red giant if we are still on this planet in the next billions of years.”
Well, that was certainly uplifting!
How about you?
In the comments, tell us how you think human beings will become extinct.
It’s kind of scary, but you’ve probably considered it at one point or another.
How will human beings become extinct?
What will be the final catalyst that wipes us off the planet for good?
Are you ready to do a little thinking about our existence?
Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say about it.
1. Oh, boy…
“A highly contagious virus designed to make its host infertile without presenting any other symptoms escapes from a lab and infects everyone.”
2. A hot take.
“As a long term optimist, my favorite is evolution.
As we expand out into space through the eons eventually we diverge and evolve into new species, and what we consider human is extinct.
You can also view AI as a version of evolution and count that as well, but I personally think we can coexist with an AI we create.”
3. WAR.
“It’s got to be war.
We literally have a weapon that can wipe out an entire country, now multiply the amount of that weapon by thousands.
One day countries and leaders will face a breaking point through clashing ideologies and before we even knew it, we already fucked ourselves over.”
4. Irreparable damage.
“By irreparably damaging our biosphere.
Takes a biosphere to evolve and sustain a complex living organism like us, destroy that and we probably won’t last long.”
5. That’s not pleasant.
“Slow and painful.
Slowly losing clean water until we’re a desert planet and we die.”
6. That’s not good.
“I’d say we’ll either kill each other for resources due to overpopulation or (which by now I think is more likely) a pandemic worse than the coronavirus will collapse health and economic systems throughout the world which will lead to supply shortages then maybe to war.”
7. Something to think about…
“Humans will biologically die out. I think at we could maybe reach a point where sentimental value of being a human is slowly gone in favour of something else, like being a machine, uploading consciousness.
We may be our real selves but digital, or just a program with personality effectively killing the host and stealing their memory, while retaining their information, soulless.
Either way, it won’t be human.”
8. Human error.
“I think we will make a mistake. Something like, we send the majority of the population to another planet, but they crash. Or, we couldn’t get to another planet in time.
Humans make mistakes. It’s about time we make a big one.”
9. Or maybe a machine?
“It could even be machine error. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War (during Reagan’s era), the USSR detected multiple incoming ICBM missiles allegedly launched by the US.
Turns out the system mistook a particular alignment of sunlight for nukes. Had it not been for Stanislav Petrov, a USSR officer who decided against retaliation despite all evidence pointing towards an attack, we would have had full blown nuclear war and humanity may very well be extinct today.”
10. This is scary.
“Honestly, a massive asteroid. (I’m talking miles in diameter).
I mean nuclear war is devastating but just think about the colossal amount of energy released during such an impact event (billions of nukes).
The worst part? There’s pretty much nothing we can do about it with our current technology.”
11. Our fault.
“We’ll probably damage the environment to a point where we can no longer live in it.
In the last 100 years we’ve been burning through Earth’s resources like we have another planet to move to.”
12. Two theories.
“Two likely options:
Climate collapse.
Might not be the direct cause of human extinction, but it would certainly prompt a lot of candidates for human extinction.
Nations going to war with each other as their land goes underwater or becomes otherwise uninhabitable, wars over the last remaining resources, increased temperatures across the globe result in more heatstroke deaths and tropical diseases spreading across the globe.
In that scenario, either nuclear war or uncontrolled disease kills us all.
Massive collapse of technology.
A coronal mass ejection cripples all technology on Earth- life support systems, planes, power plants, anything more complex than a radio is rendered unusable. Within hours, millions are dead. As supply chains collapse across the globe, famine becomes a part of life for many.
With today’s level of dependence on technology, it would knock us back to being an agrarian species. And the more technologically advanced we get, the worse a coronal mass ejection becomes.
Imagine a time when most humans have complex cybernetics- a coronal mass ejection would literally kill billions as their body’s electronic components failed. It would deal us a blow we could never recover from.”
13. As simple as that.
“Stupidity.
Or I should say the rapidly increasing gulf between common and academic knowledge.
Science is moving faster than the average person’s intellect because we have coddled being fucking morons for decades now.
Look at how Covid has been handled in the scientific vs. common communities and imagine that level of dissonance in an even greater threat.”
14. I’m sorry I’ll miss this.
“An asteroid composed of dinosaurs will crash into the Earth and they’ll eat us all.”
People sure are creative, aren’t they?
Okay, now we want to hear from you!
If you had to guess, how do you think human beings will become extinct?
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