I’m a big fan of horror movies and quite a few of my favorite films happen to be depressing, hard-hitting dramas the average person might not choose to watch.
But truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction and real life can often be much more disturbing than anything we might see on our screens or read in books.
For instance, have you ever heard of the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack? During World War II, the Japanese bombed the Chinese with fleas infected with the bubonic plague.
The attack is just one of the many war crimes the Japanese committed against the Chinese, and that’s including the atrocities, among them human experimentation, committed at Unit 731.
If you have the stomach for it—and I have rarely been more serious in my life—the film Men Behind the Sun dramatizes many of these crimes.
It turns out there’s no shortage of disturbing facts out there.
Let’s face it, humans are messed up.
We heard quite a few of them after Redditor Ddeddffddvvf asked the online community:
“What was a fact you regret knowing?”
“From personal experience…”
“From personal experience… just how fast pigs… process… a corpse.”
“Had an old goat die in the barn and didn’t find her for a couple of hours. At the time we had two pigs that were a few months old. Didn’t realize just how much we had messed up by letting them be in with the goats that day.”
“Come evening, we go to close up and do the evening chores, and find half of a goat spilled all over the floor with our pigs rooting around the guts. And that’s the story of how fifteen-year-old me learned to respect pigs.” ~ CalamityJay
“More people jumped…”
“More people jumped from the burning World Trade Center on 9/11 than you think. Do yourself a favor and don’t Google it.” ~ GoreyFeldman
To which this person replied:
“Seriously. I was on a 9/11 kick recently, if you want to call it that, and I came across a documentary on YouTube of footage stitched together from the first plane hitting to the final building collapsing, lasting about 1 hour and 40 minutes.”
“No interviews, just cellphone footage, old home cameras, and some news footage sprinkled in. There’s a section in the documentary of people beginning to jump one after another. It continues on for the rest of the documentary and it’s very disheartening.” ~ TheChubbyBuns
“The Challenger space shuttle…”
“The Challenger space shuttle astronauts were most likely alive and awake on the way down.” ~ thezoidberg
“An octopus penis…”
“An octopus penis is actually one of their tentacles. So if you would go and pet an octopus at Sea World or some other place you could be groping their penis.” ~ TillyOTilly
“Every year thousands of children…”
“Every year thousands of children write to Santa Clause. One of the most requested things children ask for on their Christmas lists is a dad.” ~ jadedgenie
“There was an experiment…”
“There was an experiment once where, every hour, a rat had to choose between getting fed or having the pleasure nerve of its brain stimulated. And the rat being tested starved every time. It’s pretty interesting but also kind of sad.”
“Thanks, Freeman’s Mind.” ~ Superflamegameplays
To which this person replied:
“Yes, but for those experiments, they keep the rats isolated in cages with nothing else to do. So of course they choose that option all the time.” ~ hammermuffin
“Male ducks…”
“Male ducks gang-rape female ducks.” ~ PopcornVT
To which this person replied:
“Male and female ducks are also in an evolutionary arms race to develop more and more convoluted genitals to prevent/enable the rape. I am not kidding.”
“Female ducks develop more and more convoluted vagina shapes to make it more difficult, and males respond by developing ever longer explosive spiraling corkscrew dicks.
“The females that can control when they mate (only relaxing their vaginal shape when it’s consensual) are more successful and the males who are better at raping are more successful (in the sense of passing on their genes/having more living offspring), so they just keep evolving in that direction.” ~ holysh*treddit
“Your child is more likely…”
“Your child is more likely to be abused by someone you know than a stranger. You literally have to protect children more from their own family and friends than random criminals.” ~ CerseiLemon
“The fact that at literally any second…”
“The fact that at literally any second you could lose someone you love. Everyone “knows” this but once it’s happened a few times you’re acutely aware of it. A car wreck, a miscarriage, a heart attack, stroke.” ~ SaltyTapeworm
“This is dark, but…”
“This is dark, but in the U.S., police are not legally obligated to protect you.”
“There was a case where a police department refused to enforce a restraining order or act after a father kidnapped his three daughters because they assumed he would bring them back to his wife eventually.”
“He ended up killing them and driving their bodies to the police station, where he was then shot and killed. The police department was sued for not acting, but was found not guilty.” ~ ecoseeker
“That there are…”
“That there are anywhere between 25-50 active serial killers in the United States, according to the FBI.” ~ nmacro
“So when they land on your sandwich…”
“Flies don’t have teeth. So, when they land on your sandwich and want to eat some, they barf up the contents of their stomach (often containing another animal’s s***) so the digestive enzymes can get on the food and then they eat.” ~ Tmbgkc
We apologize in advance if any of these truly scared the hell out of you. It’s a big, beautiful world out there, but we’d be lying if we told you it’s not without its horrors.
While we’re at it, we’ll leave you with this—did you know that a brain aneurysm can happen at any time?
Aneurysms are unpredictable and may not show any symptoms until they rupture.
That’s a fact that has kept me up at night sometimes. And if you didn’t know about it, then you certainly know now.
Be afraid… be very afraid.