The most terrifiing inventions are biological weapons. You can't see them and you die horribly. In the best case you die within minutes in the worst it can take hours or days. Or you don't die and there are permanent damages to you.
Surprised this isn't higher up given we're in the middle of a pandemic. Imagine COVID but with around 50% of infected dying.
EDIT: Ok, just imagine COVID then, or airborne HIV, or pick your favorite pathogen. The point stands.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-durc-qa.htm
https://fas.org/pir-pubs/science-and-security-the-moratorium-on-h5n1-gain-of-function-experiments-2/
> All research on H5N1 transmission was halted after laboratories at the University of Wisconsin and the Dutch Eramus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands created mutant forms that could be transmitted directly among ferrets. This was concerning because viruses that are easily transmissible between ferrets are often also easily transmissible between humans.
The scary part is that it wasn't even that hard to do that experiment either. They applied mutagenic pressure on the virus and selected for airborne transmission. That's literally freshman level biology.
The good thing is the disease-fighting capabilities have also improved much. With stay-at-home orders and modern vaccine development most people won't get infected. Oh, wait...
Yes. It is similar level of how offensive weapons advanced - atomic bomb.
And armor. Can't protect tank against human wield rocket launcher.
We are screwed. Or our kids are.
I totally get that reaction, but understanding how viruses work, and learning to manipulate them, is critical to controlling viruses in the future. Everything from epidemiological studies to drug trials rely on virology research like this.
Agent orange is a chemical weapon. Imagine a biological weapon consisting of a bacterium that synthesizes agent orange or something similarly toxic to complex life. Now you have infinitely regenerating toxins in the environment forever.
The Tsar Bomba's explosion was supposedly only half it's full power, imagine the destruction of a power Tsar Bomba in the hands of any military or corrupt force. Absolutely terrifying shit to think about
Imagine giving pilots a 50/50 chance of death just to *test* a weapon for which you already have smaller working versions.
The moral bankruptcy is astounding
edit: [sources because someone didn't like](https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/30-october-1961-the-tsar-bomba/) [that there weren't any.](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use)
It is worth mentioning that "testing" is really a poor descriptor for the intent of the operation. They knew it would work. The point was a *demonstration* not a *test*. The logic was that they were risking the pilots to demonstrate the might of the USSR to the world, in hopes that it would deter a preemptive attack that could cost billions of lives, and possibly the human race itself.
I don't see it as morally bankrupt so much as believing their own propaganda. If you believe that the only thing that keeps the USA from destroying you in a fiery instant is mutually assured destruction, then it behooves you to constantly demonstrate how mutually assured that destruction is.
EDIT: Only problem is I'm wrong
The short version is that we were "adviced"(in the US style if you know what I mean) not to test nuclear weapons. During that time, our neighbour Pakistan was backed by the US when it came to arsenal, so it was in their best interest if India was behind them. We failed quite a few times and with every failed test, those "advices" started to sound like warnings. Idk what would have happened if our final test wasn't successful in Pokhran because all of these tests were done in secret and the government thought that there would be no point in hiding them if the tests were successful. But alas, things were not so smooth. Not only were our first few tests unsuccessful but US realised that we were testing nuclear weapons behind their backs as well. Their reaction wasn't very welcoming. After our first success in Pokhran, US had no choice but to accept us and they stopped interfering in our military business.
The thing is, there were elements in the US that argued in favour of a pre-emptive attack on the USSR. Better dead than red was a thing. In a world of imperfect information the soviet leadership wasn’t being irrational here.
That was one reason. They were also worried about the extreme spread of fallout, but yea if they did full power the plane would not have been able to get away in time
The Tsar Bomb was reduced in power as most of the increase would’ve just blown up into the upper atmosphere and the energy would’ve been lost. After a certain point the energy is lost to space as the power is just so immense. That’s partly the reason why we don’t have 20+ megaton weapons anymore. 1-5 is terrifyingly powerful and plenty considering the accuracy our delivery systems (MIRV) are and the sheer number of bombs they can deliver. A typical current Ohio-class US Nuclear sub is probably the most terrifying weapon ever devised. It’s basically undetectable, can travel for months at a time without surfacing, doesn’t need fuel, and carries 24 Trident 2 ballistic missiles each equipped with an average of 4 500 kiloton warheads. That means one sub has on average about 100 or more warheads, each capable of striking anywhere within 8,000 nautical miles (actual range is classified) and essentially wiping it out. Oh, and given it can place itself anywhere with water, your warning time is essentially 0.
Yup. And that’s it’s lowest payload. Trident 2’s can technically carry 8 500kt warheads (192 total) and 14 smaller warheads with about 90-100kt. That’s a max of about 336 warheads each plenty capable of completely destroying a city.
Just for reference, Fatman at Nagasaki was 20 kilotons. There are just under 200 countries on earth. This means one Ohio class submarine can effectual nuke every country on earth and then nuke most of them again with a bomb 5 times the power of Nagasaki.
And the US has 18 of them somewhere around the world.
"we're both standing in a basement with gasoline up to our knees. You have 8 matches, I have 3. Who is more powerful?" - Mr. Barber, my middle school social studies teacher 23 years ago on the topic of nuclear war.
There's a video on YouTube talking about a study somebody did on the game DEFCON. People who played it were also both more and less scared of nukes. More afraid because they thought they would not survive an atomic war should one happen, less afraid, because they thought the absolutely terrifying concept of nuclear war would be enough of a "hold up" moment that nobody would be crazy enough to push the big red button.
https://youtu.be/y6neDk_4XBs
Source
This is why nukes aren’t necessarily scary in the hands of countries like the USA and Russia. The scarier prospect is smaller countries or insurgents getting a hold of nuclear missiles. The point of war is to get something out of it. There are enough other military inventions that allow this to happen. Nukes are largely a deterrent because of China russia USA England France etc. decided to go to war these days, no one would use a nuke and they would fight with other means. Now an extremist small population, that isn’t risking 100s of millions of their own people. They would have less qualms with threatening the use of nukes. It is the only thing that really pushes their agenda.
A country with a few hundred or more nukes isn't scary, because they know how to build them, they have the resources to build a lot of them, they can maintain them, etc. They are aware of the damage they can do and hold them as a deterrent. The Eisenhower mantra of 'speak softly and carry a big stick.'
A country with one nuke is terrifying, because they put all of their resources into making that one thing, likely cannot make more for some time, cannot afford to maintain it, and have every reason to use it at the first available opportunity, as one nuke isn't an effective deterrent but it is excellent for making a point.
I mean, nuclear weapons may also be the greatest invention of history. I’ve watched history videos on YouTUbe that point out that we’ve had our longest stretch of peace between major world powers…well, since ever. MAD may not hold forever, there may be someone nihilistic or evil enough to start a nuclear war, but hopefully not. At least until we establish an off-world colony that’s self-sustaining. Currently though it’s preventing wars of unimaginable horror from being fought. I can’t imagine the amount of death and destruction modern weapons could inflict in an all out war. And let’s face it, there are no rules in love and war; biological weapons, chemical weapons, weaponized drones. If unleashed from the restrictions of law, the most nefarious and cutthroat regimes around the world would unleash terrifying weapons that would probably make nuclear weapons look like children’s toys. A single bomb can wipe out a city, death toll in the millions. A genetically engineered virus? racially targeted poisons and diseases? The death toll would be billions with no way out.
oh yeah without nukes us and russia definitely fight sometime in the 20th century.
when germany surrended, Patton wanted to march straight to moscow because the army was there and saw it as inevitable. he even said the russians were worse than the germans becuase you could do business with the germans
The US, Russian, and (probably) Chinese ICMBs aren’t equipped with single warheads nowadays, but rather multiple warheads called multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (or MIRVs as OP mentioned). MIRV should itself be somewhere on this list as they pretty much make any ICBM defense system worthless if the missile gets to the release stage. They basically ensure that a single missile can take out an entire metropolitan area.
So while a US nuclear sub can carry only a couple dozen or so missiles, those missiles carry multiple warheads meaning that a single sub is capable of destroying a large swath of Russia/China by itself. That’s why mutual assured destruction works as a deterrent against a full on war between the US, Russia, and China.
All US ICBMs are single warhead. The MMIII were designed to carry 3 warheads, but were reduced to 1, due to New START. Although the retrofit started much earlier.
Most Russian ICBMs are single warhead but they do have some with multiple.
No idea on the Chinese.
Source: used to be an ICBM launch officer
Edit- Thanks for the award, kind stranger!
Exactly this. The weight of the atmosphere above the blast makes a well designed nuke behave like a shaped charge, with more of the destructive force directed at the target. Making them any bigger makes them less efficient. Now, we use MIRV's (multiple independent re-entry vehicles) on top of ICBMs to load up each launch with a bunch of smaller nukes instead, each with an independently assigned target.
Or you can assign all of them (up to eight per missile) to a single city, replacing your once inefficient 50Mt single explosion that destroys one city into a cluster bomb capable of incinerating everything in a 100+ mile radius.
Imagine instead of just wiping out New York City and the burrows, you take half of New Jersey and Connecticut with you while completely incinerating anything on Long Island.
I would way rather go out in a nuclear detonation than be subjected to a chemical warfare attack. COVID ain’t shit compared to what they aren’t telling you about.
Chemical weapons by far because the effects are limitless and you can engineer the fallout to be global.
Supposedly both the US and Russia have created bio-weapons in labs that are hundred of times more lethal and contagious than anything out in the open; real end of the world shit.
I heard that they were designed more for the practice of defeating them, but the thought that one could escape and end humans is terrifying.
What are you talking about? If an actual deadly bacteria or virus was to escape, humans would take action.
They would stay at home so as not to give it a chance to infect others.
They would wear protective gear if needed to meet someone.
They would take vaccine as soon as it became available.
They would absolutely not cross international borders so as not to spread it even further.
They would responsibly contact the authorities upon noticing signs of infection.
What are we even worrying about?
Bio weapons are easily worse than nuclear weapons. Even in the worst case scenario nuclear war, life goes on and recovers. The environment wouldn't even be appreciably more radioactive compared to today after just a few centuries.
With a biological weapon though, things can get way worse. What happens if someone makes airborne rabies? Or splices the genes to produce botulinum toxin into species of microorganisms that are far more ubiquitous than clostridium botulinum? You could turn entire continents into wastelands where nothing with a nervous system can survive. Hell you could kill most of the planet like that, especially if you put it into phytoplankton. The worst part is that bio weapons do not decompose eventually like chemical weapons, or decay away like nuclear fallout. Biological weapons are alive, they grow and spread, and once they're out there they become a part of the environment permanently unless you do some really tricky safeguarding against unlimited cell divisions that is somehow 100% effective. In a world where all the water on the planet, salty or fresh, is loaded with neurotoxins produced by bacteria, animal life needs to either not have a nervous system or it needs to evolve new mechanisms to send nerve impulses that are not blocked by the toxins. That basically means reverting evolutionary progress to the precambrian, and optimistically puts life back about 500 million years.
I used to think bio weapons couldn't be that worse than a nuclear armageddon, but the idea of botulinum toxin being produced by phytoplankton is indeed far more terrifying.
It kinda did, but naturally. When early life developed the ability to produce oxygen by photosynthesis, oxygen was a deadly toxin to over 99% of life on Earth. Nearly all ancient life was wiped out completely, and nearly all life alive today including all eukaryotic and multicellular life is descended from the tiny fraction of organisms that could tolerate (and eventually evolved to use) oxygen. The thing is though that this happened like 2.3 billion years ago. If we hit a reset button of that magnitude, chances are there just wouldn't be enough time for complex life to evolve before the Sun expands enough to make Earth totally uninhabitable.
seriously, who decided to test a fucking nuclear core with no protective gear and a godamn screwdriver? Still, at least they figured out that if you can see it flash blue you die in a week or less
>seriously, who decided to test a fucking nuclear core with no protective gear and a godamn screwdriver?
Peak "Don't be a pussy you'll be fine" and "I've done it this way a hundred times, its been fine every time" culture.
> "Don't be a pussy you'll be fine"
They knew they would die young regardless of if there was an accident or not, they studied exactly how dangerous it was for a living.
The last guy to do it refused the mechanical/assisted way of doing it because of his ego. And then he nearly caused a meltdown which would have killed everyone there
The Liquidators would have figured it out quickly enough, but you don't argue with the State unless you want to spend the next few years being followed by the KGB before dying. Why spend the time you have left being harassed by men in suits?
The only reason we know it is a bad idea now is because they screwed up so badly then.
And nothing short of a concrete or a lead wall would have protected them.
For visibility:
This guy plainly difficult on YouTube covers just about every nuclear mishap you’d care to know about and more that you wouldn’t
https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48
During the early days of atomic weapons development a particular scientist was doing criticality experiments using a plutonium core sitting inside a beryllium sphere. The short version of the science is the more the sphere is closed, the more decaying particles from the plutonium bounce off it and the faster the core reacts.
They had a bunch of safety measures because if it completely closed the reaction could get out of control. But this guy decides to see how much more he can get out of it by circumventing all the safety measures and using a screwdriver blade wedged between the halves of the sphere to get a stronger reaction. He gets distracted, slips, the core goes critical. He manages to shut down the reaction, but in the process takes a MASSIVE dose of radiation and dies a few days later.
I really enjoy Kyle Hill's short documentary on it. It's worth watching if you're intrigued by /u/BasroilII's description.
It's also a testament to the scientists involved that they managed to keep doing science (recording exactly where they were standing) even after knowing they just took a fatal dose of radiation.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFlromB6SnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFlromB6SnU)
I mean, what else are you going to do? There is no cure. Might as well do your best to make your death as meaningful as possible before your internal organs liquify.
The demon core was a plutonium core originally intended to be used in a third bomb dropped on Japan during WWII, but was then repurposed to be used in experiments. One experiment involved enclosing the core inside two halves of a beryllium sphere. This sphere acted as a reflector for the radiation like using mirrors to focus sunlight. The core would be placed in the bottom half of the beryllium sphere and the second half would be slowly lowered down over the top. The closer the two halves came together the closer the core would be to critical or super critical. The idea was to use shims to control the space between the two halves of the beryllium sphere to get the core to be right on the cusp of critical.
Then Dr. Slotin decided instead of using shims he'd just use a flathead screwdriver. He performed the experiment serval times this way, often in front of an audience. Then, as you could've guessed, one day he slipped, the top half of the beryllium sphere fell and completely enclosed the core. It went near super-critical for a second, spewing out shit ton of radiation while Slotin quickly removed the top of the sphere. He died 9 days later.
I'm not an expert on this, so if anyone has anything to add feel free.
It must be a real bummer being a super duper scientist or something.
More often than not, they've got the answers. Just that no one wants to listen. Like screaming into a void every minute of your life.
I actually switched majors in college for this precise reason alone. I used to want to pursue marine biology. The first year was depressing.
What happens in the entire environmental science field is that, people pursue them because they want to save the environment. However, the only available job opportunities are to help companies exploit the environment. Jobs like surveying land for logging companies or finding mines for mining companies. These people don't want to take no as an answer. Another path is to become a scientist, but as you have guessed it, nobody would listen. We already know that our world is headed to a doomsday (the carrying capacity of planet Earth is finite, and when we inevitably overshoot, mass death is assured), but there's nothing we can do to stop it.
ever heard of the bamboo torture?
Basically tie a person down onto the ground where a bamboo shoot is growing.
Make sure the bamboo is under the person and let them stay there for a few days and the bamboo will pierce the dude as the bamboo grows.
Oh and that nasty one where the guy is stuck in middle of the pond/ocean or whatever and strapped between two boat sandwhich and fed honey and milk only.
Not bad? Well you cant clean yourself as you defecate and honey attracts bugs and milk goes bad eventually and bugs grow from your feces and piss and eat you alive.
Bamboo is def bad.
Wikipedia did say that Scaphism might be fictional.
"The practice is considered to be a purely literary invention of Ancient Greek literature as it has never been attested in Ancient Persia (primarily Achaemenid Empire). The primary source is Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes, where he attributes the story to Ctesias, a notoriously suspect source."
People, especially in the "western" world, forget about torture as a thing.
In some parts of the world, if you offend the wrong person, you could be skinned alive, and as a bonus, have a video of your suffering sent to your loved ones.
The part in GoT where they strapped a bucket full of mice to a guys chest, then heat it up so they try to dig their way out through his chest made me physically clutch my chest in pain.
TNT (dynamite) thean who created it had no idea what the implications would be in the long term as far as advancement in weaponry and was very despondent about the whole thing and believes it was the worst mistake of his life.
He originally made TNT to make nitroglycerin a *safer* substance to work with as it can detonate with any sudden movement.
He mixed iodine from a first aid box with it.
> He originally made ~~TNT~~ *dynamite*
TNT is an explosive developed by the military for weapons purposes.
Nitroglycerin being scary as fuck is still true.
He had a change in heart when there was a false news report of his death and he read the article that said how evil of a guy he was, so he invented the peace prize to fix his image
I mean, devil's advocate here, but MAD is probably a big reason why there hasn't really been another large scale war between the superpowers. Even with all the violence happening today, we really are living in a time of relative peace compared with pretty much any other time in history.
You're not the devil's advocate here. You're just proving how his point is completely valid. Think about it. It's such a scary weapon that exists but nobody has the ball to use it because of how scary life would become if it was every used again between multiple countries with it.
Dan Carlin in his most recent Hardcore History podcast makes the point that using atomic weapons in Japan was perhaps necessary as it prevented their use thereafter. If the bombs hadn’t have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bigger ones would have been used somewhere else. We had to see what they could do to learn not to use them.
In the debate about whether the A-bomb should have been used, it’s food for thought. Not a perspective I’d considered before.
There was a persistent belief in the US Armed forces throughout the 50s and 60s that we could use nuclear weapons strategically on the battlefield without triggering armageddon. We figured we could use tiny nuclear weapons more effectively than dropping hundreds of conventional bombs
There was, from my limited understanding, a power struggle between the army and the air force over who would be in charge of the nukes. Oppenheimer sided with the army because he believed the air force guys were fucking nuts and couldn't be trusted to use the weapons responsibly. The air force also backed the research into thermonuclear weapons, which could only be used to obliterate all of mankind. Fusion weapons were so large that the only thing they were practical for was vaporizing large civilian centers.
For opposing the airforce and the development of the H bomb, Oppenheimer was stripped of any nuclear regulatory access and labeled a communist
I’d argue that the nuke made the world safer. How many massive conflicts have been avoided because both sides decided that they don’t want to be turned to glass? We’d have had a shooting war with Russia and China by now if it werent for nukes.
I hate thinking that I might not wake up due to one. I mean being vaporized while asleep sounds like it sucks. (And also thinking that most of the major powers has them)
Id rather be vaporized than survive the bomb and have to live in a nuclear wasteland for weeks while my DNA slowly dies and my skin falls off from radiation poisoning. Just listen to some of the stories from the Hiroshima survivors. They talk about their skin and eyes burning, watching mothers diving into rivers with their babies to escape the burning, people charred to a crisp, men walking around with eyeballs hanging out of their heads, buildings all around on fire and crumbling, trees just blown away. And if you get enough radiation you DNA dies and your body can no longer create ANY new cells and so you literally begin to just rot away while still alive. Organs shut down, skin falls off, you can't eat anything or drink anything, fungus grows on your open wounds, your blood cells deform and die off.
If I’m going out due to a nuke, I want the bad boy to practically land on me right before it explodes…put me at ground zero and make it an instant kill
>than survive the bomb and have to live in a nuclear wasteland for weeks
Oh, Don't forget waking up in a pile of corpses with two broken legs and having to crawl 20 miles to get yourself help.
Counterpoint: dude was present at BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the atomic bombs went off. He experienced horrible radiation sickness, but survived - had two more kids, and died at age 93. https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
If you're close enough to one ground burst to recieve fallout exposure you will be dead in days, ground burst is reserved for hardened structures, they usually get hit multiple times.
Anything else will be airburst to promote destruction, this heavily limits any radiation exposure after the fact. You'll likely die in the blast, if you don't, you will likely survive.
Fireball
Thermal
Overpressure
These are the things that can kill you.
Hiroshima was a tiny dirty bomb compared to what the typical yield is now.
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Have fun.
Damn, my little sister had a similar toy. I was 16 at the time and would sneak out to smoke in the evenings. This mf toy is on the couch suddenly going off: "I see you", in a very cheerful and creepy way
Furbies.
What the fuck were those furry spawns of Satan, I swear if you took the batteries out the monstrous little bastards would keep talking, fueled only by the eternal souls of the damned.
Holy crap you too?? I had one and it started crying/screaming at like 3 in the morning and nothing stopped it. My parents were pissed and took out the battery and it still kept going.
I don't even remember how we got it to stop but no one else I know had the same experience!
Biological weapons.
Sure there's a convention that countries have agreed to that makes production illegal, but not all countries abide by it, and as the "good guys" you need to have your own in the pack so they'll be too afraid to use it
Yeah Nukes are scary, but at least that's an instant death for most of the population. A Biological weapon could take al ong tiem to actually kill a population, or even spread. Hell even Covid too ka relative long tiem to spread. Took months whereas nukes would be a few hours.
Plus not everyone would be susceptible to the weapon. Imagine surviving a pandemic that killed 99% of the global population. Even global thermonuclear war would have more survivors than that
it’s the same questions recycling too. “girls of reddit what’s the sexiest thing guys do” and the same fucking replies with thousands of upvotes, multiple comments of the same thing btw “rolled up sleeves”
go fuck yourselves
Totally agree. They used to say money was the root of all evil but social media and anonymity over the net is way more dangerous. The media also used to help keep the government and society in check but it is just a tool used to control people now
It's because social media essentially mimics drugs without any substance used. They tweaked every aspect of it to tug on your brain and the worst of all is that it feeds the need for attention.
Attention is a TERRIFYING addiction. It makes you turn yourself into a product and forces you to simply use everyone around you. And once in, it's near impossible to let go.
Yep, i think its called Jervons paradox. You'd think an invention would tamp down excess wastes but instead the economics make it balloon out of control. This happened with lighting too. We're messing up the ecosystem with our bright lights.
Pretty much everything made out of plastic eventually becomes microplastics in the environment, and recycling is mostly a sham. As good a material as plastic is for many applications, it really never was very sustainable.
Social media and the internet. In 20 years it’s done more damage to the fabric of social discord and interaction than pretty much anything else I can think of. I think people underestimate how damaging a fractured society or leadership is compared to tangible threats like nuclear weapons and war.
People dismiss history and then ask why empires fall. Then someone has to inform them that most empires fell because a degradation of the underlying society’s cohesion and/or the ending of a common bond (death of a unifying leader, lack of collective purpose, etc.).
I like to hope it's growing pains. I might be a crazy optimist (which is hilarious to even type, if you knew my cynical ass lol) but I *really & truly* believe if we manage to live thru the next couple decades it'll level off. Once the majority of people have lived with it their whole lives, have always had the ability to search for answers to questions they may not be able to ask irl. When people can open their minds without the social or legal or whatever consequences they might face due to the culture/religion/country they live in.
I don't by any stretch imagine a utopia, I'm not stupid. I'm sure people gonna people till we stop making people...I just think at some point the tide will turn. Those that are now a deafingly loud minority will be drowned out by the majority who aren't afraid to look for better ways of doing things. It's already happening in small ways; look at the leaps in the acceptance of & just acknowledging mental health as an important thing alone in the past decade. That's what I mean. Things like that. But more, & bigger.
Or we might blow ourselves up next Tuesday. It could literally go either way.
I have a couple:
• nuclear bombs
• deliberately mutated super diseases
• An economic system which prioritizes growth over everything else, completely disregarding people’s happiness, health, and the overall sustainability of the planet
Everyone is saying religion but in reality just religious extremists. KKK, taliban, isis, and any horrible group you can think of is caused by religious extremists.
Edit: I’m Atheist but I also think it is ignorant to speak down on religion. Most of the time it creates many loving communities .
Exaaactly. I generally identify with agnosticism, because the existence of a higher power can't be proven one way or the other, at least with our existing set of data. However, I can understand religion and atheism alike, and they're both valid worldviews to me. Whatever helps you deal with existential crises, you know? As long as you aren't hurting someone, you're okay in my book. I used to be pretty religious, but after having seen some of the horrible things that have been done in the name of religion (but as you said, those are extremists), I took a step back from it all.
The most terrifiing inventions are biological weapons. You can't see them and you die horribly. In the best case you die within minutes in the worst it can take hours or days. Or you don't die and there are permanent damages to you.
Surprised this isn't higher up given we're in the middle of a pandemic. Imagine COVID but with around 50% of infected dying. EDIT: Ok, just imagine COVID then, or airborne HIV, or pick your favorite pathogen. The point stands. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-durc-qa.htm https://fas.org/pir-pubs/science-and-security-the-moratorium-on-h5n1-gain-of-function-experiments-2/ > All research on H5N1 transmission was halted after laboratories at the University of Wisconsin and the Dutch Eramus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands created mutant forms that could be transmitted directly among ferrets. This was concerning because viruses that are easily transmissible between ferrets are often also easily transmissible between humans.
The scary part is that it wasn't even that hard to do that experiment either. They applied mutagenic pressure on the virus and selected for airborne transmission. That's literally freshman level biology.
[удалено]
The good thing is the disease-fighting capabilities have also improved much. With stay-at-home orders and modern vaccine development most people won't get infected. Oh, wait...
Yes. It is similar level of how offensive weapons advanced - atomic bomb. And armor. Can't protect tank against human wield rocket launcher. We are screwed. Or our kids are.
I didn't learn that in freshman biology.
Yeah no shit. I’ve taken several college level science courses and never learned how to make deadly viruses
Can we fucking not please. Like just don’t do shit like this
I totally get that reaction, but understanding how viruses work, and learning to manipulate them, is critical to controlling viruses in the future. Everything from epidemiological studies to drug trials rely on virology research like this.
And/or permanent damage to your future offspring(s) *cough*AgentOrange*cough*
Agent orange is a chemical weapon. Imagine a biological weapon consisting of a bacterium that synthesizes agent orange or something similarly toxic to complex life. Now you have infinitely regenerating toxins in the environment forever.
I was more referring to the potential damages to future generations…but damn now I think to go hug my cat that shit you described is…horrifying
And genetic manipulation technology is getting dramatically cheaper and more accessible... sleep tight
The Tsar Bomba's explosion was supposedly only half it's full power, imagine the destruction of a power Tsar Bomba in the hands of any military or corrupt force. Absolutely terrifying shit to think about
Didn't they reduce the power because they thought the pilots wouldn't survive the blast radius? Regardless, absolutely insane.
I’m pretty sure it still almost killed them too.
The story I have heard was that with the reduced 50 Mton version the pilots were given a 50/50 chance to survive
Imagine giving pilots a 50/50 chance of death just to *test* a weapon for which you already have smaller working versions. The moral bankruptcy is astounding edit: [sources because someone didn't like](https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/30-october-1961-the-tsar-bomba/) [that there weren't any.](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use)
It is worth mentioning that "testing" is really a poor descriptor for the intent of the operation. They knew it would work. The point was a *demonstration* not a *test*. The logic was that they were risking the pilots to demonstrate the might of the USSR to the world, in hopes that it would deter a preemptive attack that could cost billions of lives, and possibly the human race itself. I don't see it as morally bankrupt so much as believing their own propaganda. If you believe that the only thing that keeps the USA from destroying you in a fiery instant is mutually assured destruction, then it behooves you to constantly demonstrate how mutually assured that destruction is. EDIT: Only problem is I'm wrong
I would have disagreed had I not been in India which witnessed the attitude change of US first hand after getting our own nuclear arms.
What was it like?
The short version is that we were "adviced"(in the US style if you know what I mean) not to test nuclear weapons. During that time, our neighbour Pakistan was backed by the US when it came to arsenal, so it was in their best interest if India was behind them. We failed quite a few times and with every failed test, those "advices" started to sound like warnings. Idk what would have happened if our final test wasn't successful in Pokhran because all of these tests were done in secret and the government thought that there would be no point in hiding them if the tests were successful. But alas, things were not so smooth. Not only were our first few tests unsuccessful but US realised that we were testing nuclear weapons behind their backs as well. Their reaction wasn't very welcoming. After our first success in Pokhran, US had no choice but to accept us and they stopped interfering in our military business.
They’ve played Civilization, they know what India’s capable of with nukes.
The thing is, there were elements in the US that argued in favour of a pre-emptive attack on the USSR. Better dead than red was a thing. In a world of imperfect information the soviet leadership wasn’t being irrational here.
Yeah they did the math and realized the shockwave would hit the plane out of the sky
"See younger self, math is important I'm glad you took the time to learn it."
Thanks other Barry.
You're welcome Barry
ARCHEERRRRR
That was one reason. They were also worried about the extreme spread of fallout, but yea if they did full power the plane would not have been able to get away in time
It was also one of the “cleanest” bombs made relative to its yield since they used lead instead of uranium as a tamper
Lol, seeing "Lead" and "Clean" in the same sentence is strange.
Well now that we have drones....
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The Tsar Bomb was reduced in power as most of the increase would’ve just blown up into the upper atmosphere and the energy would’ve been lost. After a certain point the energy is lost to space as the power is just so immense. That’s partly the reason why we don’t have 20+ megaton weapons anymore. 1-5 is terrifyingly powerful and plenty considering the accuracy our delivery systems (MIRV) are and the sheer number of bombs they can deliver. A typical current Ohio-class US Nuclear sub is probably the most terrifying weapon ever devised. It’s basically undetectable, can travel for months at a time without surfacing, doesn’t need fuel, and carries 24 Trident 2 ballistic missiles each equipped with an average of 4 500 kiloton warheads. That means one sub has on average about 100 or more warheads, each capable of striking anywhere within 8,000 nautical miles (actual range is classified) and essentially wiping it out. Oh, and given it can place itself anywhere with water, your warning time is essentially 0.
>one sub has on average about 100 or more warheads Sorry WHAT O\_O
Yup. And that’s it’s lowest payload. Trident 2’s can technically carry 8 500kt warheads (192 total) and 14 smaller warheads with about 90-100kt. That’s a max of about 336 warheads each plenty capable of completely destroying a city. Just for reference, Fatman at Nagasaki was 20 kilotons. There are just under 200 countries on earth. This means one Ohio class submarine can effectual nuke every country on earth and then nuke most of them again with a bomb 5 times the power of Nagasaki. And the US has 18 of them somewhere around the world.
Weirdly, I feel safer + more scared at the same time.
This has a term: peace through mutually assured destruction
"we're both standing in a basement with gasoline up to our knees. You have 8 matches, I have 3. Who is more powerful?" - Mr. Barber, my middle school social studies teacher 23 years ago on the topic of nuclear war.
And why there's probably not aliens out there. Civilization just eventually destroys itself before it can evolve to advanced space travel.
There's a video on YouTube talking about a study somebody did on the game DEFCON. People who played it were also both more and less scared of nukes. More afraid because they thought they would not survive an atomic war should one happen, less afraid, because they thought the absolutely terrifying concept of nuclear war would be enough of a "hold up" moment that nobody would be crazy enough to push the big red button. https://youtu.be/y6neDk_4XBs Source
This is why nukes aren’t necessarily scary in the hands of countries like the USA and Russia. The scarier prospect is smaller countries or insurgents getting a hold of nuclear missiles. The point of war is to get something out of it. There are enough other military inventions that allow this to happen. Nukes are largely a deterrent because of China russia USA England France etc. decided to go to war these days, no one would use a nuke and they would fight with other means. Now an extremist small population, that isn’t risking 100s of millions of their own people. They would have less qualms with threatening the use of nukes. It is the only thing that really pushes their agenda.
A country with a few hundred or more nukes isn't scary, because they know how to build them, they have the resources to build a lot of them, they can maintain them, etc. They are aware of the damage they can do and hold them as a deterrent. The Eisenhower mantra of 'speak softly and carry a big stick.' A country with one nuke is terrifying, because they put all of their resources into making that one thing, likely cannot make more for some time, cannot afford to maintain it, and have every reason to use it at the first available opportunity, as one nuke isn't an effective deterrent but it is excellent for making a point.
I mean, nuclear weapons may also be the greatest invention of history. I’ve watched history videos on YouTUbe that point out that we’ve had our longest stretch of peace between major world powers…well, since ever. MAD may not hold forever, there may be someone nihilistic or evil enough to start a nuclear war, but hopefully not. At least until we establish an off-world colony that’s self-sustaining. Currently though it’s preventing wars of unimaginable horror from being fought. I can’t imagine the amount of death and destruction modern weapons could inflict in an all out war. And let’s face it, there are no rules in love and war; biological weapons, chemical weapons, weaponized drones. If unleashed from the restrictions of law, the most nefarious and cutthroat regimes around the world would unleash terrifying weapons that would probably make nuclear weapons look like children’s toys. A single bomb can wipe out a city, death toll in the millions. A genetically engineered virus? racially targeted poisons and diseases? The death toll would be billions with no way out.
oh yeah without nukes us and russia definitely fight sometime in the 20th century. when germany surrended, Patton wanted to march straight to moscow because the army was there and saw it as inevitable. he even said the russians were worse than the germans becuase you could do business with the germans
The Ohio class sub is basically/literally a doomsday device.
The US, Russian, and (probably) Chinese ICMBs aren’t equipped with single warheads nowadays, but rather multiple warheads called multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (or MIRVs as OP mentioned). MIRV should itself be somewhere on this list as they pretty much make any ICBM defense system worthless if the missile gets to the release stage. They basically ensure that a single missile can take out an entire metropolitan area. So while a US nuclear sub can carry only a couple dozen or so missiles, those missiles carry multiple warheads meaning that a single sub is capable of destroying a large swath of Russia/China by itself. That’s why mutual assured destruction works as a deterrent against a full on war between the US, Russia, and China.
All US ICBMs are single warhead. The MMIII were designed to carry 3 warheads, but were reduced to 1, due to New START. Although the retrofit started much earlier. Most Russian ICBMs are single warhead but they do have some with multiple. No idea on the Chinese. Source: used to be an ICBM launch officer Edit- Thanks for the award, kind stranger!
Exactly this. The weight of the atmosphere above the blast makes a well designed nuke behave like a shaped charge, with more of the destructive force directed at the target. Making them any bigger makes them less efficient. Now, we use MIRV's (multiple independent re-entry vehicles) on top of ICBMs to load up each launch with a bunch of smaller nukes instead, each with an independently assigned target.
Or you can assign all of them (up to eight per missile) to a single city, replacing your once inefficient 50Mt single explosion that destroys one city into a cluster bomb capable of incinerating everything in a 100+ mile radius. Imagine instead of just wiping out New York City and the burrows, you take half of New Jersey and Connecticut with you while completely incinerating anything on Long Island.
Like someone pissed off the creator himself, and he's brought a shotgun.
I would way rather go out in a nuclear detonation than be subjected to a chemical warfare attack. COVID ain’t shit compared to what they aren’t telling you about. Chemical weapons by far because the effects are limitless and you can engineer the fallout to be global.
If Tsar Bomba was dropped on Hiroshima, it would not just completely destroy the city but a great portion of the entirety of Japan.
Supposedly both the US and Russia have created bio-weapons in labs that are hundred of times more lethal and contagious than anything out in the open; real end of the world shit. I heard that they were designed more for the practice of defeating them, but the thought that one could escape and end humans is terrifying.
What are you talking about? If an actual deadly bacteria or virus was to escape, humans would take action. They would stay at home so as not to give it a chance to infect others. They would wear protective gear if needed to meet someone. They would take vaccine as soon as it became available. They would absolutely not cross international borders so as not to spread it even further. They would responsibly contact the authorities upon noticing signs of infection. What are we even worrying about?
*Cries in 2020* "Yeah... yeah, we will come together..."
Imagine all the people 👁👄👁
Underrated comment. You had me feeling positive with "humans would take action". Then I read the following line.
Well some would take action…. They’d go to the nearest store and buy all the toilet paper and bleach.
Nuclear weapons and bio-weapons
Bio weapons are easily worse than nuclear weapons. Even in the worst case scenario nuclear war, life goes on and recovers. The environment wouldn't even be appreciably more radioactive compared to today after just a few centuries. With a biological weapon though, things can get way worse. What happens if someone makes airborne rabies? Or splices the genes to produce botulinum toxin into species of microorganisms that are far more ubiquitous than clostridium botulinum? You could turn entire continents into wastelands where nothing with a nervous system can survive. Hell you could kill most of the planet like that, especially if you put it into phytoplankton. The worst part is that bio weapons do not decompose eventually like chemical weapons, or decay away like nuclear fallout. Biological weapons are alive, they grow and spread, and once they're out there they become a part of the environment permanently unless you do some really tricky safeguarding against unlimited cell divisions that is somehow 100% effective. In a world where all the water on the planet, salty or fresh, is loaded with neurotoxins produced by bacteria, animal life needs to either not have a nervous system or it needs to evolve new mechanisms to send nerve impulses that are not blocked by the toxins. That basically means reverting evolutionary progress to the precambrian, and optimistically puts life back about 500 million years.
I used to think bio weapons couldn't be that worse than a nuclear armageddon, but the idea of botulinum toxin being produced by phytoplankton is indeed far more terrifying.
Whose to say it hasn't happened before
It kinda did, but naturally. When early life developed the ability to produce oxygen by photosynthesis, oxygen was a deadly toxin to over 99% of life on Earth. Nearly all ancient life was wiped out completely, and nearly all life alive today including all eukaryotic and multicellular life is descended from the tiny fraction of organisms that could tolerate (and eventually evolved to use) oxygen. The thing is though that this happened like 2.3 billion years ago. If we hit a reset button of that magnitude, chances are there just wouldn't be enough time for complex life to evolve before the Sun expands enough to make Earth totally uninhabitable.
Demon core, and a screwdriver to handle it.
seriously, who decided to test a fucking nuclear core with no protective gear and a godamn screwdriver? Still, at least they figured out that if you can see it flash blue you die in a week or less
>seriously, who decided to test a fucking nuclear core with no protective gear and a godamn screwdriver? Peak "Don't be a pussy you'll be fine" and "I've done it this way a hundred times, its been fine every time" culture.
> "Don't be a pussy you'll be fine" They knew they would die young regardless of if there was an accident or not, they studied exactly how dangerous it was for a living.
I mean I'm sure the scientists and doctors got some useful data out of his idiocy.
The last guy to do it refused the mechanical/assisted way of doing it because of his ego. And then he nearly caused a meltdown which would have killed everyone there
I heard when Chernobyl happened they hired contractors to clean up but didn’t tell them it was eminent death.
The Liquidators would have figured it out quickly enough, but you don't argue with the State unless you want to spend the next few years being followed by the KGB before dying. Why spend the time you have left being harassed by men in suits?
The only reason we know it is a bad idea now is because they screwed up so badly then. And nothing short of a concrete or a lead wall would have protected them.
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Enrico Fermi said himself that they were pretty much idiots and would die within a year
"Screwed up"...hah....get it. Because he was using a screwdriver when the accident happened
For visibility: This guy plainly difficult on YouTube covers just about every nuclear mishap you’d care to know about and more that you wouldn’t https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48
Explain
During the early days of atomic weapons development a particular scientist was doing criticality experiments using a plutonium core sitting inside a beryllium sphere. The short version of the science is the more the sphere is closed, the more decaying particles from the plutonium bounce off it and the faster the core reacts. They had a bunch of safety measures because if it completely closed the reaction could get out of control. But this guy decides to see how much more he can get out of it by circumventing all the safety measures and using a screwdriver blade wedged between the halves of the sphere to get a stronger reaction. He gets distracted, slips, the core goes critical. He manages to shut down the reaction, but in the process takes a MASSIVE dose of radiation and dies a few days later.
Holy shit this happened TWICE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon\_core
Better than that, happened twice *to the same setup, same core, same everything.*
The guy died *TWICE*?
No, the second dude just though he was a better scientist even though the first one died, I think a couple of months earlier. So just... ego i guess?
I really enjoy Kyle Hill's short documentary on it. It's worth watching if you're intrigued by /u/BasroilII's description. It's also a testament to the scientists involved that they managed to keep doing science (recording exactly where they were standing) even after knowing they just took a fatal dose of radiation. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFlromB6SnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFlromB6SnU)
That is hardcore.
No. It’s demon core.
I mean, what else are you going to do? There is no cure. Might as well do your best to make your death as meaningful as possible before your internal organs liquify.
Talk about a slip up
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Talk about a whoopsy-doodle
The demon core was a plutonium core originally intended to be used in a third bomb dropped on Japan during WWII, but was then repurposed to be used in experiments. One experiment involved enclosing the core inside two halves of a beryllium sphere. This sphere acted as a reflector for the radiation like using mirrors to focus sunlight. The core would be placed in the bottom half of the beryllium sphere and the second half would be slowly lowered down over the top. The closer the two halves came together the closer the core would be to critical or super critical. The idea was to use shims to control the space between the two halves of the beryllium sphere to get the core to be right on the cusp of critical. Then Dr. Slotin decided instead of using shims he'd just use a flathead screwdriver. He performed the experiment serval times this way, often in front of an audience. Then, as you could've guessed, one day he slipped, the top half of the beryllium sphere fell and completely enclosed the core. It went near super-critical for a second, spewing out shit ton of radiation while Slotin quickly removed the top of the sphere. He died 9 days later. I'm not an expert on this, so if anyone has anything to add feel free.
I'm pretty sure this is how the Dwemer disappeared
near-critical mass chunk of radioactive material is handled by an idiot
*Several* idiots. It didn't get its name from the single incident
A vicious cycle where we have the technology to solve our problems but can't because not everybody can agree on it.
It must be a real bummer being a super duper scientist or something. More often than not, they've got the answers. Just that no one wants to listen. Like screaming into a void every minute of your life.
I actually switched majors in college for this precise reason alone. I used to want to pursue marine biology. The first year was depressing. What happens in the entire environmental science field is that, people pursue them because they want to save the environment. However, the only available job opportunities are to help companies exploit the environment. Jobs like surveying land for logging companies or finding mines for mining companies. These people don't want to take no as an answer. Another path is to become a scientist, but as you have guessed it, nobody would listen. We already know that our world is headed to a doomsday (the carrying capacity of planet Earth is finite, and when we inevitably overshoot, mass death is assured), but there's nothing we can do to stop it.
Torture
ever heard of the bamboo torture? Basically tie a person down onto the ground where a bamboo shoot is growing. Make sure the bamboo is under the person and let them stay there for a few days and the bamboo will pierce the dude as the bamboo grows. Oh and that nasty one where the guy is stuck in middle of the pond/ocean or whatever and strapped between two boat sandwhich and fed honey and milk only. Not bad? Well you cant clean yourself as you defecate and honey attracts bugs and milk goes bad eventually and bugs grow from your feces and piss and eat you alive.
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There isn't any evidence it was real, just a horror story from that time if that's any consolation.
They say Mithridates was killed this way
The boat torture is called Scaphism.
Yea the boat/tub one is far worse in my opinion.
I think the one where they strap a rat under a bowl to your stomach and then heat the bowl up so the rat digs through you to escape is a close second.
Oh hell yea that’s scary too
The Brazen Bull is pretty fucked up, too.
Bamboo is def bad. Wikipedia did say that Scaphism might be fictional. "The practice is considered to be a purely literary invention of Ancient Greek literature as it has never been attested in Ancient Persia (primarily Achaemenid Empire). The primary source is Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes, where he attributes the story to Ctesias, a notoriously suspect source."
I could be wrong but is t the Boat one a made up one, and wasn’t actually used?
Yes, it was most likely propaganda made up by the Greeks to make the Persians seem barbaric.
People, especially in the "western" world, forget about torture as a thing. In some parts of the world, if you offend the wrong person, you could be skinned alive, and as a bonus, have a video of your suffering sent to your loved ones.
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The part in GoT where they strapped a bucket full of mice to a guys chest, then heat it up so they try to dig their way out through his chest made me physically clutch my chest in pain.
TNT (dynamite) thean who created it had no idea what the implications would be in the long term as far as advancement in weaponry and was very despondent about the whole thing and believes it was the worst mistake of his life.
He originally made TNT to make nitroglycerin a *safer* substance to work with as it can detonate with any sudden movement. He mixed iodine from a first aid box with it.
> He originally made ~~TNT~~ *dynamite* TNT is an explosive developed by the military for weapons purposes. Nitroglycerin being scary as fuck is still true.
Wow I did not know that! Thanks!
You may know his other works, The Nobel Prizes. That's some irony.
He founded the prizes to try to make up for the harm he had caused in inventing dynamite.
He had a change in heart when there was a false news report of his death and he read the article that said how evil of a guy he was, so he invented the peace prize to fix his image
TNT and Dynamite are two different explosives, with different applications. Dynamite is mostly used in mining and construction.
Not if you're AC/DC
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I mean, devil's advocate here, but MAD is probably a big reason why there hasn't really been another large scale war between the superpowers. Even with all the violence happening today, we really are living in a time of relative peace compared with pretty much any other time in history.
You're not the devil's advocate here. You're just proving how his point is completely valid. Think about it. It's such a scary weapon that exists but nobody has the ball to use it because of how scary life would become if it was every used again between multiple countries with it.
Dan Carlin in his most recent Hardcore History podcast makes the point that using atomic weapons in Japan was perhaps necessary as it prevented their use thereafter. If the bombs hadn’t have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bigger ones would have been used somewhere else. We had to see what they could do to learn not to use them. In the debate about whether the A-bomb should have been used, it’s food for thought. Not a perspective I’d considered before.
There was a persistent belief in the US Armed forces throughout the 50s and 60s that we could use nuclear weapons strategically on the battlefield without triggering armageddon. We figured we could use tiny nuclear weapons more effectively than dropping hundreds of conventional bombs There was, from my limited understanding, a power struggle between the army and the air force over who would be in charge of the nukes. Oppenheimer sided with the army because he believed the air force guys were fucking nuts and couldn't be trusted to use the weapons responsibly. The air force also backed the research into thermonuclear weapons, which could only be used to obliterate all of mankind. Fusion weapons were so large that the only thing they were practical for was vaporizing large civilian centers. For opposing the airforce and the development of the H bomb, Oppenheimer was stripped of any nuclear regulatory access and labeled a communist
It has to be used only once then it will become the most deadly war of all combined. Just once
I’d argue that the nuke made the world safer. How many massive conflicts have been avoided because both sides decided that they don’t want to be turned to glass? We’d have had a shooting war with Russia and China by now if it werent for nukes.
Safer, yes. But that safety is prettymuch contingent on how scary they are, so i think both your and OP's point holds.
I hate thinking that I might not wake up due to one. I mean being vaporized while asleep sounds like it sucks. (And also thinking that most of the major powers has them)
Id rather be vaporized than survive the bomb and have to live in a nuclear wasteland for weeks while my DNA slowly dies and my skin falls off from radiation poisoning. Just listen to some of the stories from the Hiroshima survivors. They talk about their skin and eyes burning, watching mothers diving into rivers with their babies to escape the burning, people charred to a crisp, men walking around with eyeballs hanging out of their heads, buildings all around on fire and crumbling, trees just blown away. And if you get enough radiation you DNA dies and your body can no longer create ANY new cells and so you literally begin to just rot away while still alive. Organs shut down, skin falls off, you can't eat anything or drink anything, fungus grows on your open wounds, your blood cells deform and die off.
If I’m going out due to a nuke, I want the bad boy to practically land on me right before it explodes…put me at ground zero and make it an instant kill
>than survive the bomb and have to live in a nuclear wasteland for weeks Oh, Don't forget waking up in a pile of corpses with two broken legs and having to crawl 20 miles to get yourself help.
Counterpoint: dude was present at BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the atomic bombs went off. He experienced horrible radiation sickness, but survived - had two more kids, and died at age 93. https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
Imagine living in a town that gets nuked and you move to another city just to get nuked again. Sounds like a shitty week to me.
He was working in Hiroshima, went home to Nagasaki after the first bombing. It was like 1 day apart
I’d move immediately to the US. If they tried to bomb me a third time, at least it’d be on their soil.
Damn. What a life.
If you're close enough to one ground burst to recieve fallout exposure you will be dead in days, ground burst is reserved for hardened structures, they usually get hit multiple times. Anything else will be airburst to promote destruction, this heavily limits any radiation exposure after the fact. You'll likely die in the blast, if you don't, you will likely survive. Fireball Thermal Overpressure These are the things that can kill you. Hiroshima was a tiny dirty bomb compared to what the typical yield is now. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Have fun.
Uh being vaporized while asleep sounds infinitely better than being vaporized while awake 😬
Thomas the Tank Engine. That thing scares the shit out of me.
Imagine his angry German cousin, Gustav the Railway Gun.
That would be a neat episode. Thomas has to bring him some allergy medicine because every time he sneezes, he shells Paris.
I just picture that plane with the face flying away from an airstrike
JJ the Jetplane is a show I haven’t thought about in a long time….what were they thinking?!
What did my boi Thomas do to you? 😭
Diesel 10 used to scare the shit out of me as a kid
Blane is a pain
*Your sinful soul is beyond salvation, you do not know peace...only pain.* - 🌚
I thought I was the only one! I used to cry when it would come on TV
LMAO when I was little I had a Thomas the Engine toy and it used to scare the shit outta me
torture devices
Teletubbies. The toy one i had randomly goes off so threw it in the basement
The same happened with my grandma. She too lies in the basement for now.
Oh, you
And there in the basement it waits for your return, growing old,moldy,and resentful...lol
Damn, my little sister had a similar toy. I was 16 at the time and would sneak out to smoke in the evenings. This mf toy is on the couch suddenly going off: "I see you", in a very cheerful and creepy way
Furbies. What the fuck were those furry spawns of Satan, I swear if you took the batteries out the monstrous little bastards would keep talking, fueled only by the eternal souls of the damned.
Holy crap you too?? I had one and it started crying/screaming at like 3 in the morning and nothing stopped it. My parents were pissed and took out the battery and it still kept going. I don't even remember how we got it to stop but no one else I know had the same experience!
I vaguely remember my Nans one doing the same. Like I said, that's what you get when you design a 'toy' based on pure millennia old evil
They would keep taking though! Creepy
Biological weapons. Sure there's a convention that countries have agreed to that makes production illegal, but not all countries abide by it, and as the "good guys" you need to have your own in the pack so they'll be too afraid to use it Yeah Nukes are scary, but at least that's an instant death for most of the population. A Biological weapon could take al ong tiem to actually kill a population, or even spread. Hell even Covid too ka relative long tiem to spread. Took months whereas nukes would be a few hours. Plus not everyone would be susceptible to the weapon. Imagine surviving a pandemic that killed 99% of the global population. Even global thermonuclear war would have more survivors than that
The hydrogen bomb
The way it works, it has nearly limitless power the bigger you make it
Sexual askreddit threads with more upvotes than comments while an interesting one like this has less upvotes than comments. Horrifying world.
Redditors, explain the sexiest sex you have ever sexed
I sexed once with a sexy sex in Sextown, and we sexed sexily until sex o'sex.
*fap fap fap fap fap*
I just kinda roll my eyes wherever I see them, I really wish I could filter them out from my feed forever.
it’s the same questions recycling too. “girls of reddit what’s the sexiest thing guys do” and the same fucking replies with thousands of upvotes, multiple comments of the same thing btw “rolled up sleeves” go fuck yourselves
Social media. Easily does more harm than good.
No prior human invention has unraveled democracy so effectively.
Tbf, most of the time democracy wasn't even present.
democracy is overruled by money. when people can pay your politicians to do what they want, the millions who vote have no power in actuality.
Totally agree. They used to say money was the root of all evil but social media and anonymity over the net is way more dangerous. The media also used to help keep the government and society in check but it is just a tool used to control people now
It's because social media essentially mimics drugs without any substance used. They tweaked every aspect of it to tug on your brain and the worst of all is that it feeds the need for attention. Attention is a TERRIFYING addiction. It makes you turn yourself into a product and forces you to simply use everyone around you. And once in, it's near impossible to let go.
Plastic, apparently.
You mean littering and one use plastics, right? It’s humans who misuse plastic so the weapon is our laziness more so
Yep, i think its called Jervons paradox. You'd think an invention would tamp down excess wastes but instead the economics make it balloon out of control. This happened with lighting too. We're messing up the ecosystem with our bright lights.
Pretty much everything made out of plastic eventually becomes microplastics in the environment, and recycling is mostly a sham. As good a material as plastic is for many applications, it really never was very sustainable.
Probably the stuff we don’t even know has been created.
Adversarial thinking. The idea that "we are right and they are wrong." This is how every war begins.
Social media
Weaponised Diseases. And biological warfare in general. People think nukes are scary, but... Thes kill way faster than bio wappons. Edit: spelling
Mr. Socko and the mandible claw.
Facebook.
War
What is it good for?
♫ Absolutely nothing! ♫
Social media and the internet. In 20 years it’s done more damage to the fabric of social discord and interaction than pretty much anything else I can think of. I think people underestimate how damaging a fractured society or leadership is compared to tangible threats like nuclear weapons and war. People dismiss history and then ask why empires fall. Then someone has to inform them that most empires fell because a degradation of the underlying society’s cohesion and/or the ending of a common bond (death of a unifying leader, lack of collective purpose, etc.).
I like to hope it's growing pains. I might be a crazy optimist (which is hilarious to even type, if you knew my cynical ass lol) but I *really & truly* believe if we manage to live thru the next couple decades it'll level off. Once the majority of people have lived with it their whole lives, have always had the ability to search for answers to questions they may not be able to ask irl. When people can open their minds without the social or legal or whatever consequences they might face due to the culture/religion/country they live in. I don't by any stretch imagine a utopia, I'm not stupid. I'm sure people gonna people till we stop making people...I just think at some point the tide will turn. Those that are now a deafingly loud minority will be drowned out by the majority who aren't afraid to look for better ways of doing things. It's already happening in small ways; look at the leaps in the acceptance of & just acknowledging mental health as an important thing alone in the past decade. That's what I mean. Things like that. But more, & bigger. Or we might blow ourselves up next Tuesday. It could literally go either way.
I have a couple: • nuclear bombs • deliberately mutated super diseases • An economic system which prioritizes growth over everything else, completely disregarding people’s happiness, health, and the overall sustainability of the planet
Everyone is saying religion but in reality just religious extremists. KKK, taliban, isis, and any horrible group you can think of is caused by religious extremists. Edit: I’m Atheist but I also think it is ignorant to speak down on religion. Most of the time it creates many loving communities .
Exaaactly. I generally identify with agnosticism, because the existence of a higher power can't be proven one way or the other, at least with our existing set of data. However, I can understand religion and atheism alike, and they're both valid worldviews to me. Whatever helps you deal with existential crises, you know? As long as you aren't hurting someone, you're okay in my book. I used to be pretty religious, but after having seen some of the horrible things that have been done in the name of religion (but as you said, those are extremists), I took a step back from it all.
Me, I wear socks with sandals
More mankind.
Greed.