Ask Lemmy

Lot of contenders really! And the only solution is to try not to think about it, these are things I can't do a god damn thing about.

Heart disease

Brain aneurysms

The fact that just experiencing negative emotions degrades your health (that is so unfair); depressed because everything's gone to shit? Mad because people keep fucking you over? You don't live as long because of it.

Basically let's just say all the ways the human body can fail you and isn't equipped properly for the lives we lead. The food I'm "supposed" to eat disgusts me, and I could be on the verge of death at any given moment and not know it.

The fact that we're less than a single ember in the history of the universe and all that astronomers believe is charted to happen after us is like, incomprehensibly massive cosmic events, lot of black holes.

The fact that some day I'm going to die and that's just going to be it is chilling, the most I can hope to is try to be one of the "fortunate" ones that makes it to around 100 years of age; and even then I'll probably be tired of it and physically/mentally degraded pretty severely by then. What's it like after you die? It's exactly the same as it was before you were born.

Oh yeah, black holes. You go near one of them and time slows down as you're torn apart at the atomic level. Imagine falling into a meat grinder but it takes a thousand years, or a million. You'd be insane and dead.

The idea of suffering in silence while people either can't see that you're distressed or don't care. This could apply to just being depressed and wishing you had friends, or like, actually having something bad happen to you where you'd be fine if you had another person around, but you don't. Something like choking or falling off a ladder while living on your own.

Climate change and the fading light of earth's biodiversity .

The rise of political folks who desire modern fascism.

Late stage capitalism and its tendency to basically make the entire world worse.

Death by violent means

I've had health issues since I was a kid (all stemming from developing Crohn's Disease symptoms before I was even a teenager), and a lot of them still haven't been resolved (in part of reasons such as developing new conditions due to medications I took to treat another condition). One of the worst things I fear is that if I randomly end up leaving this world in a way that incurs an autopsy, the results will end with something like "Damn, this man had issues. If his doctors had known about X then he could've lived a much better life, the treatment is simple".

I go through so much, and I've done countless research to try to track down possibilities that my doctors hadn't considered (some of my research has in fact lead to me finding out new things that my doctors didn't account for, even as of this year) - and I always have this terrifying doubt of "What if I had just chosen a different doctor, the next one on the list might've had this idea years ago and prevented some of this". That line of thinking of "Could've, should've, would've" doesn't help of course (as my friend likes to tell me "What if the sky were green?") but that doesn't stop me from thinking about it more often than I'd like to.

Honestly not to take away from your fear but it's the light at the end of a tunnel. I can't just walk into the ocean and leave my family and pets to fend for themselves, but when it eventually happens it'll be a relief.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't like the amount of power big corporations have. Nintendo is currently abusing their power to stifle their competition and potentially harm the future of gaming. Google recently proved that they have pretty much full control over the internet. Microsoft is ruining the entire PC market. I could name more but these are the first few that came to mind.

Grey aliens. Yep, I know they're almost certainly not real. They freak me the frack out. It's undoubtedly all the UFO stuff I read as a kid about abductions and such. A very petite friend once threatened to dress up as one in a realistic costume to scare me in the night. I begged her not to for her personal safety: I'm certain I would not react in a safe or rational way.

Being alone at night creeps me out because of this. Driving alone in a remote, low population locale? Horrifying.

Nevertheless, I still read up on stories and other media about the paranormal. Why am I like this? No idea.

It hasn't ruined my life or anything. I've spent time alone far away from people, when I had to. I can go places at night. It's just something that creeps into my mind sometimes. I function as a grown ass man, but I still get the creeps about it when I'm alone. I don't know that I'll ever completely shake it.

Dylan.

My biggest fear is something happening to my kids. If something happened to them my hair would turn white, I would curl up in a ball and die.

Intolerance.

Aka, the lack of willingness to understand one another — I mean, the ability to discuss and work together toward a common goal, even with people we (deeply) disagree with — and the hostility towards whatever dares being/liking/talking/thinking different.

This is a not only a sad dead-end, imho this is also the very end of any society and of any civilization when the only other persons we can tolerate around us are exact copies of ourselves. People behaving, dressing, talking and thinking exactly like we do — or like we want them to.

This frightens me way much than anything else because I see no way to escape it and, even more terrifying to me, I see no place anywhere where one could escape it. Intolerance is growing everywhere, and it's growing fast.

Getting old. Because it's like old people are just ignored. Nobody thinks they are good looking or interesting and they are mostly just tolerated, not appreciated.

That in combination with body starting to break down is not a great feeling.

Alzheimer’s, and the fact that my mother’s genes put me at terrible risk of developing it. The idea of my mind slowly fracturing while my body continues to live is utterly terrifying to me, and I have actively thought about buying a gun to take care of the problem should it ever appear. Problem is, I don’t even know that I’ll recognize it if it does.

Seeing how rapidly and how fervently the public, one's own family even, can be turned into puppets of powerful interests. All it takes is the right messaging. The right conditioning. Television was just child's play. Today we've got "smart" phones, baby!

Medical needles/injections, and that moment when we die. Not death itself, but that moment when the lights go out. I feel like I'll know and be very scared. Also mold for some reason. I can't bring myself to touch it or clean it, so I just have to prevent it or, worse case, chuck whatever has the mold.

Hey I've seen this one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent

Heights, s.n.a.k.e.s, clowns, and being kidnapped and getting sick or not having feminine products while I'm locked in a place without adequate facilities. Also, the vastness of things like the ocean or the grand canyon. And that I'll wake up from the dream, be 12, have to relive my life, and wont know how to get back to this exact spot.

Something similar. Not necessarily the fear of death or a painful death, but the very real possibility that once the light goes off, you disappear for good.

I won't get into religion or anything like that, but it all feels...very inefficient. IMO, reincarnation always seemed cool, because it's essentially the reuse of consciousness in another being. I also remember reading a cool story years ago where it turned out that everyone was actually the same person, and in death you reincarnated as the next person, with the ultimate goal of having lived every life to ever live and becoming god. The idea that someone could live for even a very brief moment, and that energy is just gone is just so wasteful that the universe just seems cruel for it to even be a possibility.

My earbuds exploding while I'm using them

Heights, depths; but not consistently.

After considerable reflection, I realised that a lack of a margin for error is what truly terrifies me.

That I don't know that my memories are true, or that I might just suddenly experience eternal suffering.

I have a phobia with butterfly spawn, the wiggly kind.

Can't look at it, don't wanna talk about it either cuz then the image pop up in my mind.

Don't mind the adult form or the pupa. Also fine with other larvae since they all mostly look the same.