Chris Wahl
It’s like our brains have a VIP pass to the Panic Room, and boy, do they use it! The funny thing is, a lot of the stuff we lose sleep over? Totally harmless.
Enter the world of supposedly scary things that are, in fact, as benign as a kitten video. Inspired by a curious Reddit thread started by user ThexLoneWolf, I found a goldmine of overblown fears. We’re talking about stuff ranging from getting swallowed by quicksand to being struck by lightning while singing in the shower.
Here’s the scoop on some of these ‘terrifying‘ things that, turns out, you can pretty much strike off your worry list. Get ready to breathe a sigh of relief and maybe even chuckle at the absurdity of our collective paranoia.
#1 Flying on a plane. You are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash.
#2 Sharks. Movies really do sharks dirty. Wouldn’t say they’re completely safe, but definitely no where near as dangerous as perceived to be.
#3 Roller Coasters and Amusement Park Rides: While these rides may seem scary, they are designed with strict safety regulations and are statistically very safe.
#4 Using a sharp knife in cooking. It’s actually far more dangerous to use a dull knife.
#5 My dad is an electrician, and he taught me when I was pretty young how to fix electrical things, so I am always amused at how terrified people are by anything to do with electricity.
#6 Wolves. Wolf attacks on people are so rare they have individual entries on the Wikipedia page.
#7 Bees and wasps. I used to get stung a lot when I was a kid but I learned that if you don’t wave your arms like a lunatic they’ll leave you a lone. Also don’t throw rocks at their nest and you should be okay.
#8 Tandem Skydiving – strongest safety statistics of any type of jump, with only 0.003 fatalities per thousand jumps over the past 10 years. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning or win the lottery than to die on a tandem skydive. Only done it twice, but such an incredible experience and rush….
#9 Going in the ocean. Talking to those people afraid of seaweed.
#10 Foxes. For some reason my local fb group ALWAYS seems to post about when they see a fox in town like “careful on your walks”
Do you think foxes EAT PEOPLE????
#11 My step mom is convinced that if a steak has any pink in the middle (I’m talking about anything less then well done) that its raw and will give you Salmonella.
#12 Nuclear waste, specifically the high-level spent fuel that needs to be dropped in cooling ponds for years. Make no mistake, it can absolutely [unalive] you if you’re exposed to the neutron emissions, but once it’s cooled off, it’s melted down into glass and sealed away in concrete casks. For all intents and purposes, these casks are indestructible; you could hit them with a runaway train and they wouldn’t break open. They can also be sealed away in deep boreholes underground for billions of years, more than enough time for the radioactive elements to decay to harmless amounts. When it’s handled correctly, nuclear waste may be the safest kind of waste there is. Ash from coal power plants emits far more radioactive particles than a nuclear reactor ever will, and it’s handled way less responsibly.
#13 Silica packets say ,’Do not eat’ on them because they are a choking hazard, not because they’re poisonous.
#14 Alligators. They are big and look scary but don’t generally attack humans and don’t consider us prey. Florida has millions of gators but only averages like 8 unprovoked attacks per year with about one fatal death every 3 years. They are dangerous to small pets, however, and I’m pretty sure many of those attacks are from trying to save a pet. But alligators are everywhere is Florida so it’s quite surprising how few attacks there are.
#15 Black bears are pretty harmless. They *can* [harm] you, but usually would rather leave you alone.
#16 I do risk assessment for a living. Humans are terrible at assessing risk, in general.
#17 Quicksand. We were misled by ’80s action films. It’s pretty hard to actually die in it. (Conversely, regular old riptides in the ocean are WAY more dangerous than people think).
#18 Eating slightly out of date food.
#19 Being a cop. Logging is over six times more dangerous.
#20 MSG. Victim of a smear campaign.
#21 Small bubbles in an IV line aren’t going to [unalive] you like the movies. The amount of panicked patients I’ve had is wild.
#22 Living in Chicago, I did it for 10 years, still don’t own a bulletproof vest.
#23 I’m sure other people have said, but trick or treating. Any danger in d***s or razor blades in candy is wildly overblown in actuality I think there have been only one or two instances of someone actually being malicious with their candy handouts.
#24 Spiders. They’re definitely more afraid of you than you are of them. I for one appreciate spiders- they help to keep fly populations under control.
#25 A lot of 3rd-world travel destinations; just because a country is poor doesn’t mean that the people are robbers/murderers.
#26 Australia in general. It gets hyped for its creepy crawlies, snakes and whatnot but it’s pretty safe. You don’t mess around in crocodile areas though. I’d much rather come across a snake or spider on a hike than a pissed off Grizzly or Moose.
#27 Traveling alone. If you are aware of your surroundings it’s not as scary.
#28 Artificial sweeteners.
It takes an alarming amount of sweetener to have any sort of effect on a human (equivalent to 12-16 cans a day). The effort it’d take to reach harmful amounts is ridiculous.
#29 This is kind of a meta answer, but I’ve injured myself a lot more doing stupid projects around the house than I have while on duty in an actual dangerous industrial jobsite. Universally because I didn’t do a proper pre-work analysis and ensure I was using PPE.
#30 Changing the brakes on your car. They’re trivially easy to do, don’t require any special tools outside of a torque wrench, and dealer and mechanic prices are outrageous (parts can be found online for a fraction of the dealer price at places like AutoHausAZ, and shop rates for labor are super expensive). It’s pretty hard to screw up, and can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
