Thoughts & Things

Five Things That Scare The Pants Off Me

We all have our own little fears. Those irrational things that you can't help but be afraid of. Most of mine are medical fears, because why not? But then there are some things that are not even irrational, but deserve to be feared. These aren't the things that you think about when listing your main fears. These are the things that are just instinctively frightening. Here are five things that scare the pants off of me.

Deep Sea Creatures
Have you seen deep sea creatures? The ones that humans today have been able to catch a glimpse of are absolutely terrifying to behold. The knowledge of all the ones we might never see is even scarier. I don't need to see space monsters to be afraid. What other alien monsters lurk unknown right here on our own planet?


We Are In An Ice Age. Right Now.
Ice Ages tend to last millions of years. We are currently in the interglacial period of an ice age. This means that we are in a period of warmer temperatures considering that it is an ice age, but that does not mean it is any less of an ice age. The most recent "ice age" we are familiar with from 10,000 plus years ago is actually just the most recent glacial period of the current ice age. Mammoths and sabre tooth tigers lived during the same ice age we are in right now.


Animals That Survived Extinction Events
I'm mostly looking at you, crocodiles. During the K-T extinction event, most of the species on earth were wiped out, but some species survive today. Crocodiles survived what dinosaurs could not, despite looking remarkably similar to how we picture the dinosaurs having looked. Other animals that survived the K-T extinction event include the platypus, sharks, cockroaches, and others.


Black Holes
Nothing that gets near a black hole can escape. Nothing. Not even light. There is a supermassive black hole here in the Milky Way (there is one at the centre of every galaxy) called Sagittarius A. According to NASA, "It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths." I want nothing to do with Sagittarius A, or any other black holes (especially those classed supermassive).


The Destruction of Knowledge
The loss or destruction of different forms of knowledge both breaks my heart and terrifies me. What are we as a species without knowledge? We have so much recorded knowledge that it is humbling to think about all the things that we know as a species but could never have the time to learn as individuals. Knowledge is either recorded or passed down verbally, but what happens to the knowledge we lose? So much of it is just gone. How much knowledge from a thousand or more years ago is just gone? How much knowledge that we have today will be gone in another thousand years?