Science is fun and informative, but it's also horribly scary. There are invisible dangers all around us — ancient viruses locked away in glaciers waiting to defrost, zombie proteins that cause cows to go mad. Yeah, this stuff is pretty wild. If you'd rather remain blissfully unaware, we don't blame you in the slightest, but for the morbidly curious, the kind people at r/AskReddit took some time to detail some of science's scariest facts that we don't often talk about. Did you know that 50 percent of insects have disappeared in the last half-century? Did you even want to know that?
Scientists don't know exactly how over-the-counter medication like Acetaminophen works to relieve pains and fevers, but we use it anyway. Isn't that just fun? What could be more fun than learning about how many nuclear devices have been lost and never recovered?
For more fun facts, check out a variety of other information for all-around knowledge seekers.
Via u/cruttysack: “All onions (all veggies in the Allium family)are toxic to dogs. Worst can senario then can develop AIHA, Auto immune hemolytic annemia, whereas the body destroys its own red blood cells. This disease is about 80% fatal. My dog caught it(we are not sure from where) but is was a primary disease(not a result of a cancer). We think he was eating leeks out of the garden. Took a week in the hospital, 2 blood transfusions, and about 6 months of meds to get him back. He started at 45lbs and was down to 19lbs at the worst part of it”
u/hewhoamareismyself: “Prions are terrifying. They're basically zombies at a protein level, they're misshapen in such a way that causes them to misshape other proteins. Normal methods of disinfection don't work. This makes researching them a very tricky matter, as while most cases involve eating infected meat, mishandling prion samples is all it takes. Tricky part is, there is no treatment either. Once they get in you, they are 100% fatal. It has been a while since I've studied them so this picture may be incomplete but I do know they're always fatal.”