what's your biggest fear, not like spiders or heights, the real one

mine's dying without ever actually making it, like looking back one day and feeling like i failed at life overall

curious what everyone else actually carries around ...........

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[–] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Loneliness. Without my wife or dog, I would descend into a most dark place.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I'm pretty shocked by how much my mental health has tanked since my dog passed away. I knew losing her would wreck me, but I didn't realise how much she made my life worth living.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The thing that scares me the most is a clean windshield on my car.

    Don't get me wrong. I hate having dirt on the windshield. However, I remember a time when in summer I was in a constant battle to clean spattered insects off my windshield. Now I almost never hit an insect.

    I haven't moved. I still drive on the same roads I used to drive on. Either the insects have evolved to avoid roads, or they just aren't there anymore.

    Life on this planet is dying out, and we're using all our technology and all our resources to allow us to pretend it isn't. Eventually, the extinction will outpace our ability to compensate, and we'll all start dying along with everything else.

    I don't actually believe life will cease completely. I think when enough people have died, they planet will recover. However, the millennia between the crash and the recovery will be unpleasant for anyone who manages to survive long enough to experience it. And the deaths of those who don't survive long enough will be horrifying.

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  • [+] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Yeah, I believe life has survived worse. The pandemic showed that things recover surprisingly quickly once you eliminate people.

    It may even be more possible than science believes for us to recover if we really put effort into it. However, it is far less possible that we'll put any real effort into it before irreversibly catastrophic consequences start happening.

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    [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    Severe physical pain. I'm not really afraid of death, however a gruesome and painful leadup to death is what scares me the most

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    Drowning in a small space like underwater caving. I'm a bit catastrophic (claustrophobic). Normally no issues with water but the thought of being trapped somewhere small and watching it full up with water terrifies me. Safe to say I am never going caving or swimming in caves.

    Oh and the apparently inexorable march towards fascism in the UK and the west is pretty bad too.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    Being trapped in a country that descends in to rampant transphobia

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    What are your three biggest fears?

    In all seriousness though, basically this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change

    Sea level rise is already not a question of if but when and how much.

    We're seeing evidence now that ocean temperature increase is accelerating, and ocean current patterns which have been stable for the entirety of recorded human history are collapsing. There have been several extreme heat events around the globe this year.

    So I guess my fear is that I'll live to see everything descend into bloody, desperate chaos when all the infrastructure we've built fails, and food and water scarcity become a daily concern for the entire population.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    The destruction of everything I know and love merely due too ignorance, malice and apathy. OH WAIT

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Making a small mistake that snowballs into manslaughter.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Being misunderstood and I am living it everyday (neurodivergent).

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    For me that has come to normality so i formulate everything as precicely as possible (i still get missunderstood)

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah it's not about the cliché potential of misunderstanding and already being under NTs for a few decades I figured most of it out.

    However, there are other layers of communication that fail them or me since it's inherently based on assumptions and social networks (not the technological type).

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah. I know. I am highly ND as well. Now even lost my job because of this missunderstanding despite giving a litteral manual with examples: "hey this is how i need you to phrase things for me to understand. And this is what i mean when i say x"

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Getting to a point of deterioration where suicide becomes a logical choice. That can be health, societal, or environmental.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I’m not scared of being dead, I’m scared of being maimed

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Abandonment, by far. Fun fact: 0 fear of death.

    Edit: btw OP, what is your success criteria for life?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    For a time recently I felt extremely overwhelmed and fearful of the idea that in death there is nothing and your consciousness slips away into a black nothingness and everything I had ever done was completely meaningless and that my existence was for nothing.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago*

    The world around me becoming dystopian like in The Handmaid's Tale. Ignorant people laugh at that because it's fiction but, like all dystopian fiction, it's based on things that have actually happened in history. There's little stopping it from happening again. The country right next door to mine is already on the path to it. Some say my country isn't far behind. There are people in Canada who support Trump

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Fear? I'm already at the acceptance level for not having done shit with my life, and I'm fine with that. I have been happy and I've seen the world and I've done all the things and if other people gonna judge me because I didn't do the same dumb shit that they did and now hate their lives and are massively in debt and worked their whole existence away, too bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    apart from the normal ones: balls/flying objects above the size and weight of a badminton ball.
    Its because at every opportunity someone accidentally threw a ball into my face.
    It got to panic attacks after a shoe landed in my face.

    The fear got to the level i can only get to close proximity of a sport ball if i know the intent of balldirection is opposite of where im standing (its possible for others to kick a ball to a goal but not to kick it back, they would need to carry it). Else i dont even visit very ball sporty places

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Modern life, with modern politics, has been scary enough that I struggle to imagine what could scare me anymore. I've been homeless three times, I've had friends die young, I've come to a point of acceptance and I'm not sure if it's healthy or a sign of being beaten down so much that acceptance is my cope.

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  • I mean, God's judgment is pretty scary, lol. Without taking Hell into consideration, If even He thinks I'm a cunt then there's no way around it, and that's a big blow to one's self-esteem!

    In this world... probably my wife dying early. I'd rather die before her like most men do, and perhaps I could tolerate her going first and me waiting some a year or so, heartbroken and fading, but anything else is just too much. 😔

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    The destruction of all life due to a runaway process, e.g. paperclip maximizer or other such maligned goal seeking program

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Probably spending the rest of my life alone.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Exactly what I'm living right now, the whole thing.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    ur

    My biggest fear is that people are forgetting how to write actual words.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Biggest fear I can't control: living a life where I get walked over, where nobody seems to care about me but expect me to drop everything for them (wait, that's my life right now)

    Biggest fear I can control: thalassophobia

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago
    [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Serious brain damage or dementia.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)