What is the scariest shit you can think of?

alzheimers.

Some form of torture. The thing about torture is you can always add "and then..."

Psychological and physical

Imagine being forced to rip off your significant other's fingernail.

And you might say "There's no way I'd do that"

Sadly you will. Either to save yourself or them from more torture.

You will do it, we all would. That's scary.

Nice try, sleep paralysis demon

The sun moving the other way through the sky

Don't even hafta exhaust mental energy to try to come up with such thing bcus it already occupies my mind basicly 24/7

No . Not telling you what it is

Mondays

Fuck man you gotta chill

Dick spiders.

More seriously: body parasites of any kind.

unit 731 (seriously, genuinely, don't look it up if you're unfamiliar, it's beyond nightmare fuel the kinds of torture imperial japan committed and got away with)

Well that was an interesting wiki read.
- I told you not to! I haven't even read most of it. I once read part of someone's really horrific account and at some point BAM, instant mental block.

Becoming a quadriplegic or suffering from "locked in" syndrome, where I can no longer move anything myself, cannot feed myself or use the toilet, etc, just laying there, 100% dependent on other people for everything. I'd rather be dead, thanks.

The idea of lobotomies.
\ Just being trapped in a shell of who you once were, for the remainder of your life... Bloody hell, what a horrible part of history.

Bears. They don’t kill you right away, they just crush your face and start gobbling at your gutty works. Sometimes they leave for a bit to digest while you’re still not dead and come back to finish their meal later.

There are existential horrors and real life scenarios that are probably worse than death, but bears still take the cake for me.

Prions - Actually nightmarish.

In terms of anything that does not include something related to death or torture its probably having an operation on your eye while being conscious. I know someone who had to get surgery on his eye and could see while two doctors were doing stuff on his eye. Even just hearing this scared the living shit out of me.

NOOOOOO WHYY DID YOU MENTION THIS
How am I gonna sleep tonight?
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
The Final Destination Intensifies
my uncle just had detached retina surgery with sclera buckle placement. he said to look it up on YouTube, and... AHHHHHHHHHHHH

Being given an anesthetic that should put you out for an operation but only immobilizes you and you remain cognizant thru out the operation feeling everything being done.

Kinda happened to me in middle school when I broke my arm and they gave me anesthetics to knock me out so they could re-set my ulna and radius but half way thru i wake up to my arm in 5 Chinese finger trap-like device to hold my arm up and a strap across my bicep with weights on it weighing my arm down and 2 doctor's trying to push my bones back in line.

I woke up getting my wisdom teeth out. They were at the “hammer and chisel to break them down into chunks” part. I could see, I could smell, and I could feel the thud, thud, thud, and the little bits of tooth land on my tongue. They’re was NO pain whatsoever, but it was an extremely freaky experience.
I thought I had dreamt it before realizing 1. you don’t dream on anesthesia and 2. They showed me my chiseled out teeth
Damn. I'm deathly scared of the opposite. General anesthetic. I have the worst memory of being put to sleep forcefully, like I was dying. I'd rather stay awake

On the smaller scale it's probably my wife and dog dying, in the larger scheme of things it's the rise of fascism here in Germany and Europe.

- The fact that you're quoting Goebbels pretty much explains your entire comment.
- No, no, we do don't this here. This is bait and it is intentionally misleading. If you want rational discussions, don't present arguments in bad faith.

pure void - just a void, not death, a void

Like this? https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3001
Nothing, void, doesnt feel scared.
Unless it did.
If it's not death, that just sounds like the best sleep possible.
- till you wake and try to get any form of input or stimulus from your surroundings ^*

Getting falsely accused of something that requires me to interface/deal with, and potentially be incarcerated within, the US justice system. Fuck all that with a bundle of rusty rebar.

The worst is that it can possibly happen at any given moment. You could look at a redcap Karen in a store, they take it the wrong way, and bam, your life is a loving hell for the next decade or more. Nope.com

Burying my kids.

Imagine every day, your muscles get just a little bit weaker. Maybe you can't open a container you used to be able to. Or you find you can't lift your arms high enough to shampoo your hair anymore. No matter how much you try to exercise, it never helps. Pain sets in due to incredible stiffness. Your fingers start to curl up until they are nigh unusable. Entire limbs become gnarled.

Eventually you lose the ability to walk. Then speak. Then eat. And finally, even your breathing muscles become so weak and paralyzed that you constantly aspirate due to your inability to cough. Recurrent infections set in. Then you die of respiratory failure.

And the entire time, people shame you for being lazy and not exercising. They blame your diet, your screen-time, and gleerfuly take joy in your "just" suffering.
EDIT: You then find an actual cure, and are desperately using it. You can barely keep up, then someone yanks it out of your hand "stop using that! It's making you worse!".
Having no other choice, you slowly wither alive.
I watched my father go through that. MND is horrible for the person and everyone around them.

Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment

...evidence is emerging for rapid, interacting and sometimes self-perpetuating changes in the Antarctic environment. A regime shift has reduced Antarctic sea-ice extent far below its natural variability of past centuries, and in some respects is more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than Arctic sea-ice loss. A marked slowdown in Antarctic Overturning Circulation is expected to intensify this century and may be faster than the anticipated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown. The tipping point for unstoppable ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be exceeded even under best-case CO2 emission reduction pathways, potentially initiating global tipping cascades...

This is just an example from today, but overall the climate news from recent years scares me more than anything else. Insect counts are plummeting globally, wildfires are getting noticeably worse everywhere, all of the ice is receding, ocean currents are destabilizing as the temperature patterns in the air and the water shift, and crop growing seasons are changing. I get the impression that the predicted climate changes are not only happening now, but are accelerating noticeably.

Unpredictable food production is bad bad bad. If you watch the series Fall of Civilizations, one of the most common elements of collapsing societies is destablised food production (not necessarily no production, just irregular). If this happens globally, everything stops and people start dying in large numbers.

Personally, this is the only political issue that really matters. Every other thing that people argue about is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Glacier collapse causing sea levels to rise. Global ocean currents failing. A meteor hitting the earth. The next pandemic Locust Super Volcanoes

Locust Super Volcanoes

Cancer. Everyone has a bunch of fucked up cells at all times, but your body keeps you healthy by repairing or killing them, time after time after time… until one of those cells says “fuck the system” and goes rogue. No one is safe.

Yup. My SO got mouth cancer a couple years back in their early 30's, even though the operation was succesful and chemo & radiation worked and they'll be considered cancer-free in about 9 months, the fact that it happened so early means it's quite likely they'll get it again. How does one live with that information? And as a partner how do I build my life around it? Of course it's possible they'll never get that shit again, but it would be foolish to not prepare ourselves mentally for the worst. If it's around the head they can't get more radiation. If it's in the same place than the previous one they'd would probably lose their ability speak, eat properly etc. The chemo probably made them infertile so if we'd like to have biological childer we have just a couple years to make the decision, and I have restrictions about that so we'd have to look for other opportunities anyways, and we should start looking for them now but we * can't *. If we move elsewhere, as we'd like to, the chances are they won't get as good treatment as here. I don't feel like I'm ready to consider all this in my mid 30's while I'm still trying to find my place in the world. So yeah, fuck cancer.

Non-existence.

Just thinking about not existing at all gives me this gnarly feeling of primeval fear.

Glad to know I'm not alone. Surely there's something behind the veil, right? Right?
- I don't really believe in an afterlife, as such, but I do hold on to the possibility that conciousness is less about our physical meat and something more quantum mechanical, and thus is a chance that none of the information that makes up our experiences and thoughts is ever just "deleted" it just becomes part of the universe.
- Maybe (I believe so, ofc, peep the username 😅), but you can't "know" (and yes, I understand epistemologically "objective truths" are at least somewhat unreachable but if I don't hold the apple whilst on Earth it will inevitably fall), you just have to take it on faith.
Meh, something that doesnt exsist doesnt feel... well... anything. Not so bad if you ask me. I get it would suck if youve been gifted with capitalism compatible dopamine receptors.

Time dilation.

Imagine you go to prison for a year. That’s one year you’re without your family and friends, and a year they’re without you. 1:1 time.

Now imagine you’re put to sleep and kept in a coma like state, fed by tubes. A computer or similar machine induces a dreamlike state that is indistinguishable from reality in which you will be imprisoned for 100 years. You never sleep. You never eat or drink. You never need to. And you can’t relax, you’re constantly being hunted or otherwise threatened. In the real world your family never left your side because in the real world, you’re only under for an hour.

Something similar happened to a guy on Star Trek (O’Brien on Deep Space Nine). Black Mirror did it a few times. And the fourth season of Sword Art Online (an anime) did it as well. Probably some others. Oh yeah, Interstellar. So you may have seen it.

Simpsons did a parody of the concept as well.
Like that short story about a cube

Liquid shit.

I think shit that is too-solid is scarier. At least with liquid I can resign myself to the throne.
Especially if it's sentient. And flying.

People who enjoy breaking down and hurting other people.

Having rabies and not knowing it until it's too late

Having it at all is already too late.
- Only once you have symptoms is it too late.
  You can have it for years before symptoms appear, though the average is two months. If you get vaccinated before then, you're good.

The normalisation of genocide, pantopicon surveillance, neoliberal fascism.

The moral framework of the West turning out to be meaningless propaganda.

The silver lining to this is that at least more and more people can see it for what it is, and the possibility for change increases, right? Right?!

That we may be living in a world where the super-rich and powerful from all countries have conspired to establish a kind of global absolutist monarchy of the utterly unscrupulous, in which fabricated conflicts between countries serve mostly to distract from the fact that those pulling the strings behind the scenes have already undermined every political system and are simply pitting people against each other in order to secure even more power for themselves through war, mass surveillance, propaganda, the rationing of essential goods, and blatant destruction.

Please note: This is a conspiracy theory with no solid evidence, not a fact, but a dystopia that unfortunately seems increasingly realistic these days.

As a counter point, when I see the super rich, they sll have huge egos. So while they may sceme together occasionslly when it suits them, I can't see them all conspiring together because they all seem to think they know what's best.
- Yes, that's true, of course, and it's the reason why no clear patterns can be found here. However, as is often the case with conspiracy theories, this could also be dismissed as a distraction from the conspiracy.
  But you are absolutely right: we should stick to the facts—this idea is just a nightmare scenario for me because even in democratic systems it would make freedom, self-determination, and above all the hope for better times almost completely impossible.

Surviving my children.

Death is the only correct answer. We've been singularly focused on avoiding it since we were single-cellular. Any other fear presented here represents a "what if" hypothesis about what's on the other side of it.

How would a society of immortal beings work, though, considering the already existing inequalities and rampant amoral antisocial nature of those currently in power? We kinda just have to make peace with death, right? I'm religious, and what I'm gonna say here might sound a tad heretical, but one life does feel like "enough" (of a gift, if you're religious) and I don't see a working alternative... but perhaps I'm not creative enough? 🤷
- I see nothing wrong with your logic. Acceptance of death is in some peoples opinion the main function of religion.

The morning after entirely way too much beer and spicy food

Username checks out.

Any disease that causes you to slowly go mad. Things like fatal insomnia or rabies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings

Rape and murder always top this kind of conversation. The other day i was thinking about japanese occupation and man, that shit must've been scariest shit for all the victim involved.
- I just finished a re-listen of Dan Carlin’s “Supernova in the East, which is like 30 hours covering everything Japan did during the great wars. It was insanity.

What I'm living with right now.

A failed democracy.

Being buried alive.

I mean, God judging that I was a "problematic child" and overall a bad person and sending me to Hell, I guess. 🙃

But, without talking about my religious beliefs, I'm afraid of doing something awful that I cannot fix or take back, in a moment of heightened emotion and lack of foresight, and hating myself forever for it. It's the reason I stopped getting into random fights, after all. In the end, when you die, you die, there's no more time for regrets, but if you kill then you have to live with yourself being a murderer, right? And I'm too self-aware to ignore it, and to see that if I ever started taking drugs to turn my brain and heart off I evidently have a problem and remembering the source of that problem would put me back to square one...

dick falls off

note: not a universal scare

windows usb detach sound plays out of nowhere

Homeless in the gutter on a cold night, shivering so hard it hurts like needles, wondering hoping to find the threshold of death in the hopeless misery of a lost battle of life in a dystopian world with no ethics or morality; surrounded by people that treat animals orders of magnitude better than me; completely indifferent and uncaring about my last breaths and thoughts as I pass alone in the freezing cold.

This is me but the animals are hurting, too.
Hey what’s up funny faces?! They call you Giggles right? Stop making snort noises my sides are splitting!

Elephant shit, because it is so much.

For me personally being out in nature with no cover and encountering a thunderstorm right above me. Most scary things are scary because I read about them at some point or heard about them in the news but the fear of getting struck by lightning is much more archaic.

My scariest shit was in a dream. I took a dump in a bucket in the garage, and when rising and turning to look at it, it started growing into this spider that soon outgrew the garage. I chose to wake up at that point as I'm not too keen on spiders.

That was my scariest shit. I cannot think of any scarier ones.

Ooooh you should read Cursed Bunny's first short story called The Head by Bora Chung.
Or maybe not, because that shit scared me when reading it.
- The Head by Bora Chung
  Looks awesome, great recommendation! 😆

Being tied to a chair, lights and a video camera in your face with someone behind you waving a long knife, hand on your shoulder chanting Allahu Akbar over and over...

Ebola

Read The Hot Zone bloody terrifying **

going to the park with your kids and letting them play on the playground while you sit 3 feet away.

then realizing you can't see them anymore, and no matter how loudly you call for them, they don't answer.

being a kid at the park and getting dragged off to a van where you're crying and screaming for your father but he doesn't look up to see you. as you're dragged into the van and the doors close, your world is encapsulated in darkness and you know you will never escape.

Being drafted during war and not dying in the first days

Compacted.