You don’t hear about mass hysteria often these days, but most of us know the term and have a general sense of the meaning. In very simple terms most of us would probably describe it as a condition where everyone goes a little crazy at the same time. There have been cases in the past of outbreaks of dancing sickness, for instance. 

Every year in the modern world at Halloween we trot out the myth of tampered Halloween candy. It has almost no basis in fact whatsoever but causes extreme paranoia among parents and a deluge of articles from the media about this thing which isn’t real and is arguably another example of annual mass hysteria.

How is it that whole groups of people can go a little loopy in the same way at the same time?  There can’t be no cause at all, right? Something has to cause it and damn it, we are here to get to the bottom of it. Let’s find out just how mass hysteria happens in the first place.

What is Mass Hysteria?

Mass hysteria is a condition characterized by a group of people all feeling sick or exhibiting similar symptoms when there is no physical or environmental reason or cause for the sickness. The word hysteria comes from the Greek word for womb and speaks to how, for generations, this was considered a condition that only affected women. It’s also where the word hysterical comes from, as in “stop being hysterical!” 

The fact is that it can affect both men and women but women and girls do seem more susceptible to it. For as yet unexplained reasons, cheerleaders are especially susceptible. The reasons for that are still unclear but it may be due to the fact that women are more conditioned to suppress stress than men, to not act out or be aggressive. That can potentially make it manifest in other ways, such as what has been called mass hysteria. 

Because of that ingrained sexism, the term is more properly known these days as mass psychogenic illness. That’s defined as “a social phenomenon, that consists of collective anxiety due to a perceived threat and can culminate in a cascade of symptoms suggestive of organic disease without an identifiable cause.”

In simple terms, psychogenic illness happens when you think something has happened. You may think you are exposed to an illness or a toxin, or that an event has occurred even though it has not. We’ll cover some examples that have nothing to do with sickness at all, but rather things groups of people believe they were seeing or experiencing that just didn’t happen. 

One of the key components of a psychogenic illness and how it plays out is that the people involved would not normally behave that way. In psychological terms, it’s similar to how mob mentality works. In large groups, people can act contrary to how they would as individuals. Part of this is because, when you’re part of a group, you do lose touch with your individuality to a degree. There is also a loss of self-awareness and a heightening of emotions. In crowds, these are usually intense emotions. You’re going to be excited, maybe even angry, or fearful. The emotions of a crowd tend to feed the crowd and that can lead to negative consequences.

There are examples of mass hysteria dating back hundreds of years. They occur all over the world and there don’t seem to be any barriers to cultures or groups which are going to be susceptible to it.

What Causes a Mass Psychogenic Illness?

One of the hardest things to do when it comes to explaining a mass psychogenic illness is to account for what caused it in the first place. Because a mass psychogenic illness can take the form of people thinking they’re sick with a disease to thinking that there’s a monkey man loose in town, killing people, it’s hard to say there’s one specific trigger.

For instance, a group of people could be exposed to an unusual smell and think they are now infected by some kind of toxin as happened at a Tennessee school in 1998. As we mentioned in the earlier definition, a perceived threat can be all that it is. So that could be thinking that a virus has been released or even that aliens are loose, a monster is in town, or the government is being illegally overthrown.

In 2014 in Colombia, there was an epidemic among pre-teen and teen girls that lasted for months. 240 girls were hospitalized with symptoms that ranged from nausea to dizziness to fainting and convulsions. The locals decided it must be a side effect of the Gardasil vaccine and protested. But the President assured the people it was not because that has literally happened nowhere else. The real culprit? Mass psychogenic illness. 

These girls had an honest belief that they were sick, it’s not fakery or deception in any way. Their symptoms are real but the illness is entirely psychological and transmitted through psychological means. 

Victims are usually near one another – schools, workplaces, and things that force you to be together with others. Physical symptoms usually involve fainting or seizures but also nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, headaches, and so on.

Data suggests a psychogenic illness will start with one person and then is most likely to spread to people who see them afflicted and know them well. If the first person is considered high status, such as a very popular student at school, it will affect even more people. 

That school in Tennessee was thoroughly investigated as were the people who fell ill. No toxic agent was ever identified, but the investigation showed that most victims saw another person get sick and then began to feel sick themselves. 

In May 2006, a group of hundreds of teens in Portugal all reported illness including a rash, dizziness, and breathing difficulties. The cause was determined to be “Strawberries with Sugar,” a popular teen drama TV series in which the same thing had just happened as a storyline. 

Anxiety seems to be a major trigger for mass psychogenic disorder. The more stress you’re under, the more things around you that cause worry, the more susceptible you’ll be. In fact, the condition is sometimes called “conversion disorder” as stress or trauma are converted into physical symptoms.  If you see other people falling ill, if you or your world is in a time of great upheaval or stress like the end of the school year and exams for those kids in Portugal, it can exacerbate the situation and allow it to take hold more easily.  

The cause of the anxiety can also be very culturally significant. For instance, in African nations, you’re more likely to see a fear of the devil or evil spirits being behind what causes it. In the West, it can be a fear of chemical spills, toxic fumes, and other more tangible things of that nature.

Mass Hysteria, Mass Suggestion, and Bad Media

In the modern world, mass suggestion and mass hysteria are spread more easily than they were in the past. Where many instances back throughout history had to take place out of school, convent, or something like that, now we can all be linked by the media so the spread of an illness that may not be real can happen that much more easily.

In 2021, German researchers discovered that social media was actually helping to spread a mass psychogenic outbreak of Tourette’s Syndrome, or at least what sufferers thought was Tourettes. Videos from Instagram, TikTok, and other social media sites began to spread after one initial video of a person who seemed to exaggerate their symptoms, intentionally or otherwise, went viral. That happened in Germany but another outbreak was linked to a Canadian TikToker with Tourette’s, as well.

After that first video, there was a sharp rise in people going to see doctors with concerns about Tourettes but many of them displayed identical tics to the viral video, including the same vocal tics which were all unusual like “fries” and “Heil Hitler.” The tics only displayed when the afflicted were being asked to do things they didn’t want to do. Since none of the symptoms matched how Tourette’s actually manifests, it was soon ruled out and a new diagnosis was made – mass social media-induced illness.

Other conditions, like dissociative identity disorder, have also seen an increase in self-diagnosis thanks to TikTok trends that draw in billions of views. Teens see these videos, identify something they can relate to, and then may begin to manifest more symptoms based on what they’ve seen. Bipolar disorder and various autism spectrum disorders also can manifest in this way. 

In 2016, the media helped spread the story of a woman hallucinating people trying to take the roof off of her car. They reported that the responding officer as well as others who had contact with the woman all began to hallucinate as well. People were hospitalized and the local ER was put under quarantine. One story told of doctors baffled by the mystery illness spread by touch. Another headline said doctors confirmed the spread by touch but the article never says that at all. 

In reality, there had been no quarantine at all. Anyone who went into the ER was released soon after. There were not five people having hallucinations at all, just one. Others had vaguely flu-like symptoms including someone who recently was exposed to the flu. But the story spread quickly and was reported as far away as the Philippines. Most of the information came from the first article to report on it as breaking news with no actual quotes from involved sources and much of the info seems to have been exaggerated or just made up. 

Examples of Mass Hysteria in History

In recent history, one of the most well-known cases of psychogenic illness seems to be Havana Syndrome. Dozens of people, usually employees of the US Government stationed at embassies around the world, reported similar symptoms after the first outbreak in 2017. Dizziness, ringing in the ears, confusion, fatigue, etc. No physical cause has ever been found.

In 2016 parts of America and even beyond were gripped by a clown panic, a belief that sinister clowns were trying to lure children into the woods. Nothing was ever confirmed but soon there were sightings of clowns in multiple states. This was exacerbated by people dressing up as clowns to just stand around in cities. They didn’t do anything, but it fueled the fire that clowns were doing dangerous things. 

In 1999, mass hysteria over tainted Coca-Cola in Belgium caused the company to dump hundreds of millions of dollars in product even though nothing was wrong with it. The problem with a psychogenic illness is that the symptoms are real, the people are very sane, and it is hard to convince a person that they are not sick when they are literally sick. Tell someone that they’re imagining things they know to be real and they just won’t believe you. 

The Satanic Panic of the ’80s was a widespread case of mass hysteria that became so pervasive it’s still part of pop culture and influences movies and shows like Stranger Things. People were convinced Satan worship was everywhere and there were cases of serious abuse accusations and ruined lives and innocent people were convicted of horrible crimes that never happened at all, they were only imagined.

Back in 1837, London saw the rise of Spring-Heeled Jack, which still exists as a cryptid to this day. Stories of a sinister being with fierce claws who could leap across rooftops spread across the city. Women claim to have been attacked, and a man was even arrested but ultimately not convicted because the victim claimed he could breathe fire when the man in custody could not. 

America had its Salem witch trials which were also the result of mass hysteria, religious fewer, and probably a bit of good, old-fashioned hatefulness. The end result was the same, however. Innocent people being accused of horrible crimes and even being executed for them.

Anytime you have a group of people together during a stressful situation, which can be as simple as the stress of school to as complex as the stress of a pandemic, religious oppression, or some other societal ills, you have a prime breeding ground for a potential mass psychogenic illness. If you’re keeping track, that means anytime, anywhere. And the fact is, these do happen frequently, all over the world. Often they’re small and isolated and we don’t hear about them, but if you ever come across a situation where a mystery illness is spreading and there doesn’t seem to be any cause, keep in mind that things may not be any more complicated than that.

Many people already have a healthy fear of going to the doctor. Unfortunately, that fear may be well-founded, especially when you consider the horrific mistakes that happen every day in hospitals around the world. Most people have heard horror stories of medical instruments being left in patients, a common mistake that happens to an estimated 4,000 people every year in the US. However, there are many other medical and surgical errors that still happen to unsuspecting patients, often causing severe injuries or death.

10Surgery On The Wrong Person

This is a mistake that the National Quality Forum considers a “never event.” This means that it’s a serious reportable event (but not necessarily something that’s completely preventable) that is hoped to never happen in a hospital. But in many cases, the problem is preventable, like when surgeries are performed on the wrong person. Even with new protocols, there have still been reported errors in which the wrong patient has received an invasive surgery. In a prostate biopsy mix-up, one man had his healthy prostate removed while the man who needed his cancerous organ removed was left untreated.

One of the most horrifying examples in recent history was when a woman woke up just before her organs were harvested for transplant, like something out of a gory horror movie. Not only did they mistake her for someone else, they mistook a living person for a corpse. Luckily, the 41-year-old woman opened her eyes just as surgeons were about to remove the organs. Although the surgery was stopped in time, the fact that the surgical staff was about to remove organs from a patient who was still alive points to a plethora of mistakes that are horrendous to contemplate.

9Air Embolisms

The very air that keeps humans alive can also kill them during surgery. Air that is allowed to enter the bloodstream during surgery can cause a blockage in the circulatory system, an event known as a venous air embolism. Air embolisms in surgery are rare, but they still occur more often than they should. Air embolisms can cause a pulmonary embolism—or blockage in the lungs—which is the leading cause of preventable hospital-related deaths.

Venous air embolisms from catheters have a 30 percent fatality rate. Even people who survive can be left with permanent physical disabilities, such as severe brain damage. What is most frightening about air embolisms is that they can happen during very routine surgeries, yet are extremely deadly. For example, a seemingly simple dental implant surgery recently turned fatal when an oral surgeon gave air embolisms to five patients in one year, killing three of them. The air is thought to have been introduced into the patients’ bloodstreams through the hollow dental drill.

8Blood Transfusions

Receiving a blood transfusion during a hospital stay is common—it’s estimated that 1 in 10 hospital stays where a medical procedure is performed will involve a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, this routine aspect of medical care can also be extremely dangerous when mistakes are made, most commonly when the wrong blood is given to the wrong patient. Out of every 10,000 units of blood that are transfused to patients, it is thought that one of these units is the wrong blood for the intended patient.

The most common mistakes in blood transfusions revolve around identifying the blood and patient correctly. Blood can be incorrectly labeled when collected, the wrong blood can be dispensed, or medical personnel can administer the wrong blood during surgery or at the patient’s bedside. From July 2008 to July 2009, there were 535 blood transfusion errors reported through the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority alone. Fourteen of these mistakes resulted in serious adverse effects, and one patient died during surgery.

7Wrong Surgeries

One of the surgical mistakes that’s considered a “never event” is when patients receive the wrong surgery. In a study of medical lawsuits, 25 percent were for patients who received a different surgery than what they were scheduled for. Over a 20-year period, 2,447 lawsuits were filed for surgeries that were performed for the wrong procedure.

Despite all the safety procedures that have been put in place to ensure that wrong surgeries do not happen, they continue to occur more often than acceptable. One woman had her fallopian tube removed instead of her appendix, while another patient received a heart operation that was not needed. One of the most tragic stories is that of a pregnant woman who was scheduled to have her appendix removed in 2011. Instead, her ovary was removed, leaving the infected appendix inside her. The woman was readmitted to the hospital three weeks later when the mistake was discovered, but unfortunately, she miscarried and died on the operating table.

6Wrong Medication Or Dose

Most people assume that the medicine they receive from their doctor or pharmacist is the correct drug at the correct dose, but millions of people every day get the wrong prescription. Out of over three billion prescriptions that are annually doled out in the US, it is estimated that 51.5 million errors occur—that’s 4 out of every 250 prescriptions filled. The danger is twofold: Patients could receive harmful drugs that they don’t need, or they could not receive the drug that they do need. Either case can be fatal.

These medication errors happen at both pharmacies and hospitals. One tragic example is when two premature twins died due a nurse’s fatal mistake. The babies, who were born at 27 weeks at Stafford Hospital, were given a lethal dose of morphine—650–800 micrograms instead of the 50–100 micrograms they were supposed to receive.

In another fatal drug error, a 79-year-old man was given the paralytic drug pancuronium—one of the drugs used in lethal injections—instead of an antacid for his upset stomach at North Shore Medical Center in Miami, causing the man to become unresponsive within 30 minutes.

5Infections And Contaminated Medical Supplies

Most people go to the hospital to be treated for illnesses, yet this is also where many diseases and infections originate. Exposure to deadly illnesses through contaminated medical instruments or poor staff hygiene isn’t something you hear about too often, but it occurs with alarming frequency. Between 2012 and 2014, dozens of patients were exposed to the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from contaminated surgical instruments in at least four different hospitals in the US.

Infection from contaminated equipment is another “never event” and also one which is completely preventable. According to the most recent US Center for Disease Control’s Healthcare-Associated Infections Progress Report, preventable infections from hospitals in the US are improving but are still too prevalent. It is estimated that 1 in 25 hospital patients contract an infection while in the hospital, with about 75,000 people dying due to these infections every year.

4Misdiagnosis

It’s understandable that extremely rare diseases might be misdiagnosed. The popular TV show House was based on exactly that premise. However, there is no excuse when symptoms of common ailments are overlooked due to incompetence.

It is estimated that 80,000 Americans die each year from ailments that are misdiagnosed. One woman went to the emergency room complaining of neck pain and a headache, but was having trouble vocalizing her symptoms. The rushed emergency room doctor dismissed the issue as just a muscle pain, releasing her with only pain medication. The next day, the woman was readmitted to the same emergency room and died of cardiac arrest from the stroke she had apparently been having the day before. The doctor who had treated her the previous day admits that he should have recognized the signs of stroke, blaming himself for her death.

3Urgency

Anyone who has been to the emergency room lately knows how crowded they have become. However, you’d assume that those in need of immediate assistance would still receive the care they need. This is not always the case. Too often, patients are left untreated when the medical help they need is just down the hall.

One 39-year-old woman was admitted to a Bronx, New York hospital just before 5:00 AM after complaining of abdominal pain. Although the woman was listed as “urgent” and blood tests were drawn, she remained untreated until well into the afternoon. Finally, the physician in charge of her case ordered a CAT scan and noticed fluid accumulation. They brought the woman in for surgery to search for an embolism. She died on the operating table, 13 hours after she was admitted to the hospital for a treatment that she should have received within minutes. What makes this story even more tragic is that, if they had followed up immediately on the initial blood tests, they would have easily recognized that she had internal bleeding and she could still be alive today.

2In-Hospital Accidents

The Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHRQ) estimates that close to a million patients each year sustain a fall while they are under medical supervision in a hospital. The agency estimates that about one-third of these falls can and should be prevented.

The misuse of bed rails in hospitals and long-term care facilities is also a major concern. The FDA has documented almost 500 deaths from the use of bed rails, admitting that there are probably many more deaths that have not been correctly attributed to these devices. Patients who are very ill and have limited mobility can become wedged in between their hospital mattress and the bed rail, causing suffocation and strangulation.

1Operating On The Wrong Body Part

Surgeries on the wrong body part—such as amputating the wrong appendage or removing the wrong kidney—are some of the most common surgical mistakes. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study which estimated that 1,300–2,700 of these “wrong body part” surgeries are performed every year in the US—that’s about 40 per week. Even with precautions, such as physically marking the body before surgery, these inexcusable surgical errors still occur.

In Rhode Island, one hospital performed three brain surgeries on the wrong part of the brain in less than a year. All three incidences involved the same brain surgeon. In 2010, a man in Florida had his healthy kidney removed instead of his gall bladder, which was the intended organ. The surgeon was fined only $5,000 for his error.

Rebecca is a full-time freelance writer from Washington state. Visit her at her LinkedIn or view her freelance writing profile on Elance.com.

While people might worry about the health of organs like the heart, lungs, and liver, not many people think about their eyes. But our vision can be affected by some very strange diseases and conditions indeed.

10Cat Eye Syndrome

An extremely rare chromosomal disease, cat eye syndrome appears at birth and is a lifelong condition. The syndrome was named after its signature symptom—an absence of tissue in the eye, which causes the pupil to narrow and push itself into the iris. However, not all sufferers of cat eye syndrome actually experience this ocular abnormality.

Unfortunately, cat eye syndrome also affects the kidneys, heart, ear, and skeletal system. It may also cause hyperactivity and mild mental disability. The condition can often be detected early on, as it causes growth delays before birth.

Treatment varies depending on the phenotype of the sufferer and the severity of the symptoms. The ocular abnormality cannot be reversed, but eyesight can be improved with glasses or other prescription eyewear.

9Eye Paralysis

In every case of eye paralysis, the eye loses all sensory and motor functions—and it’s a much more common condition than you’d think. It’s usually a symptom of various diseases, such as diabetes, peripheral artery disease, a tumor in the pituitary gland, or a cardiovascular problem. It is also associated with Kearns-Sayre syndrome, which causes pigment to build up behind the eye and comes with a horrible bonus of heart disease. Other signs of Kearns-Sayre are seizures and deafness, which usually strike in late adolescence. In rarer cases, eye paralysis is a side effect of Moebius syndrome, which paralyzes the entire face. Treatment for eye paralysis depends on the underlying cause—if the cause is cured, the paralysis will be as well.

8Hippus

More of a natural occurrence than a medical condition, hippus can be observed in anybody. When you shine a light into a person’s eye, their pupil will enlarge and contract at a slow pace, as it adjusts to the new, brighter environment. This is the pupil’s normal way of reacting. In fact, if hippus doesn’t occur under these circumstances, that may be a sign of medical problems in itself.

But when hippus occurs without the help of light, it can indicate a wide range of conditions, including neurosyphilis and multiple sclerosis. It has also been linked to renal failure and cirrhosis, and even cerebral tumors.

7Eye Tumors

Normally appearing behind your eye, ocular tumors are unpleasant enough to begin with—but are even weirder when they appear on the outside of the eye. These types of tumors, called limbal dermoids, are almost always benign and usually don’t cause any major vision problems, since they rarely cover the center of the cornea. Doctors who have treated limbal dermoids (a typical ophthalmologist may see one or two cases in their lifetime) say that patients often don’t request surgery to have them removed, because the tumors don’t harm them, aside from the possibility of mild astigmatism.

Some limbal dermoids will grow hair follicles, cartilage, and even sweat glands. One anonymous Iranian man had an eye tumor removed after it sprouted several black hairs, which were causing him mild discomfort.

6Ocular Herpes

Ocular herpes is exactly what it sounds like: herpes of the eye. It can be caused by the varicella-zoster virus or by herpes simplex type 1. These are distinct from the virus that causes genital herpes and ocular herpes cannot be sexually transmitted (the majority of people will actually be exposed to some form of herpes during their lifetime, mostly without noticing it). Ocular herpes can appear as a sore or bumps on the eyelid. These sores will usually heal within about a week, but until then they can cause redness, headaches, and photophobia.

More unusually, the virus can also affect the cornea itself, resulting in more severe versions of the usual symptoms. In very rare circumstances, herpes can even appear inside of the eye, causing temporary vision loss.

5Red Eyes In Albinos

Albinism is a condition caused by insufficient production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to your skin and hair. This melanin deficiency also affects the eyes, which can appear red or pink as a result.

Since albinos lack pigment, their eyes aren’t really red. Instead, the iris becomes transparent enough that the blood vessels behind it show through, creating the reddish color. Unfortunately, the lack of melanin means the retina is less efficient at absorbing light. This causes photophobia, an uncomfortable or painful response to bright light, and can lead to eye damage. Albinism can also inhibit the eye’s development and is strongly associated with astigmatism and other vision problems.

4Star In The Eye

Nine months after being punched in the face, an Austrian man went to the doctor complaining of deteriorating vision. When the doctor examined his eye, he was surprised to find a perfect star-shaped cataract. It’s common for cataracts to form after a blow to the eye, since the shock wave can disrupt the structure of the lens, causing it to become opaque in places. The cataract’s unique shape was a beautiful coincidence. Doctors eventually used sound waves to break up the cataract, which was then removed and replaced with an artificial lens.

A much more serious case of a star-shaped cataract occurred in California in 2004. An electrician’s shoulder came into contact with an exposed wire, causing 14,000 volts to course through his body—including his optic nerve. The initial shock of the electricity created the unusual star shapes. The cataracts were eventually removed, but the damage to the optic nerve was unfortunately permanent, leaving the man with limited sight in both eyes.

3Heterochromia

A fairly well known condition, heterochromia is a difference in color between the eyes. Most cases are hereditary, but it can be acquired later in life. Heterochromia itself is fairly benign, although it can be a symptom of an underlying condition like Waardenburg syndrome.

Heterochromia can manifest itself in different ways. For instance, not all heterochromia cases involve two totally different-colored eyes. Some people have two different colors within the same eye—for example, with sectoral heterochromia, you could have two blue eyes, but a quarter of an iris might be red or brown. The third type (other than complete heterochromia, which is described above), features a circular ring of color around the outside of the pupil, and is known as central heterochromia.

2Polycoria

True polycoria is one of the rarest conditions in the world—there have been only a handful of cases in recorded history. Even exactly how it occurs is still unknown. People with true polycoria have two or more pupils in one eye. The pupils are contained in the same iris, but have their own sphincter muscles and are capable of operating independently of each other.

Much more common is a condition called pseudopolycoria. People with this condition simply appear to have two or more pupils. However, the additional “pupils” are merely holes in the iris, lacking a pupillary sphincter, and do not function as true pupils. One Massachusetts woman appeared to have five pupils in one eye. The condition apparently did not cause her any major vision problems, other than mild discomfort in very bright light. Other than mild vision loss, polycoria doesn’t affect the inner workings of the eye.

1Haemolacria

Maybe one of the strangest conditions in medicine, haemolacria is better known as crying blood. In 2009, a teenager named Calvino Inman randomly began weeping blood one day. Reasonably thinking he was dying, Inman was rushed to the hospital and had a CT scan, MRI, and ultrasound. None of these revealed any abnormalities. Today, researchers are still puzzled as to why Calvino keeps bleeding from his eyes.

Another sufferer, Michael Spann, felt a violent pain in his head and suddenly began bleeding from his eyes, nose, and mouth. Ever since then, he has wept blood at least once or twice a week. Spann’s life has been badly impacted: “Any job I get, I lose, because my eyes start bleeding and they can’t keep me on.” Oddly, both Spann and Inman are from Tennessee.

A 2004 study looked at four children with haemolacria, all of whom eventually recovered without any medical treatment. It is unclear what caused Spann and Inman to develop the condition, but Spann at least appears to be recovering—he used to weep blood up to three times a day.

Mankind has always made predictions about the future, and quite a few people throughout history have claimed to know what lies ahead. Even during the 20th century, sci-fi writers made some surprisingly accurate predictions about the computerized 21st-century space age.

Then there are the doomsday prophets who, over the centuries, have repeatedly predicted the end of the world. Given the hundreds of end dates provided, we fortunately seem to have a pretty good success rate for surviving apocalypse theories. Some predictions were based upon close analysis of biblical references. Others involved planetary movements and collisions with comets. Many were just plain weird, to the point of even changing the date when the anticipated apocalypse failed to arrive.

Today’s Internet age has provided a means of delivering these theories to a vast audience within a short time frame. With websites dedicated to imaginary planets, fake news sites, and social media shares, these messages of imminent doom can quickly go viral. It’s surprising how many people have actually believed the world was going to end tomorrow. Again.

10 Y2K
2000

As the calendars clicked over to the year 2000, a combination of uncertainty about the dawning of a new era and widespread scaremongering saw millions of people hoarding supplies and bunkering down for the end of the world as we know it.

Some believed that computer coding issues meant that programs would be unable to recognize the year 2000, crashing systems and causing worldwide chaos. Many feared that on the stroke of January 1, 2000, computers would recognize the new date as 1900.

Millions of dollars were spent worldwide preparing for “Y2K” or the “Millennium Bug,” which was supposed to affect everything from banking and retail to emergency services and airplane safety systems. Even the skeptics were hoarding extra groceries, water, and flashlights “just in case” essential services actually did fail.

On the stroke of midnight, the predicted global meltdown failed to eventuate, and the world as we know it continued to go on.^[1]

9 Nibiru Collision
2003

The fictional planet “Nibiru” (also referred to as “Planet X”) first failed to collide with Earth on May 27, 2003. Nibiru is said to be a planet which sits on the outskirts of our solar system. Some followers claim that the planet’s orbit is controlled by a giant UFO.

Nancy Lieder claimed in 1995 that a brain implant enabled her to communicate with aliens in the Zeta Reticuli system. She believed it was her chosen mission to warn the world of the impending end to humanity.^[2]

NASA scientists have repeatedly refuted the existence of the planet, suggesting that at most, it’s a small, inconsequential comet, if it’s anything at all. This has sparked claims of a cover-up from believers in Nibiru.

A number of dates have been proposed for the apocalypse since 2003. When the planet fails to arrive, the date is shifted to a new estimated time of arrival. It would seem that Lieber’s extraterrestrial communications may be a little unreliable.

8 Live On The Internet
2008

Ohio-based pastor Ronald Weinland took to the Internet to warn everyone that the world would end on September 30, 2008. The minister of the “Preparing for the Kingdom of God” church also released a book in 2006, stating that he and his wife had been appointed as witnesses to the end of the world.

Citing biblical references and a complex series of events which would occur in the lead-up to Armageddon in a series of sermons streamed live on the Internet, Weinland urged his followers to prepare for the end in 2008.

Unfortunately, there had been an error in Weinland’s calculations, so the apocalypse didn’t appear as expected. Under his new calculations, it was due on May 7, 2012. After that, it was May 19, 2013. Weinland was found guilty of tax evasion in 2012.^[3]

7 Catastrophic Earthquake
2011

Evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping advised the world that it was due to end on May 21, 2011. His radio ministry invested in an extensive advertising campaign to warn the world of impending doom. Billboards, motor vehicles, and radio advertising spread the word that the end of the world was nigh.

According to Mr. Camping’s revelations, true believers would ascend into Heaven on that date, while the rest of the world would suffer a catastrophic earthquake. A number of followers divested themselves of their worldly goods in preparation, only to be sadly disappointed when the day passed without the forecast doom.

A review of the scripture revealed to Mr. Camping that he had failed to factor in God’s mercy, which would extend the date of impending doom until October that year. Mr. Camping’s previous predictions of a 1994 apocalypse had also failed to come to pass.^[4]

6 Comet Elenin
2011

Throughout history, the appearance of comets has always been seen as a harbinger of doom. So when Russian astronomer Leonard Elenin first spotted Comet Elenin late in 2010, the doomsday theorists hit the Internet. The armchair astronomers predicted everything from earthquakes and tidal waves to a full-on collision with Earth between August and October 2011.

This was despite the fact that the comet was some 647 million kilometers (402 million mi) from Earth when it was first spotted. Mainstream news all but ignored the existence of the comet, as there wasn’t really very much to report, according to the facts provided by space scientists.

NASA astronomers assured the world that the comet posed no threat to life as we know it.^[5] In fact, the object broke into small pieces during its journey through the inner solar system in 2011.

5 A Transformation Of Sixes
2012

Followers of the Miami-based sect “Growing in Grace” proclaimed the end of the world would occur on June 30, 2012. According to their leader, Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, on that date, his followers were to be transformed into magical beings that would fly and walk through walls. The cult leader claimed he was a reincarnation of Jesus, a fact which was revealed to him through talking to the prophets.

According to the cult, on June 30, 2012, the Earth’s rotation would accelerate to a speed of 107,289 kilometers per hour (66,666 mph). Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda turned 66 in 2012. All cult members were tattooed with the numbers “666.” These inexplicable coincidences all pointed to the inevitable end of the world as we know it on the predicted date.^[6]

Advertising billboards were erected to proclaim the date on which his followers would be taking over the world. As usual, July 1, 2012, arrived without incident.

4 Maya Doomsday
2012

According to some scholars, the ancient Maya calendar indicated that the end of the world was coming shortly before Christmas 2012. Misinterpretations of the ancient calendar suggested that it ended on December 21, 2012, signaling the end of time.

So popular was the “2012 Phenomenon” that many were pointing to natural disasters and world events at the time as indications that the prophecy was unfolding. Once again, the Internet was flooded with theories of galactic collisions that would mark the end of the world on that date.

Yet again, NASA scientists were quick to debunk the doomsday theories, seeking experts to explain the complexities of the Maya calendar. The Maya perception of time was infinite, and therefore their calendar could not be said to pinpoint a specific date in time or be read in the context of our modern calendars. Nor were there any other indications in Maya culture of a cataclysm on that date or of any potentially Earth-shattering comets or planets currently on NASA’s radar.

NASA was so confident that the Earth was safe that they issued their press release a day early. As was the case with the previous predictions, the world continued to turn on December 22, 2012.^[7]

3 Rasputin’s Apocalypse
2013

Grigori Rasputin was a holy man most famous for his connections with the ill-fated Russian Royal family. Dubbed the “mad monk,” Rasputin’s “mystical powers” were claimed to have cured the Russian prince of the blood disease hemophilia. In letters to the Russian royal family during the revolution, he made a number of accurate “predictions,” such as his death at the hands of government officials and the subsequent murder of the Russian royal family.

These, however, may have been more of an astute understanding of the political turmoil of the time than any mystical revelation. Among the predictions in his final letters was the suggestion that the “second coming” would occur on August 23, 2013, and that the Earth would be consumed by fire—yet another apocalypse that failed to materialize.^[8]

2 Blood Moon Prophecy
2014

In 2014, we once again managed to escape the “Blood Moon Prophecy.” In fact, this was the 62nd time in 2,000 years that we have escaped a lunar-induced apocalypse, specifically the end that’s supposed to come after a series of four lunar eclipses, referred to as a tetrad. Biblical scholars have long cited references from Acts and Revelation where “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood” as a biblical verification that the lunar eclipse signifies the imminent end of the world.

Christian pastor Mark Bilz predicted that a series of eclipses in 2014 would mark the beginning of the apocalypse, while John Hagee, author of Four Blood Moons, also suggested that the string of blood moons would mark the end of the world. Both these predictions attracted wide attention, with some people actually hoarding supplies in preparation for the impending apocalypse. However, like every lunar eclipse before them, nothing happened other than the Moon being temporarily shadowed.^[9]

1 Nibiru (Again)
2015

In 2015, Nibiru was once again threatening life on Earth, with claims that its collision course with our planet would end on September 23 that year. According to conspiracy theorist David Meade, NASA was hiding information on the planet from the general public.

Biblical verses indicated that the apocalypse would definitely arrive shortly. When Nibiru appeared to miss its connecting flight in September 2015, the estimated time of arrival was revised to October 15 that year. Nibiru’s latest no-show was on April 23, 2018.

NASA once again continued to reassure worried stargazers that Nibiru was nothing more than an Internet hoax. Given the number of times the mythical planet has failed to show up this decade, you tend to believe them.

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper editor who provides articles to online publications and through her travel blog.

China is known for many things, but they’re perhaps most infamous for their counterfeit items. From clothes to bags to electronics—even whole towns—China has it all. However, they’ve recently taken the counterfeit business a little further and have entered the disturbing realm of counterfeit foods.

10Plastic Rice

If there’s one food that should be impossible to counterfeit, it would be rice. But the Chinese did it anyway. China’s fake rice is also called plastic rice. It’s made from potatoes, sweet potatoes, and synthetic resin molded into the shape of real rice. The faux rice was commonly sold in Chinese markets, especially in Taiyuan in Shaanxi Province. The rice remained as hard as stone even after it was cooked and did not digest easily. It’s also pretty dangerous, since consuming three bowls of it is equal to consuming one bag of vinyl, or one plastic bag.

Aside from producing artificial rice, dishonest Chinese rice sellers also add flavors to ordinary rice and sell them to the unsuspecting public as “Wuchang rice,” which is more costly and generally considered one of the better brands of rice sold in Chinese markets. Only 800,000 tons of this Wuchang rice are produced annually, while about 10 million tons are sold. In other words, more than 9 million tons are fake.

9Rat Mutton

When they’re not tampering with rice, dishonest Chinese food sellers are adding chemicals to meat from rats, minks, and foxes and selling them as mutton. The scheme was so popular and successful that the police arrested more than 900 people and seized about 20,000 tons of this meat, all within three months. One of the sellers, a man named Wei, even raked in more than £1 million from sales alone. He mixed fox, rat, and mink meat with nitrate, gelatin, and carmine before selling it in markets to unsuspecting buyers.

Chinese police posted a tutorial on Sina Weibo, China’s biggest microblogging site, to teach people how to differentiate between real and fake mutton. While the difference between them is hard to tell at first glance, the white and red parts of real mutton don’t separate after getting thawed, torn by hand, or boiled, while the fake meat does.

8Chemical Tofu

Tofu, also called soya curd, is a cheese-like food made from a mixture of soy milk and a coagulant. Chinese authorities recently closed down two factories in Wuhan, Hubei Province for selling fake tofu, which was made by mixing various chemicals together. One worker confessed that they combined soy protein with flour, monosodium glutamate, pigment, and ice to make the fake tofu before packaging it and selling it under the name of another company that was producing real tofu.

Using soy protein to make tofu isn’t the most dastardly of deeds, but not all the schemes were so innocent. Another criminal gang made counterfeit tofu by adding rongalite, an industrial bleaching agent that’s been linked to cancer. Supposedly, the chemical made their tofu chewier and brighter. The syndicate was headed by three cousins who sold about 100 tons of the tainted product to the unsuspecting public. When police raided their factory, they found employees making the counterfeit food with grimy, unwashed equipment.

7Formaldehyde And Duck Blood

Duck blood tofu is a delicacy in China. It’s made from blood extracted from slaughtered ducks. The blood is then heated until it thickens, allowing it to be cut into squares and sold. That’s strange already, but it gets worse: Sellers have been known to mix deadly ingredients like formaldehyde with much cheaper pig or buffalo blood, then sell the concoction as duck blood.

Chinese authorities once broke a fake duck-blood ring that was being run by a couple in Jiangsu Province. In this instance, the couple wasn’t using pig or buffalo meat. Instead, they used chicken blood mixed with inedible dye and materials used for printing. One ton of fake duck blood was confiscated. The use of fake duck blood for duck blood tofu is so prevalent in China today that customers have become pretty good at spotting the difference between the real stuff and the fake stuff.

6Adulterated Honey

There are two types of counterfeit honey: the adulterated one, which is a mixture of real honey and sugar syrup, beetroot syrup, or rice syrup, and the fake honey, which looks more like real honey than real honey itself. It is made from a mixture of water, sugar, alum, and coloring.

One kilogram (2.2 lb) of fake honey can be produced for just 10 yuan (about $1.60) and sold for as much as 60 yuan ($9.50). About 70 percent of the honey sold in China’s Jinan Province is fake and, as usual, Chinese newspapers have offered instructions on how to differentiate between real and fake honey.

Police raided several fake honey production sites where 38 buckets of honey were seized. China is the world’s biggest producer of honey, which it exports to other countries. A study revealed that 10 percent of the honey sold in France was fake and most likely originated in either East Europe or China. US Customs also busted a fake honey-smuggling ring made up of US honey producers. It was discovered that they had been bringing fake honey into the US from China via Australia.

5Contaminated Bottled Water

Selling fake honey is one thing; messing with people’s water supplies is a whole other criminal ballpark. Police have recently uncovered a scam in which plastic bottles are filled with tap water or poorly treated water and sealed with quality standard seals—the same used by genuine bottled water companies. Among other things, the bottles have been found to contain E. coli and a stew of harmful fungi. More than 100 million bottles of this bacterial soup are sold annually, with the sellers raking in more than 1 billion yuan (about $120 million). For comparison, about 200 million bottles of water (both genuine and counterfeit) are produced in Beijing annually.

The bottled water scam is not new and has been going on since at least 2002. It costs producers about three yuan to produce fake water, which can then be sold for nearly 10 yuan. Real bottled water costs six yuan to produce.

4Rotten Rice Noodles

China’s counterfeit rice noodles are made from rotten, stale, and moldy grains which are usually used as animal feed. These are then mixed with cancer-causing additives such as sulfur dioxide to get the final product. And this isn’t a one-man show—almost 50 factories in Dongguan city were found to be in on the scheme, churning out 500,000 kilograms (1.1 million lb) of counterfeited rice noodles per day. Another inspection of 35 other factories showed that 30 of them were producing substandard rice noodles. Producers bleached spoiled rice and mixed it with additives to get triple the amount of rice noodles.

Aside from using stale rice, some producers use flour, starch, and corn powders instead. These noodles usually have a very low protein content—as low as 1 percent compared to 7 percent for pure rice noodles and 4.5 percent for mixed rice noodles. Some pigs that were fed these fake rice noodles ended up with weak limbs and several other problems.

3Clenbuterol-Laced Pork

Clenbuterol, also called “lean meat powder,” is an additive added to animal feed. It burns fat in the animals but can cause sickness, heart problems, unnecessary sweating, and dizziness in humans. Its use in animal feed began in the 1980s, but was banned in 2002 because of its health risks. However, some meat-processing companies still give it to their pigs because it makes their pork leaner, and leaner pork fetches more money on the market.

To make matters worse, one of the companies involved is China’s largest meat processor and a subsidiary of Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development Company. The company issued an apology for the act, then recalled more than 2,000 tons of their pork. Twenty-four workers were sacked or suspended.

In an attempt to minimize losses, the company’s shares were suspended to stop the scandal from affecting its stock price. The China Meat Association also tried to downplay the incident so that it would not damage the Chinese meat market. Between 1998 and 2007, China witnessed 18 outbreaks of banned clenbuterol, during which one person died and more than 1,700 people became sick.

2Fake Wine

Fake and counterfeited wine is a big problem in China. China Central Television (CTV) reported that half of all the wine sold in China is fake. A lot of people in China’s wine industry also believe that about 90 percent of premium wines sold in China are fake as well. To counter the sales of fake wine, the Guangdong Provincial Wine Testing Center was founded to determine the authenticity of wines. Wine producers have joined forces with the government to produce an app meant to track wine bottles and cartons to determine whether they’re original or fake.

The scam was simple: Counterfeit wine makers would use the original name, label, and design from expensive wine bottles, but would slightly alter the names and logos on theirs to differentiate them. Others would simply collect empty bottles from expensive wines and then refill them with dirt-cheap wine.

Today, big hotels, restaurants, and auction houses break wine bottles after use to prevent them from being reused. During a raid on a fake wine-making syndicate in China, police recovered more than 40,000 bottles of counterfeited wine worth more than $32 million. The group had been buying cheap wine and dumping it into fake bottles from expensive wine brands. In 2012, police also recovered more than 350 cases of counterfeited wine in Shanghai. The total haul was worth about $1.6 million.

1Yangcheng Hairy Crabs

Yangcheng hairy crabs are the most expensive crabs in China, so it’s no surprise that people would try to pass off regular crabs as the pricier breed. The real deal comes exclusively from Yangcheng Lake, but there are a few sneaky ways around that. For example, some sellers take water from Yangcheng Lake and put other crabs in it for several hours before selling them as Yangchengs. Others use chemicals on the crabs to make them look like Yangcheng crabs.

Only 1 in every 300 Yangcheng hairy crabs sold is real. The total number of crabs produced from Yangcheng is less than 3,000 tons annually, but more than 100,000 tons of crabs are sold. To counter the fake crabs, the Suzhou Crab Business Association demanded that a plastic ring with a special numerical code be attached to one of the claws of each original Yangcheng hairy crab. That plan soon failed when sellers of the real Yangcheng hairy crabs sold their tags to those selling fakes.

+Cardboard Buns

Cardboard buns are made from cut cardboard mixed with chemicals and pork flavors. An investigation carried out by CTV showed a video of a seller making the buns, commonly called baozi, out of cardboard. The cardboard is first mixed with caustic soda—which is used in the production of soap and paper—and then cut before being mixed with pork and seasoning.

The video went viral and was picked up by several international media organizations. The Chinese government responded this time, saying that the foreign media organizations had taken the news too far and that the fake buns were actually a hoax. The reporter who filmed the video was also arrested. The government said that he had done it to earn more audience ratings for the station.

Elizabeth is an aspiring writer and blogger. She enjoys reading your comments. You can also email her at [email protected].

Amazon didn’t get to be one of the biggest companies in the world by accident. They reported $576 billion in revenue for 2023. Clearly, the way they run their business is working out pretty well for them and it certainly looks like Jeff Bezos doesn’t have much to complain about. But, if you’re making that kind of money, there’s a good chance somewhere in the chain things go wrong every once in a while. In Amazon’s case, one of the weakest links seems to be their warehouses where every story has a little bit of nightmare sprinkled on top. 

10. Bear Repellent Has Exploded in More Than One 

One thing people really love about Amazon is that you can buy just about anything there. Outside of a handful of really niche items, there’s a good chance some version of what you want is going to be on the site. The downside that most of us don’t see at home is that all of those things need to be stored in an Amazon warehouse somewhere.

If you’re buying pots and pans, or maybe a box of vegan mac and cheese, that’s not a big deal. But what if you want to buy bear spray? You know, those spray cans of bear repellent that are meant to scare away actual bears out in the wild?

Amazon warehouses carry bear spray for people who want to order it online and, more than once now, those cans have exploded in a warehouse. If you can use it to force a bear away, imagine what it does to the average warehouse worker. 

In 2018 a can of bear repellent was knocked off of a shelf at an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey. One of Amazon’s robots accidentally punctured the can, releasing the spray which is capsaicin-based. 24 employees had to go to the hospital.

That story in New Jersey was fairly well publicized, but less well known was the same thing happening in 2015 at the Amazon warehouse in Haslet, Texas. 

9. Workers Pee in Bottles

The Rock would make a great Amazon employee because, like some of them, he’s been known to pee in bottles at work. In 2021, Amazon was dealing with a lot of bad PR about the conditions in its warehouses. They were being accused of being exploitative and dangerous and at one point they officially denied accusations that employees were attempting to save time at work by peeing in bottles instead of going to bathrooms.

The basic idea here is that Amazon expects its employees to meet quotas for picking items off shelves. According to these online rumors, if you needed to take a bathroom break you were wasting so much time that you would never be able to make your quotas by walking all the way to the bathroom and back. As a result, some people opted to pee in bottles to save time. Amazon denied this ever happened.

After Amazon’s public denial, numerous journalists who had done reports on their employment practices and had been in their warehouses and interviewed their employees clapped back. Multiple sources provided testimonials and other evidence indicating yes, many employees pee in bottles to skip bathroom breaks. 

8. Numerous Workers Suffer Injuries and Exhaustion

The demands of working in an Amazon warehouse have proven to be brutal. Injuries are very common and extreme exhaustion is rampant, By the numbers it’s quite staggering. As many as 41% of Amazon workers have reported being injured on the job while 69% had to take unpaid leave because of how absolutely exhausted and in pain they were. 34% of workers had to do that three or more times. 

The data came from a survey that covered 42 states, 451 Amazon facilities and nearly 1,500 Amazon workers.

7. The Company Has Been Fined for Excessive Surveillance

You might be wondering what it is that’s going on in an Amazon warehouse that could lead to so many people being injured, exhausted, and having to pee in bottles. Part of the problem is that Amazon is always watching you. In fact, the company has been fined for its excessive surveillance habits in the past.

In 2024, France fined Amazon €32 million, or about $34 million for its illegal surveillance tactics. The company tracked employee movements so precisely that every single break they took had to be justified. 

Employees are subject to three different layers of tracking that monitor short breaks, long breaks, and even how quickly they scan different items which can flag you if you scan something too fast, not just too slow. 

The system was deemed to be far too intrusive and led to mistrust and micromanagement. In the UK, similar research has led to the company’s surveillance technology being accused of causing extreme stress and anxiety.

6. Amazon May Be Replacing Humans with Robots

When Amazon isn’t being accused of treating its human employees unfairly, it’s looking to replace them entirely. The company has been fairly proud of its efforts to introduce robots to the workforce. In 2023 they began trials with humanoid robots called Digit that the company says will “free up employees to better deliver for our customers.”

While the cost of building and rolling out a robot workforce is arguably going to be high, the plan is for these things to only cost $3 per hour to operate in the future. Employees have long feared that these robots are going to end up taking all of their jobs, but Amazon keeps saying that they’re only there to help the employees not replace them entirely. 

Time will tell how this one pans out, but it’s hard not to appreciate the fears of somebody who’s now being set to work right beside a robot that never needs to take a break.

5. Amazon Raised Wages in 2018 But Cut Benefits to Do it

For the past few years, it’s been almost impossible to avoid stories about minimum wage, livable wage, and the cost of living in general. Many jobs that were once extremely low paying are now paying significantly more, although since everything is more expensive now it doesn’t really make that big of a difference.

Amazon tried to get ahead of the curve back in 2018 by boasting about how it was raising wages for warehouse workers. At that time it had boosted the minimum wage for its workers to $15 per hour. Back then the federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour and Amazon had been starting new employees at $11 an hour. So $15 an hour seemed great, right?

Less well publicized until the press looked into it was the fact that, to accommodate this wage increase, Amazon got rid of benefits to pay for it. Previously, employees were given stock In the company as well as bonuses based on attendance and performance. All of that was cut for the wage increase. The same thing happened in the UK where the company said employees just preferred to have immediate cash. 

4. Amazon Forces Employees to Work a “Megacycle” 10+ Hour Shift 

Even without context if you hear about something called a megacycle, you’re expecting it to be dramatic. In 2021, workers in Chicago were told to either sign up for a megacycle 10-hour graveyard shift or face the possibility of losing their jobs entirely. The company was shutting down their warehouse and employees were going to be able to move to a new warehouse as long as they took the 1:20 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. shift.

For Amazon, this was all about efficiency and being able to get products out to customers more quickly. The warehouse in question was a facility that dealt with last-minute deliveries. It is smaller than a typical Amazon warehouse. The extra long overnight shift supposedly allows products to get out to customers more quickly. 

The downside, of course, is that the hours are not ideal for pretty much any worker. And remember, this was in the height of the covid pandemic so working regular shifts was essential for a lot of workers with families.

Workers are given very little warning of the shift change but Amazon maintains no one is “forced” onto the shift. That said, most new facilities run on this schedule and some employees have stated they’ve ended up working 57-hour weeks this way and can’t get out of bed for three days afterward.

3. There Have Been Numerous Accusations of Racism 

With everything Amazon has going against it already, workplace harassment is one thing that employees could definitely do without. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. There have been serious allegations of racial harassment in Amazon warehouses. 

In 2022, employees at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois filed claims of harassment and even death threats that were racially based. The complaints included photos of graffiti in the bathrooms to support the claim. 

26 employees filed the complaint together and stated that, when they asked for extra security on site, they were told to go home and not get paid or just deal with it. One worker said she was fired for saying she’d go to the authorities about it.

Elsewhere, when Amazon tries to stop unions from forming, it has been accused of racism again as it spends literally millions of dollars and focuses strongly on warehouses that are predominantly employing Black workers. 

Even the location of Amazon warehouses is suspect. They build 70% of their warehouses in neighborhoods that are predominantly populated by people of color, and 57% are in low-income areas. The side effects of this are huge increases in traffic, noise, and pollution from fleets of delivery trucks.  

2. They Are Extremely Anti-Union

One thing you’ll notice about companies that are criticized for their poor labor practices is that they tend to not be in favor of unions. Amazon is no different. That said, Amazon will go the extra mile to try to keep their employees out of unions. They’ve been accused of paying their employees $5000 to quit before a union can even form. 

The pay-to-quit program is supposed to actually be about employee engagement. It weeds out people who don’t want to be there. But Amazon’s timing, right before major union votes, seems targeted and an attempt to weed out the sorts of employees who would want a union. 

In addition to payoffs, Amazon will hold warehouse-wide anti-union meetings that are mandatory for everyone to attend. There were 25 meetings per day in Staten Island leading up to a union vote there. That was non-stop from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, every day, for six weeks. Employees attended in shifts and had to be at two per week. 

1. Amazon Offered Zen Booths For Mental Health

So you just experienced nine harrowing tales of what can happen in an Amazon warehouse. The picture painted so far has been pretty grim. But, as we all know, you have to pay your bills. People are always going to be working at Amazon, at least until those robots take over. But in the meantime, does Amazon do anything to help out its overly stressed employees? You bet they do. They have “Mindful Practice” rooms, aka AmaZen.

In 2021, Amazon rolled out the mindful practice room as a place for tired and stressed-out workers to take a break. The rooms described were as “coffin-like” in one story, were outhouse-sized booths in the middle of the warehouse that allowed employees who felt they were having a mental or emotional issue to sit and watch corporate-produced mental wellness videos. Just imagine that stress washing away from you. 

The tiny booths featured potted plants, a fan, and a fake skylight to soak up some stress-reducing fake sunshine. After being thoroughly mocked on the internet, Amazon took down any promotional material about the idea and it’s unclear if the booths are actually in warehouses now or not.

Most of us believe that the idea of zombies should be confined to the horror section of our preferred movie providers. However, such an idea is a lot closer to reality than many of us might think.

Now, it probably won’t happen in the dramatic, explosive way typically portrayed in the movies. However, major potential exists for such an outbreak—particularly if a virus suddenly mutates and causes what we can only term a “zombie infection.” In fact, an outbreak of this kind could lead to a desperate situation.

See Also: Top 10 Zombie Apocalypse Conspiracy Theories

10 The CONOP 8888 Files

In 2014, Gordon Lubold came into possession of intriguing classified US military documents dated April 30, 2011. In them, he discovered details of a genuine US military plan to combat a zombie outbreak. Wording such as “isolating the threat” and “evil magic zombies” was regularly used.

With the spotlight suddenly placed on the documents, the military was forced to respond. They stated that the word “zombies” should not be taken seriously. It was simply used in place of highlighting one specific target or another. They insisted that this would make the program easily adaptable to multiple situations. It would also avoid a “diplomatic incident.”^[1]

This certainly makes sense, especially from a diplomatic foreign relations viewpoint. However, many in conspiracy circles were not convinced. Instead, they insisted that the apparent leak of information was exactly that. Quite often, the truth is found somewhere in the middle of two opposing viewpoints. However, when we view some other entries on this list, it is easy to see why the military might have such a planned response.

9 The Disturbing Claims of Peter Cummings

Peter Cummings, a scientist from Boston University, states that several diseases and conditions already exist that could cause someone to be viewed as a zombie. A “zombie apocalypse” might even seem possible if an outbreak of these conditions spread rapidly and mutated.

According to Cummings, the key to understanding the potential for these conditions to produce zombie traits was to examine the shutdown of the frontal lobe of the brain. He claimed that this resets the mind to its primal survival instincts, which is a zombielike state.

Even more interesting—and disturbing—are some cases from history. For example, several people were already suffering from such a condition during the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. These individuals experienced encephalitis lethargica in connection with the flu virus.^[2]

They fell into a stupor and eventually became catatonic. However, any “stimulation” from another person during this time made these patients “go berserk.” For what it’s worth, Cummings works in an advisory capacity for the Zombie Research Society, “an organization dedicated to the historical, cultural, and scientific study of the living dead.”

8 A Virus Like Rabies Could Mutate and Create Zombies!

When thinking of zombies, most people conjure up images of the dead rising from their graves. However, in 2010, Samita Andreansky from the University of Miami claimed otherwise.

She stated that the rising dead was an unlikely scenario, but the mutation of a virus similar to rabies wasn’t. Furthermore, she warned that this mutated strain could spread around the world and cause a condition almost identical to the typical view of a zombie.

If such a virus took hold of the world’s population, the outlook for humanity would be dire. This type of virus could spread quickly, and it would probably wipe out the human race.^[3]

Perhaps we should take such a scenario seriously. For example, what if an individual or a group of people take it upon themselves to create a mutation of such a virus for the so-called “greater good” of the planet?

7 Many Tribes Have Ancient Traditions of Zombies

Of course, many of the rituals, traditions, and legends of zombies come from the indigenous peoples of Africa and their voodoo legends. What’s more, these practices date back to antiquity. According to the creation stories and mythologies of the regions, voodoo came “from the Gods.”

With the slave trade, these traditions and practices made the journey to many parts of the Americas. This was particularly true in the southern regions of the United States, especially in the state of Louisiana.^[4]

In recent times, Haiti has become one of the epicenters of modern cases of “zombies.” In fact, the notion of voodoo permeates the mindset of the population. However, it is usually called ”hoodoo” in Haiti.

6 Wade Davis Claimed to Have ‘Unlocked the Secret’ of Creating Zombies

Without a doubt, one of the most controversial claims of real-life zombies came from Wade Davis of Harvard University. Davis traveled to Haiti and spent years there in the early 1980s. He claimed that he had “unlocked the secrets” of what exactly turns people into zombies.

Davis’s claims that criminals were turned into zombies in antiquity to stop their wayward behavior were even more intriguing. This also acted as a brutal deterrent to others as it was akin to being sentenced to death.

Davis claimed to have gained such knowledge by studying hoodoo priests of the region and eventually gaining their trust. Ultimately, he stated that creating zombies was achieved through a mixture of secret natural toxins.^[5]

Many people rejected his findings. Others believed that such discoveries, if true, would be of great interest to secret military projects. However, there is no evidence that the military ever examined Davis’s claims.

5 ‘People Have Been Called Back From the Dead’ in Haiti

Researcher Zora Neale Hurston has performed some of the most exhaustive studies of zombies in Haiti. Almost half a century before Davis, Hurston claimed that “people have been called back from the dead.” Supposedly, she had also witnessed real “zombies in Haiti.”

In one intriguing account, Hurston tells of being invited to study hoodoo rituals up close. Most people were not granted such access. A hoodoo priest permitted the unique opportunity, and Hurston eventually performed several rituals herself.

However, the account in her 1938 book, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, really grabbed people’s attention. Hurston claimed to have witnessed the rising of a dead woman, Felicia Felix-Mentor. This zombie had a “blank face with the dead eyes” and was a “dreadful sight.”^[6]

4 Zombies of the Animal World

There are many examples of zombies in the animal world. This is a concern to people who track the rumblings of the conspiracy field. The main worry is that these natural methods will be replicated in a science lab and used against the general population. It is easy to understand such concerns.

For example, many natural zombies are created when a parasite enters an animal’s nervous system through the food chain. The parasite will take over the animal’s movements. This is most often an effort to bring the animal out into the open and in full view of its natural predators. When successful, the parasite then passes along to the predator in the same way as it entered the originally infected host.

Even some fungi “attract” and then “target and infect” certain insects that feed on the fungi. However, the fungi cells then slowly take over the insects’ cells and, eventually, their entire movements. One fungus appears to target carpenter ants. According to Penn State’s David Hughes, this turns the animals into “a fungus in ants’ clothing!”^[7]

3 A Zombie Virus Is Why Aliens Have Not Visited Earth

Stephen Kane, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, certainly has a unique theory as to why aliens have not visited Earth. In 2014, he claimed that space travel in the past had left such astronauts stranded as zombies on an unknown planet.

Kane used a formula similar to the Zombie Drake Equation. He looked at how many plagues had hit humanity over the centuries. From this, he figured that the same thing had likely happened from space travel in the past.^[8]

Kane believed that our solar system “should” be full of life. However, germs, bacteria, and viruses likely made the journey with these ancient space travelers and probably created zombies of the unknown planet’s population—as well as the ancient space explorers themselves.

It is certainly a chilling prospect—especially if humans ever venture beyond the Moon or even Mars. If these potential space explorers do return from such a journey, might they bring back something as deadly as a “zombie virus”—one that might kill all life on our planet?

2 If It Happened, It Would Happen Fast!

One thing is certain: If such a zombie virus did spread, it would do so quickly. In addition, it would infect a large portion of the world’s population equally rapidly. Perhaps, we only need to look at how quickly flu viruses traverse the world to appreciate this.

Let’s imagine a “zombie bug” did enter the general population. It would probably take the world’s scientists and medical experts by complete surprise and on the back foot. Especially if such a virus was unleashed intentionally by an extremist of some kind.^[9]

If such an unlikely scenario occurred, it really could result in a desperate situation for humanity—one so dire that we just might not recover. When we view the idea of zombies in those terms, the prospect doesn’t appear so laughable regardless of how unlikely it is to happen.

1 Zombie Drugs and Mind Control

Some researchers insist that the intelligence world is seeking to turn people into zombies through the use of drugs and mind control. Of course, most people scoff at and dismiss such claims. And they might be right to do so. After all, there is little proof of such outlandish actions taking place behind closed doors.

But what if such a conspiracy was unfolding discreetly under the collective noses of mankind?^[10]

Surely, the proof would be hard, if not impossible, to obtain. Obviously, it would be very much within the interests of those overseeing such a conspiracy to keep it secret. They would most likely do this by calling such claims “crazy.” This is much the same way that many UFO witnesses are treated. It is certainly food for thought.

About The Author: Marcus Lowth is a writer at Me Time For The Mind and Me Time For The Mind on Facebook.

For most people, the word “sleep” conjures up peace and relaxation after a long day. However, your body undergoes many changes during the hours that you are unconscious. From undoing the day’s harm to preparing for the day ahead, the human body is constantly sorting, repairing, and refreshing. So next time you wake up feeling like a different person, know that there may be some truth to the thought.

10 Filing Away Memories

Human beings are very active organisms. We do things, go places, and interact with people, all the while creating memories. Memories are stored in the brain. But as anybody who has ever tried to find a file on a crowded desktop knows, saved things are of no use if they cannot be easily accessed and found.

During sleep, the brain actually replays the day’s events, catalogs them, and stores them in the brain’s long-term memory centers. Simultaneously, the brain discards unnecessary memories.

This storing of important long-term memories is critical to humans being able to function properly. This is because long-term memory is essentially limitless and set in stone, meaning that these memories will stay with you for your lifetime.

Most people can remember specific memories from their childhood very vividly but have a much harder time remembering exactly what they did two days ago. This kind of memory prioritization is essential for learning and retaining information as well as developing skills like problem-solving or mastery of a sport or game.

Most of this memory consolidation occurs during one of the deepest parts of sleep, slow-wave sleep, in which there is little other brain activity. As the mind transitions into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the brain then stabilizes the critical memories for quick recall later.

9 Blood Pressure And Core Temperature Drop

About 30 minutes before you fall asleep, the body begins to lower its body temperature. This occurs to slow down your metabolism to the point where you can sleep for hours without going hungry. As a result, heart rate and blood pressure also decrease.

While this may not seem like a big deal, your core body temperature drops by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 °F) to around 35.6 degrees Celsius (96 °F), which is one degree above hypothermia. Your body also needs less energy, so you are in no danger of freezing to death while taking a nap.

Upon waking up, blood pressure and heart rate rapidly rise again to keep up with the demand for energy. But for a brief period of time, there is an imbalance, resulting in the sluggishness and clouded thinking experienced by people who have just awakened.

8 Paralysis

Ever had a nightmare and found you couldn’t run or scream? While this can be terrifying, this phenomenon (known as “sleep paralysis”) is what keeps you from acting out all your dreams in real life (which is probably a good thing). During REM sleep in which dreams occur, the brain blocks neurotransmitters and receptors in muscles, effectively paralyzing you.

Occasionally, this can happen briefly when falling asleep or waking up, during which you are fully conscious but unable to move at all. This state is quite terrifying.

It is also the root of many ancient legends, usually involving hallucinations. In these legends, people are visited by demons or other creatures (from the Old Hag in Anglo-Saxon tradition to the “Pinyin” in Chinese folklore) and are unable to move.

7 Stretching

Throughout the day, downward pressure is exerted on the spine due to gravity and your vertebrae compress. As a result, fluid drains out from between your vertebral discs and you actually shrink up to 1 centimeter (0.4 in) by the end of the day. Similarly, when your back is relieved of all that stress at night, the fluid is allowed back into the joint connections, permitting the body to stretch an extra 1 centimeter (0.4 in) or so.

Although this height difference is not that significant, the lack of pressure also enables children and adolescents to grow while sleeping. In fact, we can only grow while asleep. This is because of both the pressure that is taken off the spine and legs when lying down and the growth hormones that are released while sleeping.

6 Sleepwalking

Although not everyone sleepwalks, enough of the general population (around 30 percent) has sleepwalked at least once in their lives to include it on this list. Also called somnambulism, sleepwalking is technically a sleep disorder in which the brain is in a semiconscious state, performing complex tasks such as getting out of bed, going to the kitchen, even driving.

Obviously, this can be very dangerous. But sleepwalking is relatively common, especially among children. Parents, roommates, and friends often report that the somnambulist in question will act dazed and confused while performing bizarre behaviors such as preparing a meal, only to return to bed.

Scientists still are not sure why people sleepwalk, although research has shown that it may be genetic. Sleepwalking usually occurs during slow-wave sleep, in which the brain is busy processing the day’s memories.

This may explain why a sleepwalker’s short-term memory is not very active while in this trancelike state. In fact, the person in question will have no memory whatsoever of the previous night’s events when they wake up in the morning.

5 Body Spasms

When you fall asleep, your body jerks. Every time. As described above, we are usually paralyzed while asleep to protect us from acting out our dreams. However, there is a gray area, a moment when the body is not physically asleep but not awake, either.

This is when most people experience what is called a hypnic jerk. It is believed to be a delay between the brain sending the message to relax and the nervous system getting this message.

We do not fully understand how this reaction came to be. Some scientists suggest that it is left over from a primitive reflex that misinterprets falling asleep to falling out of a tree. Others say that it is just the nerves “misfiring” as they are turned off.

Whatever the cause, hypnic jerks are one of the few reminders of the complex processes that occur while asleep that we can actually observe while awake. This is because a hypnic jerk upon falling asleep can be so violent in some cases that it actually wakes a person back up.

4 Brain Uses More Energy

The majority of energy produced while awake (about 80 percent) is used by various physical activities such as movement, breathing, and speaking. While asleep, this energy is obviously not being used and the “energy surplus” is diverted to the brain.

This means that the brain’s energy consumption is actually higher in certain stages of sleep, such as REM, than it is while awake. This energy is put to good use, completing secretarial tasks that are backlogged while awake, such as creating and strengthening neural connections and removing waste products.

The brain is too busy during the day with more urgent and energy-hungry tasks like decision-making for these other activities to occur. During sleep, however, the brain has some “free time” to tidy up.

3 Lose Weight

Ever wake up to find you are suddenly very thirsty? This is because your body actually loses more than 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of water to the surrounding air at night.

Think about it this way: The air inside your lungs is hot—about 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 °F). It is also filled with moisture. Since most people’s rooms are much cooler than 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 °F), the air you breathe out as you sleep contracts as it cools, drawing moisture out of the air and your body.

The weight of the lost water is minuscule, only about 0.02 grams per breath. But over the course of the night, this can add up to more than 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of lost weight.

CO₂ has a similar but lesser effect. Everyone knows that you breathe in oxygen (two atoms) and breathe out carbon dioxide (three atoms). As one more atom is coming out than going in, an infinitesimal amount of mass is lost each time you take a breath.

However, there are about a billion trillion carbon atoms in each breath you exhale, so this adds up to about 0.7 kilograms (1.5 lb) every night. This happens in the day, too, but you more than replace the water and carbon through food and drink.

2 Brain Cleansing

During waking hours, toxins and other waste products accumulate throughout the cells of the brain and body. As the rest of the body shuts down when you go to sleep, your brain gets to work. Essentially, it opens a valve that allows cerebrospinal fluid (pictured above) to flow from your spine into your brain, rinsing the tissue and taking all the toxins with it.

This process is part of a larger cycle known as cellular respiration, a series of reactions that help cells create energy from nutrients and keep the body running. The toxins removed at night are “leftovers” from this process.

Although this cleansing occurs throughout the body, its effects are most noticeable in the brain, where inadequate sleep has noticeable effects. This brain gunk that remains is one of the main reasons you often feel lousy after a long night.

1 Dreams

How could we forget dreams? They are such a mundane but essential part of life, and yet scientists still understand almost nothing about them. This includes the question: Why do we even dream?

If one takes a step back and thinks about it, dreams are quite strange. Every night when your body falls unconscious, your brain conjures up an imaginary reality that exists only in your head but that you think is real. When you wake up, almost all of it disappears from your memory. Despite how strange it sounds, dreams are taken for granted as a fact of life, much like brushing your teeth or going to work.

Although the actual need for dreams remains unclear, the related activities that occur during REM sleep are understood and plentiful: long-term memory strengthening, flushing the brain of toxins, increased “secretarial” work, and so on. This makes it even stranger that we know so little about dreams themselves.

These questions are not anything new. Speculation on the cause and meaning of dreams has been a fixture of human fascination for tens of thousands of years, going at least as far back as the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Despite the modern technology at our disposal—from MRI scanners to EEG detectors—theories about the origins and purpose of these mysterious experiences will, at least for now, remain theories.

Damian Coburn is an avid reader who also likes to write, travel, and camp.

Over the last several years, summers have been increasingly brutal in many parts of the world. Cities in the Southwest United States have had to plan for droughts and water conservation initiatives. Nearly all parts of the United States have experienced at least some drought since the year 2000 and it’s a trend that is replicated all over the world. 

You would think that, given the prevalence of worldwide droughts, we might be more careful with water. You’d think that if you hadn’t experienced humans and their tendency to shoot themselves in the foot, at least. In reality, we waste water in ways that are almost hard to imagine. 

10. One Farming Family Uses More Water Than All of Las Vegas

Farms need water and most of us would accept this as a reasonable course of business. No matter what the farm produces, from lettuce to apples to beef, water has to be used to make that happen, and we place more value on the farmed product than the water itself. But can there be a point when a farm uses too much water? Is there a limit there?

A single family, who owns large amounts of farmland, was found to use more water than the entire Las Vegas Valley during a 2023 investigation. The Abbati family, whose farming empire is worth millions, used 260,000 acre-feet of water. That number is beyond anything you can imagine if you aren’t familiar with acre-feet.

One acre-foot, just one, is 326,000 gallons. So 260,000 acre-feet is 84,721,371,429 gallons. In contrast, the Las Vegas Valley used 200,000 acre-feet. 

Most of the water in that part of the world is used in the Imperial Irrigation District where 20 farming families use more water than a combined 300 others, totaling about 387 billion gallons in 2022. That district has the largest claim to water from the Colorado River, and one in seven drops goes to these farmers, many of whom don’t actually grow vegetables for human consumption. 

The bulk of their land is used to grow hay for livestock. Some of the hay is even sold to other countries in what critics have likened to essentially selling water abroad since the farmers only pay $20 per acre-foot.

Because water rights were guaranteed to local farmers nearly a century ago, and the current farmers are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those farmers, they still get to operate under the old agreements guaranteeing them all the water they want, even as reservoirs reach historically low levels. 

9. It Takes 3 Gallons of Water to Produce a Single Almond

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. But if you do, think long and hard about what that nut costs. Some of our favorite crops absolutely lay waste to water. A single almond requires over three gallons of water to grow. How does the math on that play out? 

One pound of almonds is about 400 nuts, give or take. A single tree can produce between 50 and 65 lbs of nuts. So, at 50 lbs, we’re looking at 20,000 nuts. So that’s 60,000 gallons per tree. If an orchard can produce 4,500 lbs of nuts, then it’s using 5.4 million gallons of water to do so. If there are 7,600 almond farms in California each growing about that much then that requires 41,040,000,000 gallons. This is all for almonds, 70% of which are exported. 

The amount of water used to grow all the almonds that California exports in a year could ensure water for everyone in Los Angeles for three years. Almonds use 10% of all of California’s water, more than Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. 

This may make you look at almonds negatively but remember that even corn uses a lot of water. It takes 110 gallons of water to make one pound of corn. America produced 346 million tons of corn in 2022-2023.

8. Golf Courses Use Billions of Gallons Per Day

If you’re a golfer, you may already be aware of the staggering water usage at most golf courses around the world. But there’s a good chance if you know they use a lot of water, you still don’t know what a lot means. It’s two billion gallons. And while that’s a huge number, it gets so much worse. That’s per day.

There are over 16,000 golf courses in America, more than half the world total, in fact. The average course will use 312,000 gallons per day but desert courses, like those in Palm Springs, can use a million all by themselves. 

7. Reverse Osmosis Systems Can Waste Gallons of Water For Every One They Clean

Everyone prefers drinking clean water to sloppy filth so, for some, a reverse osmosis system is the way to go. In your home, these systems force water through a membrane that separates H2O from other molecules and gives you snazzy, clean water in the end. They work as advertised and you will get the clean water you want. The problem is the waste. 

Different systems will have greater or lesser success but even the best systems can waste as much as 5 gallons of water for every clean gallon they produce. Some studies have shown that a reverse osmosis system can waste 20 times as much water as it can produce. Newer models claim to offer 1:1 technology but they are harder to find and definitely cost more.

6. Up to 37 Gallons Go Into Making a Single Roll of Toilet Paper

Toilet paper is one of the most bizarre products in the world. You pay good money for it, and these days you pay a lot, knowing full well exactly what’s going to happen to it sooner or later. While TP is king in North America, many places elsewhere choose bidets. Some Americans argue that’s a waste of water, but is it? Is there an upside to toilet paper?

Toilet paper use in America is the equivalent of pulping 15 million trees. Worse, it requires 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to make that paper, or about 37 gallons per roll. A bidet would not, in fact, take up 37 gallons to reach the equivalent cleaning power of one roll of toilet paper. 

You use about one-eighth of a gallon with a single bidet use, meaning 296 squirts before you reach the water used to make one roll of toilet paper. And, keep in mind you still need to flush the toilet paper which, even with a low-flow toilet is 1.6 gallons. You’ve just added 473 gallons to your toilet paper waste if you’re matching those 296 bidet uses. 

5. It Takes 17 Million Barrels of Oil To Make Bottled Water Bottles

The numbers behind how wasteful bottled water is are pretty remarkable. For people who have no access to clean water, bottled water is a literal lifesaver. But for the rest of us, it’s hard to make sense of the obsession when you break it down.

About 25% of bottled water is tap water, the company just bottles its own municipal supply. That doesn’t mean it’s poor quality, but it does mean you can save a lot of money just by drinking tap water. Coke and Pepsi both bottle tap water that has gone through some filters but there’s never been a study suggesting bottled water is healthier, safer, or even cleaner than most tap water. In fact, the filtering to make bottled water removes minerals like calcium and magnesium, making bottled water less healthy. 

Despite the fact it offers little, Americans bought nearly 16 billion gallons of bottled water in 2022. Ignoring the other facts, making bottles for water also uses 17 million barrels of oil per year. That figure was from back in 2006, too, and consumption has increased dramatically since that time so oil use likely has as well. 

4. Chocolate Requires More Water Than Nearly Any Other Crop

We touched on the water needed to grow almonds and corn and even make toilet paper, but what about chocolate? Surely chocolate hides no terrible, wasteful secrets. Alas. This one’s going to be ugly.

Everyone has heard that raising cattle is wasteful in terms of resources. It takes 1,910 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. But chocolate? That requires 17,196 liters to produce a kilogram. That’s about 4,542 gallons per kilogram which works out to just over 2,000 gallons per pound. So a cow and a Hershey bar take roughly the same investment in terms of water.  One single chocolate bar is going to require up to 2,000 liters or 528 gallons.

3. Hand Washing Dishes Wastes More Than 5 Times The Water of a Dishwasher

How do you do your dishes? Your options are basically limited to handwashing in a sink or using a dishwasher. If you have a dishwasher, you’ll be happy to know it’s the far better option if you have an eye to water conservation. If you load it properly and make sure it’s full, your dishwasher uses 5 to 7 times less water than hand washing.

When you wash in the sink, you could be using up to 20 gallons. A good, energy-efficient dishwasher will only use four gallons. Other sources suggest hand washing can use as much as 27 gallons while a new model dishwasher may use as little as three. Obviously, there’s a lot of wiggle room here based on how you wash dishes and what kind of dishwasher you have. That said, over the course of a year, a good dishwasher can save 5,000 gallons.

2. Starbucks Used to Waste 6 Million Gallons a Day For No Reason

If you’re the type of person who already doesn’t like Starbucks then this one will hit home for you. Back in 2008, it was discovered that Starbucks was wasting six million gallons of water every day because they forced employees to keep a sink running non-stop as a time saver. 

The sink, called a dipper well, was the one employees used to rinse off utensils. The infinite wisdom of Starbucks management was that, if the sink never stopped running, it couldn’t build germs and was, therefore, more sanitary. Staff was literally forbidden from turning the water off. 

When a UK paper learned of the running tap, they started contacting various Starbucks branches to ask about it and many of them didn’t know what the sink was for and never even used it, but they all kept it running as per company policy. 

Experts were also quick to point out that keeping a sink running would have no impact on sanitation and there are countless ways to keep a place clean that don’t require wasting 6 million gallons of water. 

1. Cruise Ships Dump 150,000 Gallons of Sewage into the Ocean Daily

Who doesn’t love a cruise ship? Aside from the people who have had to poop in bags, or been stranded, or endured a viral outbreak? They have all the amenities of a hotel but they’re on the water and, you know, they also dump massive amounts of sewage into the ocean.

It’s been estimated that a 3,000-person ship will dump around 150,000 gallons of sewage into the ocean every week. One vessel managed to drop 74,000 gallons in a day. 

Governments often ban the dumping of waste, including sewage, in coastal waters but that’s just in coastal waters. These are cruise ships. They wait until they hit international waters and then the toilet gets flushed. It’s not just sewage, either. The vessels produce much larger amounts of gray water from showers and laundry facilities, as well as oily bilge water, all of which gets dumped into the sea.

As the saying goes, all things in moderation. However, what about when you decide to throw caution to the wind and just go ahead and forget that whole moderation thing? Well, it turns out that the saying is there for a reason and that when you totally ignore it and start consuming without thought, strange things can happen to your body and mind. Many of these things are perfectly safe if you take them in small amounts, but they should be treated with care so as not to overdose and have any of these things happen to you.

Related: 10 Alternate Medicines That People Swear By

10 Too Much Fiber Can Actually Block You Up

Many people have heard that the majority of people around the globe are not getting enough fiber in their diets. This leads to constipation and all kinds of other unpleasant bowel irregularities. Some people, in an effort to fix the problem with their intestines not having enough fiber to move things through, start taking extremely excessive amounts, thinking you can never have too much fiber. Some people will even take fiber supplements on top of eating high-fiber foods.

However, it is important to be careful about this kind of thing, as it turns out you actually can have too much fiber in your diet. Making sure you get enough is good, but overdoing it can actually lead to the opposite of the intended effect. That is to say, you can actually obstruct your bowels by consuming too much fiber.

MIld cases of this will lead to constipation, cramps, bloating, and the like. The reason for this is that while fiber does help move things through and is good for our gut health, it can create a mass called a phytobezoar if you take too much in a short time. An obstruction of this kind can get bad enough that you could end up needing surgery to have the mass removed.^[1]

9 Consuming Colloidal Silver Can Make You a Smurf

There have been multiple cases of people who took colloidal silver, a liquid form of silver that some people think of as a kind of miracle cure, and have turned permanently blue as a side effect. These people have often used their new, permanent skin color as a way to entertain people and make some money. While some people may find it entertaining to watch these people, it isn’t really that funny for them at the end of the day.

You see, many of the people who this happened to started out believing the medical claims that this stuff was actually going to help you with their sinusitis, allergies, or other health problems. However, as these types of claims often turn out, they actually don’t help any of that or for any disease at all.

The claims have been evaluated by health authorities, and their conclusion is that colloidal silver is not effective for treating, preventing, or curing any disease or illness. On top of that, it is a metal we do not need in our bodies and is toxic to us. It can cause neurological problems if taken over time, which would also make the cures not worth it even if they did work.^[2]

8 Drinking Too Much Soy Milk Could Cause You to Lactate

The controversy over soy is pretty well known, and it all comes down to the belief that soy can affect estrogen levels in your body. Some people argue the effect is so pronounced that just by having a little bit of soy on a regular basis, you will basically turn into a woman, breasts and all. Others argue there is literally no effect at all. You could inject yourself with soy for blood every day, and apart from the fact that it would be bad for your bloodstream, it wouldn’t make you any more of a woman. Now, as it often turns out in cases of extremes, both sides are wrong.

Soy can affect your estrogen levels, but it takes an extremely excessive amount of soy to get there in any seriously noticeable way. The proof is in a bizarre case study of a middle-aged man who had grown breasts and started lactating. After ruling out all other causes, they found out that the reason was his excessive soy milk intake. However, before you start throwing out your soy products for fear of knocking your estrogen levels out of balance, understand that this man’s intake was truly staggering. He was drinking three quarts of soy milk (12 cups) every single day.^[3]

7 Beta Carotene Overconsumption Can Make You an Oompa Loompa

Some people have been told that beta carotene is good for your eyes, so they consume a large amount of carrots, carrot juice, or other such items in the hopes of improving their vision. They argue that the vitamins in it are not likely to cause overdose problems, and thus, drinking away with reckless abandon is perfectly safe. This is all well and good until they start to turn orange. The culprit here is actually the beta carotene itself, which, in excessive amounts, can give your skin an orange hue.

This also includes products that add it to give an orange hue and extra vitamins to their products, such as Sunny Delight. In fact, several years back, the UK saw a public scandal surrounding the Sunny D company when several kids were reported as turning orange due to consumption of their product.

To make matters worse for the Sunny Delight company, at the same time as the public worry started, they released a commercial of a snowman drinking Sunny Delight until it turned orange. The good thing here is that, in time, if you stop taking large amounts of beta carotene, your skin will eventually turn back to its normal color.^[4]

6 Too Much Melatonin Can Give You Nightmares and Insomnia

Melatonin is a natural supplement that is something we naturally form in our own brains in order to signal our bodies to sleep. It is, as far as science knows, about as safe as anything can get. There is no known toxic effect that will kill you or cause a medical emergency if you take too much, and many people rely on it for sleep. However, just because it is completely safe does not mean that it is without potential problems if you take too much.

Many people who use it report some negative side effects from taking more than they usually do, which often includes feeling drowsy the next day and being lethargic. However, even worse, taking too much can cause headaches, dizziness, and nightmares. You can also cause a much worse side effect, which is that taking too much can actually confuse your brain and cause insomnia. And, as for the potential drowsiness, some formulations include other herbs meant to help you be more alert the next day, but caution should still be taken if you are going to have to drive the next morning.^[5]

5 Too Much Caffeine Can Make You Hallucinate Sounds

Most of us drink caffeine every day, and many of us rely on it to keep us alert and going as we work and go about our daily lives. As far as drugs go, if someone told you that you could get high on caffeine, you would probably laugh. It is known for being addictive, but in terms of drugs of abuse, no one really ever thinks about caffeine. However, if you take a really large amount of caffeine over the regular recommended dose, which a lot of people do, strange things can happen to you.

For starters, if you keep drinking coffee, you can trigger the adrenaline receptors in your body, which can put a serious strain on everything. Worse, however, you can actually hallucinate. Those who drink too much coffee—or anything containing caffeine—are three times more likely to have auditory hallucinations.

It can also cause psychosis at high enough levels in even normally mentally healthy individuals. The recommendation is to have no more than four regular cups of coffee a day—or the equivalent—from other caffeine sources.^[6]

4 Overdose on Aspirin by Using Too Much Wintergreen Essential Oil

Essential oils have become extremely popular in recent years, and some people are now using them instead of more traditional medicines. Some people are also using them as supplements to regular treatments. Many of their proponents love them because they are natural and believe it makes them safer and better than the stuff they get at the store. Others laugh at essential oils, claiming they are a joke that does basically nothing.

Now, this is one of those things where both extremes are wrong, and the answer is somewhere in the middle. Essential oils are very real in the helpful effects they can have, but the reason they have these effects is they basically are real medicine.

In the case of wintergreen oil, this is especially true. It has become a popular way of dealing with things like arthritis, and some people are taking aspirin as well with it. Worryingly, this can be dangerous because the active ingredient in wintergreen oil is methyl salicylate, which is very similar to aspirin. Due to this relation, it can also cause toxic overdoses and can combine with aspirin to make overdoses of either one more likely.^[7]

3 Consuming Too Much Vitamin C Could Cause Kidney Stones in Men

Vitamin C is something that many people take on a regular basis, and some people even overdose purposely on a regular basis in the hopes of trying to stave off colds or eliminate them once they get them. This is understandable, as it is an antioxidant and has not been known to be a vitamin you can overdose on. However, while it is not a bad idea to take your vitamins and make sure you get enough vitamin C, taking too much on a regular basis may not necessarily be such a great idea—at least for men.

A survey of 1,000 men found that those who regularly took supplement products containing one gram or more of vitamin C a day were twice as likely to develop kidney stones as men who did not. Interestingly, those who took supplements for vitamin C above the daily dose but did not take the insanely high dose of one gram a day or more did not have this problem.

As for whether it can affect women, it gets a lot more unclear. There is not yet any direct evidence that it affects women, and no studies have been done. Still, the scientific rationale for it is there. You see, as vitamin C breaks down, it turns into something called oxalate—which are basically calcified crystals.^[8]

2 Too Much Beef Jerky and Nitrate-Containing Products Can Worsen Mania Symptoms

Now, we want to be clear that beef jerky products are not the only things that are the problem here. Nitrates are a form of salts that are used for preservation in a lot of cured meat products and are found in the majority of them. It is also important to be clear that there is no evidence that suggests that consuming too many products that contain nitrates will make you mentally ill if you are not already.

A clear link has been established between the consumption of nitrate-containing products and an increase in symptoms for those with mental health disorders. Furthermore, a recent analysis of 1,000 people found that high consumption of beef jerky and other similar products caused an increase in manifestations of mania.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should put away all beef jerky in fear of triggering a latent mental disorder or that you should stop even if you have one. However, if you have a mental health disorder and you eat a lot of nitrate-containing products, it may be a good idea to discuss it with your doctor.^[9]

1 Taking Too Much of a Popular Anti-Diarrheal Can Trigger Opioid Receptors

Loperamide is a popular anti-diarrhea OTC medication, but in recent years, it has come under fire from medical groups, who are worried it could become a drug of abuse. Now, it might be hard to imagine how an anti-diarrheal could be a drug of abuse, but it comes down to how it works.

You see, back in the day, Arabic doctors in ancient Iraq used to treat loose stools with opioids as they slow down the movement of the gut. Loperamide is designed to do the opposite by being a synthetic opioid agonist that basically blocks the opioid receptors in the stomach by taking them up with itself instead. Since opioids slow down the gut, blocking them from acting speeds the gut up.

However, if taken at extremely large doses, it can cross the blood-brain barrier and actually get people high on opioids by latching on to the rectors in their brain. This is not advisable, however, as it is extremely dangerous to take too much of this drug.

Unlike regular opioids, where someone can be brought back with Narcan, this drug can also cause dangerous cardiac arrhythmias and a whole host of other cardiovascular dysfunctions. If you have an opioid addiction and you are looking for synectics to help wean you off, there are safer ones that can be prescribed under medical supervision by a doctor—save the anti-diarrheal for those too-loose stools.^[10]