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"I remember reading a theory that human consciousness is more or less a byproduct of our brains processing all the daily sensory input in order to survive."

"Do you know how I know this? Both large tattoos I got (whole back & whole arm, both in one sitting respectively) made me feel like I had the flu for 2 days after. Genuinely like the flu. I have a hyper active immune system anyway (Ehlers-Danlos, MCAS, allergies) but it was only after getting these did I realize how much tattoos hammer our immune system!"

"Yep, I heard some people talk about, there could have existed MASSIVE animals like jellyfish and we'd never know about them because they don't leave fossil evidence behind."

"I wrote a paper on this in college in like 2009, so it's always nice to be reminded we've done literally nothing to address this in that timeframe."

"Don't worry, the first climate reports started warning in the 80's. So we've ignored this FAR longer than that."

"Prions are essentially zombie proteins. They aren't alive. They are just misfolded proteins that, when they bump into healthy proteins in your brain, force them to misfold too.

The scary part is that they are virtually indestructible.

They can survive extreme heat, radiation, formaldehyde, and standard autoclaving (the high-pressure steam sterilization hospitals use for surgical tools). If a hospital performs brain surgery on someone who is later discovered to have had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human version of Mad Cow), they often have to completely throw away and incinerate the entire set of surgical instruments. The tools simply cannot be reliably sanitized.

And to make it worse, you can contract a prion disease and it can sit completely dormant in your brain for decades. You feel fine, you live your life, and then one day it activates, rapidly turning your brain tissue into a literal sponge. Once symptoms show up, the fatality rate is 100%, usually within a few months. There is no treatment, no vaccine, and no cure."

"The other scary part is that we aren't prepared. Japan was very prepared in 2011 and lost 20 thousand people. We will lose hundreds of thousands if not more. Barely any of the buildings on the west coast are earthquake rated, Japan is almost entirely earthquake rated. They deal with earthquakes and tsunamis often, we don’t."

"What a weird thought, but yeah. 35000ft in a plane seems so far, but it's like a 2-3 hour walk at a casual pace."

"It's the same thing in the opposite direction too. You could 'walk' down to the Mariana Trench (36000 ft deep) in those 2-3 hours. Or just less than seven miles, so just less than seven minutes of driving on the highway."

"I worked with someone who was on this project when it happened. At first they thought it was something minor changed with the manufacture process so went to other sites to see what was changed. They all were horrified to realize too late that micro crystals were being carried into each side on the scientists clothes and form converting every batch. "

"Not their clothes, but from the scientists themselves, regardless of how much time had passed. 

Any scientist who had EVER worked on the new form would contaminate the new facility."

"Yeah this one is the one that made me double take and go wide eyed."

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.