What Are Your Deepest Fears?

[Greg Bernhardt]

I have to admit, even though I fly on a plane several times a year, one of my worst fears is a plane crash. I would also say a huge fear is swimming in open ocean water at night. What are yours?

 

[Evo]

I have to admit, even though I fly on a plane several times a year, one of my worst fears is a plane crash. I would also say a huge fear is swimming in open ocean water at night. What are yours?

Swimming in ocean water where I cannot see below my feet, that's a biggie. Second is swimming in the ocean, period.

 

[drizzle]

Imagine doing scuba diving deep in the ocean, where it's dark from all sides, and you barely see even with lights you have. Suddenly you see something HUGE from a distance getting closer and closer to you, oh and you can't easily move...*faints*

 

[Evo]

I don't want anything moving around below or around me that I don't know about and can't fairly control.

Also, I will NEVER fling myself out of a plane. I have done some risky things in my life, but I have limits. Not to mention I am afraid of heights, not a fun thing. I read a study once about the differences in brains of those that are self stimulated (me) and those that require outside stimulation. They watched the brains of people that are self stimulated and while listening to soft classical music, their brains were all lit up, those that needed outside stimulation, while listening to the same music had almost no activity.

Snakes. NO.

 

[drizzle]

LIZARDS! *screams then faints*

 

['roidbreaker]

EVA 23: exploring the frontier | Luca Parmitano

drowning in a space suit takes the cake for me

 

[PhizKid]

Sleeping with my toes sticking out of the edge of the bed

 

[drizzle]

Sleeping with my toes sticking out of the edge of the bed

OMG

I remeber I was like this when I was little, I fear that something hidden underneath the bed might chop them off or something. :p

 

[Evo]

I can't sleep if my toes are covered, I sleep with my feet sticking out from under the covers.

 

[drizzle]

I can't sleep if my toes are covered, I sleep with my feet sticking out from under the covers.

+1 They need to breath too.

 

[Masquerade178]

+1 They need to breath too.

Its "breathe" my friend!

 

[Masquerade178]

I remeber I was like this when I was little, I fear that something hidden underneath the bed might chop them off or something. :p

I still have that fear!

 

[Borg]

I have to admit, even though I fly on a plane several times a year, one of my worst fears is a plane crash. I would also say a huge fear is swimming in open ocean water at night. What are yours?

That someday PF would be gone and I would have to get a life.

 

[256bits]

Walking down the street and seeing and meeting Elvis Priestly asking for directions. or not

 

[Pythagorean]

I have no ultimate always fear. I fear different things in different contexts. I tend to have a fear that somebody's coming in my house after dark when I hear house creaks and apartment neighbors walking around. Of course, intellectually, I know it's not the case, but my fear response still picks up.

Open water is one of my fears too. When I did king crab on the Bering Sea, I always had daymares about going down in a crab pot.

Flying doesn't bother me near as much as driving on highways where you're at the mercy of 100's of morons.

I fear social persecution when I've been misunderstood.

I fear my children will go overboard and drown, or fall down and break their necks, or hang themselves playing with string, or poison themselves eating the wrong thing, etc., etc.

 

[jim hardy]

Nightime: Velociraptors. Ever since "that movie".
Daytime: Fear i'll do something that hurts somebody. Ever since "Madame Butterfly".
Guess I have a suggestible nature.

I read a study once about the differences in brains of those that are self stimulated (me) and those that require outside stimulation. They watched the brains of people that are self stimulated and while listening to soft classical music, their brains were all lit up, those that needed outside stimulation, while listening to the same music had almost no activity.

now that thought deserves a thread of its own. I used to frequent Beethoven dot com's community board.

 

[Pythagorean]

I wonder... did it really have to be classical music though? I'm getting that baby mozart twitch.

 

[DennisN]

I have to admit, even though I fly on a plane several times a year, one of my worst fears is a plane crash.

Yes, plane crashing is definitely one of my fears. Even though I've tried tandem paragliding once, which for some reason did not scare me.

I would also say a huge fear is swimming in open ocean water at night. What are yours?

Yes, that too. Add the thoughts of sharks and I'd become terrified.

I'll also admit that sometimes, sometimes, when I think of the Universe, I can feel the fear when visualizing e.g. a black hole on a collision course with Earth - that's not a nice thought . I'm perfectly well aware that it's highly unlikely , but then again, we're talking about fears, right?

 

[Evo]

I wonder... did it really have to be classical music though? I'm getting that baby mozart twitch.

I'm sure it's any sort of music some would consider boring. I'm wondering what pieces they played.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

I read a study once about the differences in brains of those that are self stimulated (me) and those that require outside stimulation. They watched the brains of people that are self stimulated and while listening to soft classical music, their brains were all lit up, those that needed outside stimulation, while listening to the same music had almost no activity.

This seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Can you cite this study? How does one determine whether or not one's brain requires outside stimulation or not? Is there not a continuum of brain response to stimulation?

 

[Drakkith]

Argh. I'm irritated because I can't seem to answer this question.

 

[FreeMitya]

Dementia.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Dementia.

This is a scary one because you don't know when it hits you.

 

[fluidistic]

When visiting a huge sewers for 6 hours, that the flashlight faints. One could die by many ways including if it starts to rain outside.

 

[Monique]

This is a scary one because you don't know when it hits you.

How come, the scary thing is that people do know that their mind is deteriorating. Or do you mean at what age?

 

[reenmachine]

home invasion
losing my mind completely
failing
ageing

 

[MathJakob]

My biggest fear is the thought of dying without knowing if there is other life out there. Only once I know that life exists elsewhere in the universe will be life be complete.

 

[SteamKing]

Walking down the street and seeing and meeting Elvis Priestly asking for directions. or not

Who's Elvis Priestly? Did he sing 'You ain't nothin' but an oxygen molecule?'

My biggest fear is that the Amish Mafia will take over Las Vegas someday and turn the Strip into one big illegal butter churn.

 

[256bits]

Who's Elvis Priestly? Did he sing 'You ain't nothin' but an oxygen molecule?'

My biggest fear is that the Amish Mafia will take over Las Vegas someday and turn the Strip into one big illegal butter churn.

Butter churn Gotta love butter.
Actually it was a tonque cheeky style about going nutso and loosing touch with reality and not knowing it, but someone afterwards covered the dementia.

My second biggest fear is posting on PF and nobody having the faintest clue what I am takling about.

 

[leroyjenkens]

I was reading about locked-in syndrome, and how people who have this are completely paralyzed, some even unable to move their eyelids, but they're completely conscious. That would be hell, and that's my new worst fear.

 

[Astrum]

Running out of warm water in the shower.

Oh, and whenever the internet is down, I have a mini-panic attack.

I really need to get a life.

 

[Evo]

This seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Can you cite this study? How does one determine whether or not one's brain requires outside stimulation or not? Is there not a continuum of brain response to stimulation?

The study was from over 20 years ago.

Here are a couple of studies, let's not pull this off topic. If you are interested you should research it.

That kind of exhiliration is particularly appealing to a personality type, aptly known as ''thrill-seekers,'' people who have been studied by Frank Farley, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin. People who are high in that trait, Dr. Farley said, ''seek variety, novelty, intensity and risk.''

One theory holds that the brains of thrill-seekers are usually at a lower level of arousal compared with most other people.

Why Do People Crave the Experience? - New York Times

Boredom Disconnects Parts of Your Brain

Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by Daniel Weissman, studied the interactions that occur between multiple areas of the brain when boredom sets in, and discovered that, as attention fades, so does the intensity at which several nervous centers communicate.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Boredom-Disconnects-Parts-of-Your-Brain-99817.shtml

 

[turbo]

I fear losing my wife to some kind of accident.

 

[davenn]

I'm trying to decide between looking my sight or my hearing.

I'm swaying towards hearing ... I greatly enjoy music and conversation
and the thought of being plunged into soundless world is a bit freaky to meDave

 

[Julio R]

Insects. Specially roaches. If there is any entomologist in this forum no offense, but I throw my shoe at the sight of an insect.

 

[inotyce]

OMG

I remember I was like this when I was little, I fear that something hidden underneath the bed might chop them off or something. :p

True, same as my imagination. I used to be afraid that there might probably be a big monster's hand from below grabbing my butt while I was sitting on the toilet bowl.

 

[lisab]

A loved one suffering, and me being unable to help.
Being poor when I'm old.

Some of my weird irrational fears:

Shipwrecks. Just everything about them, so creepy.

Having a bad toothache and being unable to communicate it.

And I didn't even know I had fear of open water swimming until I learned to SCUBA dive. The thought of my buoyancy compensator failing and not being able to ditch my weight belt, just going down, down, down, the water getting colder and darker...yikes.

 

[Charmar]

Losing my mind, dementia, Alzheimer’s etc., doubly so if I realize it is happening.

 

[BobG]

Flying doesn't bother me near as much as driving on highways where you're at the mercy of 100's of morons.

I do have some fear of driving through intersections - especially the ones that have already made the news because of a traffic fatality caused by someone running the red light.

Just the fact that I remember the news stories about particular intersections for years, or remember the tree that used to be on that street before an SUV killed it, etc, is probably slightly irrational. I certainly don't remember the murder stories that long.

Slightly off-topic: You ever notice how in movies, drivers are so afraid of collisions with motorcycles that they'll swerve into other cars to avoid them; yet they almost never see a truck coming and will fearlessly drive right in front of it?

 

[Borg]

For Will Smith and family, I would have to guess that their worst fear is watching Miley Cyrus perform.

 

[Pythagorean]

I do have some fear of driving through intersections - especially the ones that have already made the news because of a traffic fatality caused by someone running the red light.

Just the fact that I remember the news stories about particular intersections for years, or remember the tree that used to be on that street before an SUV killed it, etc, is probably slightly irrational. I certainly don't remember the murder stories that long.

Slightly off-topic: You ever notice how in movies, drivers are so afraid of collisions with motorcycles that they'll swerve into other cars to avoid them; yet they almost never see a truck coming and will fearlessly drive right in front of it?

Most of my worst fear comes from watching russian dash cam videos. And a little bit from experience driving on the freeways with impatient people or, driving 600 miles south through a snowstorm in Alaska once, there was an abandoned car off the road every 50 miles, probably 4 or 5 cases of full emergency crew at the site of an accident along the whole trip. Just living in the city, you can sometimes hear sirens going all night on the first freeze as the newcomers learn to adjust their stopping expectations to a reduced coefficient of friction.

 

[Dembadon]

Having to watch someone I care about die a slow and painful death while being prevented from helping them.