Unknown Unknowns Worse Than ISIS

Americans have always had a healthy sense of fear.

As one of the founding fathers said, “those who would trade security for even a bit of liberty probably never read Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark when they were a young child.”

Lately, however, I fear that our fear has become displaced. Not that refugee grandmas or Mexicans invaders aren’t valid reasons to stay up late at night quaking in your bed, clutching your gun to your breast. But they don’t hold a candle to the real problems we face. Most likely out of ignorance, people ignore the true threats to western democracy. For instance, the terrorists could kill you, but can they eat your soul?

The following nightmare scenarios have the power to turn Fortress America into Institution America. That’s how extremely scary they are. You should be afraid. And you should be informed.

Floating Disembodied Heads– When I was very young I used to be very afraid of this picture. I became convinced that this horrible, strange image would surprise and attack me by waiting in all the dark corners of my world. Maybe it was in the mail box. Maybe in the dining room when the lights were out. Or it was slowly making its way to me as I sat at my ~~fourth~~ first grade desk. What would happen to me if I ran into this floating head? Well, in the story a dog sees it and dies, so that’s pretty bad. But I’m pretty sure something pretty terrible; probably, it would go ahead and eat my soul. So far, about twenty years later, I haven’t had an encounter yet so this hasn’t happened. Which only means one thing; the head is overdue. And when it’s done with me, it will come for you.
Ghost Trains – A major problem plaguing the countryside in Britain, ghost trains are a menace wherever there are rails. Hundreds of people die in rail accidents each year, but what the government doesn’t want you to know is that 79 percent of those accidents are probably from ghost trains. I tend to envision a ghost train encounter like the opposite version of the polar express; if you’re waiting at the station and a ghost train pulls up, you probably have a ticket to one of the hotter circles of hell. So it’s less like eating your soul so much as AmTrakking your soul to somewhere very very bad. And ghostly. Some fast facts: A motorist is almost twice as likely to die in an accident involving a ghost train than in a collision involving another moving vehicle of this realm. Also, apparently there’s a ghost train of the Lincoln Funeral Procession that runs from Washington DC to Springfield, IL. Spooky!
Time Travelers From the Future– Thanks to the clever work of our government, most people believe that the Roswell crash in 1947 was a cover-up involving extra-terrestrials. However, by pretending to cover up the truth in typical nefarious-yet-incompetent manner, the government was able to cover up the real truth that the crash actually involved human time travelers from the future. Why are these people scary? Well, for one, they are among us. Watching. That alone should give you the creeps. And think about the implications. They know the future. That means that every move you make, they not only anticipate, but they know it happened. And they’re from the future. That means they have all sorts of future technology to read our minds or eat our souls. One thing that should be clear is that they are not here simply to observe. They probably come from some future corporate-fascist dystopia and are the great fixers of history, guiding society towards its inevitable and desired demise. Be hopelessly afraid.
Sentient Needles What hates your freedom more than Al Qaeda? Free-moving, sentient nanobot needles. Whose only goal is to hover through the air until they find you. They will stab you, inject your body with hostile chemicals and puncture you continuously until your soul bleeds out. Spooky.
Spontaneously Collapsing Sun– There is nothing more terrifying, yet more certain, than the death of the sun. Most of us are able to live out the day without fear that something will happen to the sun and destroy us all, but that is because most people aren’t fixated on the uncertainties of science. We know that the sun is the giver of life, the giant nuclear furnace which sustains our planet and civilization, we know if the sun exploded it would only take seven minutes for the light to arrive and inform us of our imminent destruction. But we don’t know when it will happen. Most scientific models predict the end of the sun will naturally occur 5 billion years from now, but what about unnatural probabilities? What happens when we incorporate disembodied floating heads or future time travels into the scientific models? If an artery can rupture on a whim, if a bridge can collapse without advanced notice, than so too can a sun explode. And ~~it takes a good man with a gun to stop a bad sun~~ when it does it will make nuclear holocaust look like fireworks going off in your neighbor’s backyard. (fun fact- if the sun went supernova tomorrow, the side of Earth facing it would boil away completely)