This may not be my greatest fear, but I'm thinking it's somewhere in the top 10.

It gives new meaning to that song, "It's Raining Men", eh?

So what's yours?

Cheers!

Rick...

The end of SimHQ.

Laugh all you want.... Possession of one of my kids (or me for that matter). ie as in "The Exorcist."

You should definitely avoid reading this book then.

This one didn't exactly leave me feeling calm and serene either.

The first author was a Catholic priest and the second author was the Chief Exorcist at the Vatican.

Don't read them late at night while everyone is asleep and the wind is whistling in the eaves.

I still feel a little creepy after reading those books when I think about it.

Cheers!

Rick...

Prohibition.

Getting sucked into a jet engine.

wake in the body of a woman...becouse some nurse swaped your hospital documentation thingie....

Oh, man, that first one I've heard of and I want to get it so badly... what is it about reading things that make us uncomfortable? I still can't read the Exorcist again and it's probably been 30 years since I first read it.

I don't know, but reading it seems somehow more intense than seeing the movie. Why do we do it? I think we like to torture ourselves.

I remember when the movie "The Exorcist" came out. I was sixteen. I took a girl to see it, drove my '67 Chevelle convertible, figured it would be a fun evening. Well, at some point in the movie we both stopped talking. We rode home in complete silence, scanning the road ahead and occasionally glancing out the window. I felt like I was in shock. It was several weeks before we could talk about our reaction and laugh...a little. But it still wasn't as bad as reading the book.

If you get that book by Malachi Martin, just remember - I warned you. You're going to be heavily creeped out by it. Very scary stuff. Worse than reading "The Exorcist" and that was bad enough.

Cheers!

Rick...

Sometimes I can admire this old Eastern Air Lines pilot:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/22/nyregi...rder-trial.html

Eternity
being alone

Wireman, did you work for EAL? We were in STL and then helped open MCI. My old man worked there from before Vietnam to the bitter end in January 1990. Those were the days of before "too big to fail" LOL.

My greatest fear is people knowing what my greatest fear is

Probably losing my ability to think or act on thoughts (or at least having such things severely degraded). So significant brain damage or suffering from dementia would likely be my greatest fear. Death would probably be a relief for me in that case.

Yeah, you'd think so if you'd never experienced it, but back when I couldn't talk and couldn't tell whether I was looking at my neurologist or a woodchuck in a Hawaiian shirt, I really wasn't suffering.

It was like wandering in fog and not knowing how you got there and having no words to think things through, but I wouldn't say it was particularly unpleasant. Just really different.

And you can get better. Look how voluminously verbose I am now.

Don't be in a big hurry to croak if you ever sustain a traumatic brain injury. Be patient. If you're still breathing, chances are things are going to get better.

Cheers!

Rick...

No, that one belongs to me. Choose another one.

ANYTHING bad happening to my wife or children.

Having something penetrating stuck into my eyes.

That's about it really.

AJ.

For me it would be falling from a great hight, mind you any hight puts the fear of god in me even as something silly as being on the top of some ladders and I'm terrified, it's kinda weird though because I can fly ok, I've even had a flying lesson and I was fine but make me stand on the table and whoa forget that!

Having major surgery and the anesthesiologist messes up. Even though you appear to be anesthetized you're not. I woke up once during surgery and it was at once amazing and yet pretty frightening.

Getting a disease like ALS.

Finding out any my nieces and nephews are dead..... from what ever.

Failure.

You should avoid some places in Norway then

My young children go missing.

I have many fears but they are insignificant as they affect only me, and I'd never disclose any in case someone, one day, wished to make them a reality upon me.

From a deep-set interest point-of-view and that would affect many, many people - one of my biggest fears is that the USA will fall from being a superpower to the likes of China. Or that the U.S. military will come second best to another country's military or be crippled through some kind of nuclear war. I fear (mainly for other people) things like that. I also fear that 9/11 will ever be proved to actually have been an inside job - but I do have every faith it wasn't.

1) Anything bad happening to my wife/kid
2) Falling under a train and live

To be exposed before my peers.

Tear down the wall!



The Jedi Master

To be filled with an urge to defecate.

I believe there's a role in the pr0n industry to accomodate that!

Yeah maddog screw that! Lol

Oh come on Flyboy! You can't do that to us! Everyone else has 'fessed up, we're all friends here, tell us! You have to face your fears!

Is it:

Being at work and not being able to remember whether or not you locked the door when you left home?

Talking to a girl you like and not realizing you have a booger swinging in the breeze from the edge of your nostril?

Inexplicably getting an erection in the crowded shower at the gym?

Having someone follow you around watching you all the time?

Noticing symptoms that correlate with the warning signs of a fatal disease?

Noticing and being bothered by the observation that your tongue can taste everything but itself?

You have to tell us. Come on now!

Cheers!

Rick...

Sorry, Sauron, you'll have to make do with my 'shared' fears.

A bit in Aliens2 where android had to crawl underground through a 300+ meters of narrow pipe...that's very uncomforting. Just picturing self there...<shivers>

Being buried alive.

If you had stopped to believe in fairy tales, all these kind of "fears" wouln't have been... I don't have any problem with exorcism as I don't believe in it.

fear? any death of my beloveds, including near family members and dogs.

That is the talk of somebody who has already been possessed!

ROFLMAO! Horrible, Flyboy, just horrible. But funny! No question about that!

Cheers!

Rick...

People want to be afraid- on the face of it, there is more security and familiarity in a lifelong fear than to be disabused of those fears as superstitions. It's actually more work sometimes to let go of what you know and are afraid of in exchange for nothing, or something completely different than what you always believed. Witness people actually taking comfort in fears with nostalgia, they aren't necessarily ready to believe or admit that themselves, but there it is. I've explained to people why the personification of Evil as the Devil is not something that actually exists any more than it is a metaphor for worldly attachments and desires. I will get the usual reactions even bordering on anger- people prefer to believe in something like that. At least it's an explanation of sorts versus no explanation of why bad things happen, and because there is psychological fear, it even serves a purpose to make behavior or expectations conform.

Some people I know who really truly believe in possession and fear it also have other beliefs outside of Christianity, such as astrology, or other mystical beliefs. It seems the tendency is related.

Even if there is a Devil who is the personification of evil, he's going to be pretty ineffective if he operates on the basis of possessing individuals.

What's more likely is that he possesses weapons of mass corruption.

Television comes to mind.

Cheers!

Rick...

Truly.

But to put this in perspective, one of the world's oldest known formal rituals is the sucking ritual practiced in Shamanistic cultures. The shaman sucks the bad spirits out of the patients into his own body, might even interact with it to find out what's going on with it and why it's there. The shaman, medicine man or healer is an older profession than the world's 'oldest profession'. And you are something particularly valuable to the community had you this ability to cure people of a problem like that.

I can't think of anything I'd call a "greatest fear". I really haven't ever been the kind to think in fear. The link in the original post does fall into a "bad ways to go" concept.

Those kinds of things, along with plenty else in life, are certainly worth avoiding when possible.

Running out of Beer on a Sunday.

My greatest fear that induces discomfort is tall, open heights- the edges of cliffs or tall buildings give me more discomfort than some weird looking dude approaching me in some dark alley.

However, my fear that tends to be longer lasting that can come at any time is to reflect on one day being too old to take care of myself, or things not working like they used to.

I am afraid of heights. I cannot go to a majestic cliff or skyscraper and look over the side without becoming physically dizzy. If I had to walk scaffoldings for a living I would fall off. And for this reason I can't be on a rollercoaster for very long.

But I'm ok in the window seat of an airliner. It makes me wonder how I ever became a flightsim aficionado.

It's the openness I think. And I think altitudes that aircraft fly at are less scary than lower high altitudes. At 30,000 feet, I can't really see much detail, everything looks like it's printed on a map or something. But at a thousand feet, I can see individual people, rocks and trees. Ugh.

My fears are pretty much all standard, nothing unusual. I have no overt phobias or anything. Your run-of-the-mill fears.



The Jedi Master

Usually that means public speaking, which I think often rates worse than dying for most people surveyed.

Sporty Spice

Fear of being in a sleeping bag with Richard Simmons?

Man,after reading all this the one that comes to mind is,being trapped in a cave without light and having crawl forward into a place where my arms are pinned and I can't go any further forward or backward and the hole is too small for anyone to help you and they just have to watch you die pinned there until you just die,just die,just................

This really happened to someone last year I think.Jeeez,I can hardly breathe just thinking of the horror and terror of being trapped like that.

Greatest fear ? If I had to pick only 1 it would be being skinned alive.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned being inadvertently emasculated.

You know, like you decide to slide down the banister and realize too late that your wife has left the hedge shears balanced on the rail by the newel post at the bottom.

You'd think things like that would be a much more common stressor amongst males than say, heights or public speaking.

There were a lot of people with fear of heights. You could combine that with fear of emasculation.

Suppose you decided to face your fear of heights by forcing yourself to go skydiving? You make your first static line jump and find you're headed for trees near a suburban neighborhood instead of the drop zone at the local airport. You desperately yank at the risers trying to steer away, but it's like you're being inexorably drawn into those suburban trees.

And then the real horror arises. As you near the trees, you realize that you're going to land astride a big limb where some gardening home owner has left a big pair of hedge shears, blades open and pointing up, straddling the very limb on which it appears that you're going to land!

You can use your imagination from there. I wonder if anyone has ever been traumatically emasculated while skydiving?

Anyway, it would sure take your mind off your fear of heights, wouldn't it?

Cheers!

Rick...

Something happening to one of my children.

Being stalked by a shark, and knowing it is there..under me somewhere

Taking a beautiful lady home, getting her gear off and.. one lump or two ?...THE HORROR!

I should have great fear of being wrongly incarcerated and gang raped in prison just for being a white man while the rest of society seems blase about the prison state of society and so many non-violent offenders being victimized in the prison system, or falling into a cooking vat alive or something, trapped in a pocket somewhere unable to move like someone else said, after a while, you just have a list where you can always come up with something worse- for example being emasculated while forced to eat Good N' Plenty in front of televised audience or something. I could have fears much worse than those, I'm sure, I just don't encounter them so much. For example, I would hate to have my spine crushed or having total loss of vision more than confronting the edge of a building, however, I come to the edges of buildings more often than being confronted with those other things- I experience that fear that much more often. This is a blissful kind of ignorance on my part, every time I step into a car there's some risk of serious, permanent injury, but I remain ignorant of the danger and continue to do so.

You think that's horrible? How about if you took the beautiful lady home and she wanted to play bondage games. You were half in the bag after consuming plenty of Swan lager and playfully agreed, and you only found out about the one lump or two situation after "she" had you tied up?

I'm thinking you'd be yanking at your bonds until your wrists bled and screaming somewhere up in the altissimo range as "she" slinked toward you, eyes heavily lidded and her mouth slightly open, filling the room with erotic energy...

You'd probably develop a phobia about drinking and picking up women.

Cheers!

Rick...

I'd imagine the opposite. Why should the fear of an incredibly uncommon, even unheard of, occurrence be worse than something that could easily happen?

Really petrified of falling into a volcano, or reentering the earth's atmosphere without a heat shield, or being emasculated by a weed-eater?

When at any dinner party or night at the bar you could be unexpectedly called on to speak publicly? You can encounter great heights just being seated by a window at a restaurant in a high rise, or have a semi truck pull over toward your lane while on a high overpass. In some parts of the country encountering a poisonous spider or snake are almost a given.

Yeah, you may have a point there. But I'm not afraid of public speaking no matter how large the group, I'm not afraid of heights, and I have a pet snake and would like to get a tarantula. And I see poisonous snakes all the time during the warm months, especially Copperheads and Water Moccasins.

I guess I have to dig deeper for something gives me the willies. I'm too dumb to be afraid of the normal stuff.

Cheers!

Rick...

Cancer.

Plain and simple.

Thats it..i am never drinking with Rick !

Garçon, two more Swan lagers!

Hey, Ajay! Snap out of it! Look at the blond over there with the five o'clock shadow! I think she's giving you the eye!

Cheers!

Rick...

You're ordering Swan lagers at a bar in a French restaurant?

I think that qualifies as one of my standard fears.



The Jedi Master

Modesty never did seem like one of your forte's!

I would be more afraid if "she" were holding a bottle of KY warming liquid.

That's why I always keep a cyanide capsule tucked in my cheek. Always be prepared I was taught as a kid.

I don't think the super unlikely things scare me, because I don't see them as worth worrying about.

I think my greatest fear is being alone for the rest of my life.

This doesn't scare me at all. At 51, it's my preference now. Relationships and me don't go well together. Friends with benefits is the way for me.

Well, I got the book today, Rick. I've read the prologue and the Michael Strong Part I chapter.

It is going to be most disturbing, I think. The prologue is fantastic in and of itself, with the 'commonalities' bit and "aspiring vacuum." Applies to some of the posts in this thread, in point of fact.

Oh man, that is one intense book! And the intensity builds as you go. By the end of the book, you're just about bugeyed. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Rick...

Greatest fear? The pungent stench of failure.

I'm also surprised that no one has mentioned this one:

"Good afternoon, this is Special Agent Tenacious from the Internal Revenue Service. How are you today? The reason I'm calling is because in reviewing your last tax return, there are a number of irregularities. Consequently, we do intend to audit your returns for the preceding seven years. You'll need all financial records for the past seven years, most especially anything pertaining to your claimed deductions. We'll see you Tuesday morning at ten, they'll direct you to my office from the front desk. Have a nice day."

Surely somebody in this forum finds that frightening?

Cheers!

Rick...

Alzheimer's. Watched my grandfather die of it. I hope I remember enough when I'm diagnosed with Dementia load the gun to blow my brains out. It's also why I donate to help cure it.

Weird enough, my greatest fear, one that takes me to my knees at times, is heights... above me. I can't stand closed auditoriums, cathedrals and so on. I just have this weird unexplainable fear of falling from the height that's above me even though I'm not even up there.

You got it wrong Sauron....

AJ's only fear out of that comment is drinking Swan Lager!
I know the man ... He could cope with the rest

An IRS audit would be a hassle and a PITA, but I don't fear it. Largely because I have the feeling they'd discover I've paid too MUCH over the last 10 years.



The Jedi Master

It happened again...head first this time! Yikes!!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...k-accident.html

More worried about permanent/terminal things, not something that you can get better from.

Well, frankly you don't suffer long that way. Going foot first has to be the WORST.



The Jedi Master

So, I've read the first two cases. I've got to take a break. Yamahama.

LOL! Yamahama indeed! It's not a book that you'll soon forget!

Cheers!

Rick...

That others know my fears...

I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will let it pass over me and through me.

Intero-Rectogestion turning out to be real and catching on.

Let's see...

Being trapped in a small space with water pouring in and having my testicles twisted in a testicle-twister.

I always hate when that happens.

Unlike others here who don't seem to mind.

Heights.

Something happening to my wife or kids.

Being eaten by a predator. Lived in the boonies long enough to know you never go anywhere unarmed. Ever.

Yes, I believe it's called 'marriage.'