January 2020, new year, new decade, new you! You can’t believe how pumped you are for
what’s sure to be the best decade ever, it’s 2020 after all- that’s as futuristic as you
can get! We’re talking hoverboards, self-driving cars, cure for cancer,
and at long last rumors that Keeping Up With The Kardashians is getting canceled!
But just one month into 2020 and it becomes obvious that 2020 is not your
friend. In fact, 2020 is kind of an (bleep)hole, and just when coronavirus went and got the whole
world down, 2020 came back with a vengeance to kick the world in the nuts. Global pandemic, India
and China at each other’s throat, North Korea threatening to launch nukes at everyone, and oh,
Keeping Up With The Kardashians is getting another season- yeah, 2020 is the scumbag Steve of years,
but here’s a bunch of other terrible crap you probably missed in the worst year of your life.
10. People miraculously survived an airline disaster
There were a handful of disasters in the skies this year, with the worst
one being the pre-virus mid-air explosion of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.
All of the 176 people on that flight were killed, obliterated after their plane was hit by two
missiles fired by the Iranian armed forces. We guess most of you heard about that one,
but you might not have heard about the disaster that happened on May 22. That involved Pakistan
International Airlines Flight 8303. The flight took off from Lahore and
was in the air just over an hour when it put out a mayday call, saying that it had lost its engines
and it would have to make an emergency landing. The next thing that happened was the aircraft was
seen hurtling towards a neighborhood in Karachi. Like a burning phoenix, its wings on fire,
it crashed into buildings filled with people. Amazingly, only one person in the neighborhood
died. Maybe even more amazing is the fact that two people from the 99 passengers on board survived.
One of them later recounted how the pilot had told the passengers that the landing was
likely going to be “troublesome.” He said the next thing he knew he was climbing through the rubble
of broken buildings and he could hear people were crying and screaming. Someone grabbed him and he
was whisked off to the nearest hospital. It’s generally thought that the back is
the best place to be sitting if you’re on a plane that has to make an emergency landing,
but the two survivors were both sitting near the front in seats 1C and 8F.
That’s just a warm-up, far worse is to come. 9. Serial killers didn’t go away
Serial killers don’t generally take a break during a pandemic, although their hunting grounds during
lockdowns might be less densely populated. It’s hard to say just how many serial killers
are active at any given time. Some experts think that in 2020 in the USA alone there were possibly
2,000 serial killers. A former chief of the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit said in 2015 that there
were maybe 25 to 50 serial killers active that year. In 2020, they didn’t just go away.
Take for instance the “smiley face murders”, something we imagine not
many of you have heard about. This creepy case involves young men in the Midwest who
were found dead in bodies of water. Did they merely drown? Some investigators think no.
You see, the bodies of some 45 men were found dead in the water, but the thing was,
they all fit a similar profile. They were young, white, athletic, and popular. Maybe they were just
drunk because a lot of victims had been at parties prior to getting wet. What’s super-strange,
though, is close to where they were found there was graffiti nearby of a smiley face. If they were
killed, right now there is someone or some people out there that you should be very afraid of.
Other estimates tell us that two percent of all murders in the U.S. each year are committed by
serial killers. It can just take a long time to track them down. Take the case of Samuel Little.
He started killing in 1970 and didn’t stop until he was arrested in 2012. The FBI has said that
he was behind at least 50 murders, but Little himself has claimed to have killed 93 people.
How many people like him were doing their thing in 2020? It’s likely there were quite a few.
8. Regular murders didn’t go away either 2020 isn’t over yet as we write this,
even though many of you likely wish it was. It’s too early to put together the murder
statistics for the year, but right now the FBI is saying in the U.S. the murder rate has
increased by 15 percent from the rate in 2019. If you think that’s bad, a report released by
the Council on Criminal Justice stated over the summer in 27 big cities in the U.S. the murder
rate increased by 53 percent. Many people have asked what is going on in some cities,
such as Chicago and New York where murders have dramatically increased.
The answer is no one really knows. Maybe it was a result of lockdowns. Maybe it was connected to
the protests. Maybe it was the hot summer weather. Others think that lockdowns have caused an upswing
in domestic violence while others have said they’ve interrupted the flow of illegal drugs.
Another thing is people have been buying more guns this year than in previous years. It will
be interesting to see what happens in 2021. Now for something out of this world.
7. We were nearly hit by an asteroid In August this year, NASA said the earth
came pretty close to being whacked by an asteroid. The Near-Earth Asteroid actually set a record in
that it came closer to earth than any other NEA NASA had ever seen before. It measured around 10
to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) in width. Something like that could cause some amount of damage
if it were to actually hit the earth, but the good news is that NASA said it would have
likely broken up if it had gotten any closer. The bad news is NASA has said at some point
the Earth is going to get slammed by a piece of space rock big enough to do significant damage
to a country or continent. You might have missed this while you were watching all that virus news,
but there were articles this year talking about NASA’s “Double Asteroid Redirection Test.” That
basically entails firing a rocket into an asteroid that’s gotten a little too close to comfort.
Ok, it’s time to get biblical. 6. Fires, floods, famine
If you read the bible you might be familiar with the Book of Revelations. The writers of the texts
promise humankind that one day there will be a kind of reckoning. There is talk of things such as
floods, fires, famine, pestilence, war, and blood, a lot of blood. 2020 hasn’t been a huge year for
wars, but as for the rest, it has certainly met its disaster quota. As you all know, it’s been
a big year for pestilence, but that’s not all. This year the U.S. media said California
experienced its worst wildfires in decades. The LA Times wrote that the fires were bigger,
more destructive, and they led to the worst air quality in 20 years. Over the last decade,
the fires in California have been bad pretty much every year, but 2020 could have been the worst.
Prior to the virus getting going, Australia also experienced some of its worst wildfires.
If you look at the fires that raged in some parts of South East Asia, they were bad, too,
although a lot of that had to do with agricultural burning. All in all, it was a bad year for fires.
It was much worse for animals, with 500 million of them dying in fires in Australia alone.
As for floods, it wasn’t a great year, either. Floods in East Africa took 453 lives and destroyed
the homes of almost half a million people. In China, at least 219 people died in floods and over
54,000 people were left homeless. Many regions were affected, with experts saying the floods were
the worst since 1998. Flooding in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh was also especially bad in 2020.
Hundreds of people died, and around 4.5 million people were displaced from their homes.
Was it a bad year for famine? Well, the Covid-19 pandemic had its hand in people not getting
enough food. The World Food Program reported in September that with a combination of Covid,
climate change and ongoing conflicts, close to 270 million people could starve.
So, there you go, 2020 was a terrible year for the threesome of fires, floods, and famine. The
next problem is making matters much worse. 5. Locusts caused unbelievable damage
Swarms of locusts ravaging crops are also something you can read about in the bible.
In case you didn’t know, 2020 was a bad year for those eating machines.
In 2019 and 2020, a locust plague spread through parts of the Middle East and Africa.
Swarms of the insects also feasted in South America. 23 countries were affected in all.
The reason the massive swarms exist is due to a few factors, but mainly it’s because there
was more rainfall than usual in some parts of the world, and that created perfect conditions for the
locusts to breed. Not only that, restrictions on travel during the pandemic helped create a
perfect storm. Help couldn’t be received where help was needed. Some countries have seen the
worst infestations for decades, as people in Ethiopia, Somalia, India, and Kenya, will attest.
Getting sick from a virus might be the last thing on your mind when you see a swarm of 80 million
locusts heading towards you. Such a swarm can eat as much in one day as 35,000 people.
4. A hyperactive volcano It wouldn’t be a bad year without at least one
volcano erupting. That happened at the start of the year in the Philippines. The Taal volcano blew
its lid and scared residents senseless when they saw great plumes of ash and steam filling the sky
for miles above their heads. If you think you’ve got problems, imagine living next to a pressure
cooker that has the power to wipe you out. It was a big deal. The airport in Manila
was closed. Thousands of people were told they had to be evacuated from their homes.
The authorities issued a level-4 warning, and with level 5 being the worst of all,
it meant get the hell away from that thing right now. They also said the volcano could spew again
soon, and the next explosion could be even worse. Unfortunately, some people couldn’t just get up
and leave. Others wanted to make sure their cows and pigs were ok.
That’s one of the reasons people died. In all, 39 people lost their lives. Only one of them
died as a direct result of the initial explosion, while others perished because they stayed home.
Now we’ll talk about something that was a world-first.
3. The Big Bang It started with a fire at the
Port of Beirut. The fire got bigger and there was an explosion followed by some smaller ones. A few
people got out their smartphones and recorded the fire, and thanks to them and CCTV, one of the most
shocking things ever captured on video happened. That was a massive explosion followed by a
supersonic blastwave that wrecked buildings in its path. Then we saw a huge mushroom cloud
form in the air. It was remarkable. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen,
and that’s why we have to include it on this list even though you probably know all about it.
If you don’t know the ins and outs, the blast left behind a 460 foot-wide (140 meters) crater.
Its depth was around 141 feet (41 meters). It destroyed just about everything in its vicinity.
In fact, it was so powerful that it blew out windows 5 miles (9km) away. One of the worst
things was the explosion destroyed silos full of grain, a loss that worsened food shortages
in a country already suffering from a financial crisis and the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.
It was called one of the “largest non-nuclear explosions in history”
and said to be only about ten times smaller in intensity than the nuclear bomb dropped
on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Poor storage of ammonium nitrate was to blame,
but the question a lot of people asked is why weren’t they told about this storage.
In total, 204 people died. 6,500 people were injured, and it left
300,000 people without a home. Some of those that died were the firemen attending the original fire,
and unfortunately for them, they didn’t know about the huge amount of ammonium nitrate.
This next one could be a problem for the future. 2. Tweet, tweet, boom
You should ask yourself this question: Could problems arise if some of the most powerful
people in the world were hacked and their social media accounts posted content not from them?
Yes, you’re thinking, that would be a problem. Some Twitter accounts hacked in
July included billionaire, Elon Musk; the richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos;
and the second richest person, Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Other hacked accounts
included the then U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.
It turned out that the masterminds behind the hack were two young folks from the U.S. and a
British teenager. The three kids managed to pull off the worst social media hack of all time. Ok,
so they only did it to scam a bit of money, but what if someone could hack a very important person
and post a dangerous message? The last thing we need is a declaration of nuclear war via Twitter.
No war would be started this way, but as some security experts said, an account in the wrong
hands could cause a global security crisis. 1. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
Just kidding, after everything you’ve heard today what that couple of lovebirds is doing
isn’t something you need to be thinking about. Now you need to watch this,
“Why Is The Government Terrified Of This Hacker?” Or, have a look at this,
“Worst Natural Disasters in Human History.”Other Terrifying Things That Happened in 2020