I’ve got three:
For some reason, a brain tumor. I guess it’s because I think I’m pretty smart and value my intellect, and if something were to damage that, I’d be sunk.
Losing my husband to some accident. I’d survive, but it’s definitely something I fear.
Spiders. Yeah, it’s an irrational phobia, but it’s there, and I can’t seem to get better about it.
Being pregnant or being forced to incubate one of the creatures from the Aliens movie series. I consider them equivalent in dreaded fear.
Being wedged in a V shaped crevase. Freaks me out just thinking about it. I have to stand up and move around after typing it.
I’m with ya there. The idea of the annihilation of the self is ultimately benign, really, but the moment of transition - at least the contemplation of it - is a thing of insurmountable metaphysical ick. I hope I at least get the sensation of floating above my corpse, and maybe meeting my cat.
The other thing I cannot abide: gigantic electron micrographs of bugs. Every time The New York Times plasters one across the front page of the Science section, I have a mini-heart attack. Please Og, if you’re out there, don’t let the last sight I see after a fatal cardiac event be a dog flea the size of a regulation football, over a semi-witty headline like For A Dog Flea, Life Really Sucks.
But if you’re implanted with an alien, you get to spend your last hours as a machine-gun-wielding badass! And how many people get to do that?
Some military personnel do. But alien implantation is probably less unpleasant than boot camp*, and it’s definitely over with more quickly.
*Another one of my deepest existential fears. I actually have quite a few, now that I think of it.
As deep as the ocean is my dread of being devoured by the ocean, damn this rain, felt like a waterfall pouring on the house last night. Then I dreamed my repeat dream about swirling rising waters lapping at my back door.
That and airplane disasters, though my air tragedy disaster repeat dream is one where I witness it in close range from on the ground.
Immolation ranks right up there. I think burning to death has to be the most horrible way to go.
Being helpless and paralyzed but still sentient as by a stroke…wanting to finish dying but unable to bring it about.
Fear of falling is said to be one of our oldest and most profound fears. When I have nightmares they usually involve falling.
SS
Being in a dark enclosed space, with water. I can swim and aren’t afraid of water, but the combination freaks me out. The enclosed tube slides at water parks get to me a bit.
Being disabled, especially losing my eyesight.
Burning, definitely.
Death doesn’t get to me so much as the idea of a long, lingering death. I’ve know enough people who went through a year or more of cancer or some such thing before they went to know how absolutely horrible that is for both the person dying and their loved ones.
As horrible as some of the other means of death mentioned above could be, I’d much rather just have it over and done with when the time comes than to hang around in pain and put my family through the ordeal of watching me waste away a little at a time.
My greatest fear since being married was always that my wife would get pregnant and die during childbirth forcing me to raise the child alone, which I would always resent for killing my wife. That shit keeps me awake at night and is one of the reasons I was overjoyed when I found out we were infertile.
Hell.
I’m mind-numbingly afraid of being widowed again. You’d think I’d take steps to avoid it like, I dunno, not getting remarried, but noooo.
It haunts me, but I’m risking it anyway.
Getting Parkinson’s. My grandfather had it and watching him go from a big, strong construction worker to unable to move or (eventually) speak was heartbreaking.
Especially since you could still see the intelligence behind his eyes.
Good one! That’s terrifying to me too.
That, and falling down stairs. I think that one came from when I fell down some stairs a few years ago. It was only two stairs, but I broke three bones.
I’ve got several, but cancer’s got to be number one. It killed both my parents in a years-long process, and the last weeks for both were horrible in pretty much every way.
After that, probably ending up one of those snaggle-toothed guys one sees hanging out in freeway underpasses, begging for money.
In the realm of things that are relatively unlikely to happen, the stories of Saddam-era political prisoners in Iraq being fed into plastic shredders (whether true or not) give me the willies.
Losing my husband or daughter is the big one. The lesser, lifelong one, is a bridge collapse or a wreck on a bridge that causes the car I’m in to go over the edge. Could I get out of a car sinking in water? Terrifying.
I worry that the next ~40 years (i.e. the rest of my life) will be boring and unfulfilling.
Having my five year old child go missing and not being able to find him again - ever.
I’d rather be dead in any one of a number of horrible ways than go through the terror of waiting and not knowing, while the police give up and the case goes cold - knowing he’s probably dead at some bad person’s hands, but not being sure one way or the other.
Something happening to me and leaving my husband alone. It’s stupid, because I won’t be there for it, but he doesn’t really have much in the way of family, and our friends are scattered around, so almost all of our holidays are spent with my family and we spend all of our other time together. I also have non-mutual friends whereas he doesn’t, really.
So I’m afraid that if I die, he won’t feel comfortable continuing to see my family and he’ll just be there, alone. I know he’ll move on, but he works a lot and doesn’t get out that much. It’s a narcissistic fear, but I think about it a lot.
Well, that and failing.