Your single, greatest fear.

[launchpadmcqwak]

Death. Well Dying before fulfilling my ambitions.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Not Death (I've seen it a lot, doesn't phase me, and I played Persona 3...), not Stage Fright (I danced professionally for 7 yrs), not even drowning/spiders/being buried alive (meh)... but...
Heights...
Can't. Friking. Stand. Heights. Can't ride roller coasters. Can't look down from high buildings. I just CAN'T.

 

[Zeke63]

lol at first when I saw the thread title, I thought it meant you being single as the greatest fear

 

[Lonewolfm16]

I dont mind being alone and death, while scary, is inevitable so probably being trapped somewhere without being able to move or act, just lieing there as my mind slowly degrades unable to die, but also unable to live. I hate when you wake up from a nightmare, but you aren't fully awake and you can't control your thoughts as logic degrades so that plus boredom plus claustrophobia sounds awful.

 

[Khrowley]

Ever see Deep Rising? Yeah totally ruined large bodies of water for me; even in games I get apprehensive during swimming sections.

 

[Trololo Punk]

I have a pretty serious fear of needles. If I'm sitting in the hospital and an IV stand even rolls by me. My heart rate will literally jump up.

Other then that, I have "stage fright" on most occasions.

 

[Creator002]

Death. In partIcular, painful death. I'd be shit scared as I were dying since, right now, I don't think I'm ready and I'm loving life. However, dying in a psychologically or physiologically painful way (drowning, buried alive, burning, eaten) would scare me even more.

This reminds me of the Doctor Who episode "The God Complex" where everyone's greatest fear is in a room in some space hotel. I can't recall if the Doctor found his fear or what is was. Does anyone remember?

 

[MorganL4]

Dying without having made at least some small contribution to my fellow humans.

I don't want to end my life feeling as though I accomplished nothing.

 

[SD-Fiend]

Falling up. it's an irrational fear but sometimes... when i look up at the night sky I just start thinking about how scary that would be... falling until you eventually either burn or freeze or both.

 

[uchytjes]

Dying in obscurity.

Either that or losing control of my sanity.

 

[TheTim]

Drowning while being eaten alive by waterbreathing spiders (which do exist)

but i assume thats too narrow, so lets just say spiders.

 

[Lawnmooer]

Rejection.

Yeah...

I don't have that great a sense of preservation (I've already had my heart stop twice for different reasons) and I got to a point in which nothing really scares me (I'm emotionally retarded and so don't feel fear)

I'm masochistic so painful things don't worry me, in fact the threat of pain can actually be an incentive for me.

I know enough about various animals to either worry about being attacked by the usual scary things (Spiders, Scorpions, Snakes etc)

I don't fear death, I've had a good life so far and whilst it would suck to die (There are a few things I'd still like to do) I won't regret how I lived my life.

Whilst on the other hand, the last couple of nightmares I've had where of me being rejected by various people (Luckily, this doesn't normally happen to me outside of nightmares).

 

[TheRussian]

Going insane and hallucinating.
Think about it. You have no idea what is real and what is all in your head. That is exactly why Spec Ops: The Line feels like a horror game to me.

 

[StashAugustine]

Deep water, especially open sea, even more so if there's sharks. Second greatest, heights.
I've been playing Far Cry 3. It's almost worse then FEAR.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Hammerhead sharks and intruders. I don't actually spend much time worrying about them but I can't really think of anything I'm truly terrified of. I pick those two because I used to have horrifying nightmares that combined the two into walking hammerhead shark burglars. Sounds ridiculous on paper but those are the most terrifying (and earliest) memories I have.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

dying young and unexpectedly, pain doesn't intimidate me, but helplesness and missing out on life experiences does, since that's the point of living in the first place.

also, losing my eye-sight would be awful, being a 3D artist and drawing enthusiast.

 

[floopdawoop]

That everything I do will be met with derision, eventually leading to ostracization. So basically I'm afraid of failure so I tend not to try. Other than that, the cold strangling abyss of death.

 

[Slitzkin]

Not exactly death, but more ceasing to exist. Though I imagine it would be easy this non-existance thing, I believe I was quite good at it before I was born.

 

[Kae]

Dying.

Not actually being dead, oh no, the act of dying. Or more specifically, I'm afraid it'll be a painful and horrifying experience.

And it's coming. We're all going to die eventually.

Will I die, bleeding out, in some terrible traffic accident? Will I get caught in a building while it burns and be incinerated alive?
Or will I drown?

Drowning.

If I had to pick one, that's my single greatest fear.


Dan Brown described drowning in his book, Deception Point. Here's the relevant passage, but beware, it's one of the most terrifying things I've read.

Spoiler

Drowning, Ming had once read, was the most horrific death imaginable. He had never dreamed he would find himself on the verge of experiencing it. His muscles refused to cooperate with his mind, and already he was fighting just to keep his head above water. His soggy clothing pulled him downward as his numb fingers scratched the sides of the pit.

His screams were only in his mind now.

And then it happened.

Ming went under. The sheer terror of being conscious of his own impending death was something he never imagined he would experience. And yet here he was? sinking slowly down the sheer ice wall of a two-hundred-foot-deep hole in the ice. Multitudes of thoughts flashed before his eyes. Moments from his childhood. His career. He wondered if anyone would find him down here. Or would he simply sink to the bottom and freeze there? entombed in the glacier for all time.

Ming's lungs were screaming for oxygen. He held his breath, still trying to kick toward the surface. Breathe! He fought the reflex, clamping his insensate lips together. Breathe! He tried in vain to swim upward. Breathe! At that instant, in a deadly battle of human reflex against reason, Ming's breathing instinct overcame his ability to keep his mouth closed.

Wailee Ming inhaled.

The water crashing into his lungs felt like scalding oil on his sensitive pulmonary tissue. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. Cruelly, water does not kill immediately. Ming spent seven horrifying seconds inhaling in the icy water, each breath more painful than the last, each inhalation offering none of what his body so desperately craved.

Finally, as Ming slid downward into the icy darkness, he felt himself going unconscious. He welcomed the escape.

So yeah, sorry to make this thread all macabre...

It's a thread about fear, macabre it's how it should be, and that passage is great I could almost feel it, the panic the desperation, that has to be pretty horrifying, interesting to say the least.

OT: My greatest fear is lame and stupid and I've mentioned it before but I don't feel like saying it today, my second greatest fear it's being crazy, I keep thinking that I'm going to end up on an insane asylum, hardly one day goes by in which the thought doesn't go through my mind, the worst part is that I kinda need to see a therapist because I have nervous attacks and some other problems I'm sure they could help with, but I can't because maybe the diagnosis says I need to be locked up and I don't want to be locked up in the stupid mental ward with my mind being slowly dissolved by whatever drugs they give me to calm me down and my body just rotting there being completely useless.
I don't know ever since I was a child I've been afraid of that, the fact that people keep telling me that I'm crazy and that I'm seem off and asking me if I have "something" just makes it worse, I don't want to be crazy...
But if I think about it, I could be, there's a lot of things that seem pretty off about me... : /