The World's Deadliest and most dangerous…
Whilst man has proved very effective at killing himself there is still some healthy competition from Mother Nature. The natural world contain any number of potentially deadly animals but the effects of all these put together are almost insignificant when planet Earth itself turns against us. With the exception of war and epidemics nothing kills in numbers … Read more
In the modern world there is sometimes a complacency that we have somehow conquered nature. This belief can be destroyed in moments when the planet reminds us this is not the case, and in the most brutal ways. Of all these tsunamis are one of the most terrifying and devastating of all natural disasters. The terms … Read more
So, what is the deadliest virus on Earth? You’d think this might be an easy enough question to answer but it turns out there is more than one way to define deadliest. For instance is it the virus that kills the most people overall (death rate); or is it the disease that has the highest case … Read more
For an ever increasing number of us allergies are an annoying and often unpleasant fact of life. Come spring and summer it’s time to break out the tissues and medications, or for the even less fortunate the scratching and sneezing might be an all year thing. However, for a small but significant percentage of the … Read more
There have been any number of studies on what might be the world’s most dangerous drugs over the years. A problem many of these have is they focus on only one aspect of what makes any particular drug harmful. For example, how much damage to society does it cause, is it dangerous in the long term … Read more
It seems that our fears of animals are based around two main themes; there are those with the big pointy teeth that are just looking for an excuse to eat us alive and there are those that, whilst seemingly innocuous, pack a secret weapon so deadly that half the world seem to have a phobia … Read more
On the morning of August 27th 1883 the small Indonesian island of Krakatoa virtually destroyed itself in a series of cataclysmic explosions the likes of which have never been witnessed in human history before or since. Not only was the explosion the loudest sound ever recorded, it released 4 times more energy than the most powerful … Read more
There are somewhere in the region of 118 elements that are known of. The reason for being vague is that some are thought to exist but have never been observed. Of these 98 occur naturally. Very few of these elements are completely harmless and most present some risk in sufficient doses. There are no hard,fast … Read more
As plants aren’t, by their nature, very mobile they have developed a variety of ways of protecting themselves from all things herbivorous. Many have evolved spikes, stings and even just an unpleasant taste. However, many went down the route of the ultimate deterrent – being so poisonous that anything eating them was unlikely to ever … Read more
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one… …Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Those were the words of Robert Oppenheimer in 1945 after Trinity atomic bomb test – the first ever nuclear test. Months later … Read more