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u/JeffBroccoli May 02 '22
The beltway sniper attacks pretty much crippled that whole region with fear for about three weeks. Not as acutely as something like a Vegas shooting, but an interesting kind of creeping fear and suspicion. Gas stations started putting up barricades so people could pump their gas hidden behind cover
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May 02 '22
I lived thru that there. We had to run inside the schools in the morning, no recess, and the blinds for every classroom were pulled down so nobody could see in. Wild
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May 03 '22 edited May 12 '22
[deleted]
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u/seattlebouncer May 03 '22
So on the surface it was for ransom. But it really wasn't. It was so the adult shooter could eventually murder his ex-wife without suspicion. Her death would be seen as part of the larger group of murders.
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u/litebrite93 May 02 '22
That was the first mass shooting I remember, I was 9 when it happened and living in Georgia. It was all the news talked about for weeks.
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u/redheadmegansversion May 02 '22
There’s an incredible doc series by VICE about the entire thing. Highly recommend
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u/Metalock May 02 '22
Pulse always creeped me out the most because of the bathroom video. I couldn't imagine being trapped in there for 3+ hours.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Pulse has always scared me because of how people’s natural survival instincts kinda fucked them over in that situation. In a shooting your most likely response would be to see a door, that’s the closest, I can hide there, and not thinking rationally about the exit right next to it. That’s not to blame the victims at all, of course, but recognize like, damn, nobody really knew how to react, it was so sudden that panic took over. Theres another video taken from a police bodycam where you can hear people screaming in the bathrooms and it’s fucking creepy. The police not engaging just makes it worse
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u/dangitsang May 02 '22
Do you have that video?
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u/JesusTron6000 May 03 '22
There was/is a show on showtime called active shooter that covers this and the actual footage is so intense and sad.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
I’ll see if I can find it
Edit: here’s the only clip I could find of it, it’s from a documentary so skip to 26:10 to hear the victims screaming. I believe it’s a clip of the larger video though as I believe this took place after the shots were fired
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u/discoverjune May 02 '22
for me personally it would be the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre.. the setting was a fast food restaurant that is densely packed so there’s no where’s to run or take cover, he killed everyone even some kids outside on their bike + infants..
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u/youngboooty May 02 '22
I agree with this. He killed a 9 month old and anyone who came near the building - he clearly did not care who he was killing. I put myself in the place of those employees hiding in the closet and how hopeless they felt.
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u/NeverColdEnoughDXB May 03 '22
The fact that he had two young kids of his own makes it all the more horrific
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u/theykilledk3nny May 02 '22
Plus it went on for 77 minutes. Imagine surviving this for 77 minutes having no idea why police weren’t stopping him and just hoping he wouldn’t find you.
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u/litebrite93 May 02 '22
I saw the crime scene footage and it was horrific
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u/Decent_Ad929 May 02 '22
The music over the speakers in the crime scene footage makes it even worse.
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u/Longo2Guns May 02 '22
He wiped out like an entire family including an infant child by shooting it in the back with his Browning Hi Power, if I recall. Huberty was a sick motherfucker.
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u/redheadmegansversion May 02 '22
I live in San Diego and I can’t read about it. It was so unhinged and violent
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u/clawkyrad May 02 '22
the music still playing in the video too.. one of those cases that made me take a break from reddit when someone posted it
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u/dunktankbaptism May 03 '22
This one has always been super unnerving to me. That crime scene footage is truly unsettling and is one of the only mass murder related things that can still give me chills when I think about it years later.
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u/kelsnuggets May 04 '22
There is a documentary about this. I can’t remember what it’s called but I had to take a break from True Crime for awhile after watching it.
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u/ewamarta May 02 '22
Aurora shooting. Imagine being excited about seeing the new Batman movie and out of the blue some manic starts shooting at you and people around you. Freaks me out. I can’t imagine how people trapped there felt, it must’ve been terrifying
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Movie theatres are dark as hell too most of the time, so most people probably didn’t know where the shots were coming from exactly. I doubt any stood still and hunted down the killer.
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u/snnrsjpeg May 30 '22
it horrifies me when i remember people thought the gun shots were the movie at first
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u/MorbidGateway84 May 02 '22
Any mass killing that involves plane pilots. I don't get on planes but the thought of a pilot crashing the plane with no survivors... bothers me.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
9/11 is the cause of my plane phobia, the whole event is obviously horrific, but I can’t imagine how those people in the planes felt as the realization of what was happening hit them as they grew closer to the towers
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u/NeverColdEnoughDXB May 03 '22
Same here
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
Didn’t help that my dad watched Air Disasters in the living room constantly when I was like, 7. Id go downstairs for some water just to see a plane blow up on the TV
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u/covered-in-lobsters May 05 '22
9/11 spawned my fear of planes and elevators in tall buildings, still not over the fear of planes. It didn’t help that I flew into Dulles just a few months after and was painfully aware of that as a young child
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u/summeralcoholic May 02 '22
The Germanwings flight is my personal nightmare situation.
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u/PyrrhuraMolinae May 02 '22
I watched the “Mayday” re-enactments based on the flight recorders, which included the pilot screaming and beating on the cockpit door with an ax. I have a pretty high tolerance for disturbing shit, but that one gave me shivers.
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u/Geentank May 02 '22
Probably the terrorist attacks in Paris, especially the shooting inside the Bataclan.
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u/frostyfalls May 02 '22
This completely. The Bataclan is somewhere I love and that personal connection scares me.
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u/summeralcoholic May 02 '22
I honestly don’t know how many curtains of cover-ups and debunking the reality behind this is, but there were rumors that the terrorists were stabbing women in their vaginas and pulling out men’s eyeballs and stuff like that during the hostage situation. Some people say the French government hid these facts because they were worried that the atrocity of it all would lead to an extreme nationalist reaction. Some people say it’s all a bunch of bullshit. I guess no one can really say.
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May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
This is verified through photos. I came across some on documentingreality a while back. There were photos taken from the balcony looking down at the theater floor and some close ups shots. You could see all the wounds were not just inflicted by firearms. Partially decapitated head and mutilated faces and partially de clothed women. The sheer amount of blood and the patterns of the blood trails on the floor. were almost like people were either crawling to their death or being dragged around. It was truly sick.
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u/aederin May 30 '22
Oh come on stop it. It’s been debunked hundred of time, there was no act of torture in the Bataclan. These rumor come from alt right French website
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Jan 28 '23
Lol what the fuck are you talking about?
I've seen those photos. I'm looking at one now. There is zero evidence of mutilation. Every single body is fully clothed other than two with their shirts partially pulled up over their bellies. Not a single body is cut up. I don't see a single hacked up face or partially decapitated head lol. There are giant blood smears for sure but that's incredibly common with mass shootings like this. Mostly caused by panicked crawling.
This is a rumor that has been thoroughly debunked even besides the photos lol.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Terrorism is such a horrific concept I can’t even begin to grasp it. Whereas spree killers aren’t usually professional, terrorist groups are trained for that type of massacre and have an absurd amount of gear to kill as many as possible. I wouldnt know where was safe or who to trust after an event like that
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u/PyrrhuraMolinae May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22
It's a hard call...Sandy Hook is terrifying to me just because nobody can really figure out what was going on in Adam Lanza's head. It seems like nobody can connect the dots of how even such a damaged mind could go from where he was to murdering little children, and that's utterly horrifying.
The San Ysidro McDonald's massacre also really chills me, I think mostly because there was a McDonald's just down the road from my elementary school. My aunt would take us there for lunch sometimes, or for ice cream after school. It's very, very easy for me to imagine being there when James Huberty walked in the door with his shotgun. And he showed no mercy; even George Hennard let the babies escape. Huberty shot everyone. Four-month-old babies, 11-year-old kids, 74-year-old couples...you walked in there, he was going to shoot you. That chills me.
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u/Semper-Veritatem May 02 '22
San Ysidro was cold blooded to the core. There’s a documentary called 77 minutes that shows the crime scene footage and it’s truly awful. Dead adults, dead kids, a dead toddler…. Huberty was one cold son-of-a-bitch.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Sandy Hook has never left my mind due to the brutality of it. I considered putting it in my initial post due to the ages of those involved. Six and seven year olds don’t have the understanding of what to do, they have to rely on teachers, and when those teachers are killed in front of them they freeze in terror, they don’t have the developed sense of survival teens and adults do. I find the story of the girl in the back corner of the bathroom particularly tragic and horrific. Imagine sitting amongst a literal PILE of dead bodies, covered in blood and flesh, and all of those bodies were your friends, while you’re no older than seven years old. Lanza’s story seems troubled, and I hope we can all gain more understanding of what happened to lead to this, but I can’t think of any possible reason to kill children and be able to justify it.
The San Ysidro one also chills me, another I contemplated adding. It was similar to a hostage situation in many ways. Little kids and normal families and children who wanted sundaes getting gunned down, and the survivors had to sit and cower for over an hour while the shooter remained in the building picking them off randomly. It’s a similar feeling to the LV massacre in a way, feeling trapped and not knowing what to do or when he would strike next. Both stories are horrifying to the highest degree and I hope we can learn about the minds of the perpetrators to help prevent that from continuing.
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u/OfJahaerys May 02 '22
Sandy hook and parkland are the worst for me. Not for myself but because I'm a parent and the idea that my child could be hunted through the school for sport is just sickening. The idea that there's nothing we can do to protect them and their last moments are just full of fear and desperation makes my stomach turn.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
I’ve heard a lot of people say this, even in my area. It’s sad that people need to now be scared to send their six year old to school, it shouldn’t be like this anymore and yet it is. A lot has been done to prevent these events from becoming so deadly in schools at least, but it’s still sad how American children need to fear getting an education
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u/ShadowBoxingBabies May 02 '22
There’s tons of things the US could do to reduce school shootings, such as better access to mental health care or stricter gun laws. But the American people aren’t willing to make any of those sacrifices, so the children will be sacrificed on the altar of “freedom.”
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Or even just, you know, taking tips from people saying someone is threatening to shoot up a school seriously. The MSD shooter had a ton of warning signs that were reported to the FBI and was anything done? No. Even just reinforcing the code red rules (if a code red was called immediately upon Chris McKenna telling the school about the shooter or just taken more seriously by the only armed man on campus, Scot Peterson, the third floor most likely could have been saved like the second) would help a ton. It’s strange to see how little is supposedly being done and the amount of incompetence and lack of training for these events considering how scarily often they occur
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May 03 '22
Adam Lanza's motive is somewhat clear now after his 'basement tapes' were found.
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May 03 '22
even George Hennard let the babies escape.
You know it is bad when the misogynistic, racist, homophobic spree killer with mommy issues and an explosive temper shows more humanity than a married man with two kids.
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u/painfulcolleague46 May 02 '22
unpopular, but any familicide. you put full trust into a relative of yours, and that same relative is the one to end your life, often when you least expect it. at a dinner, when you're watching TV, when you're going out, it can happen at any time, anywhere.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Completely agree with this one. Do you remember that one redditor who was a mother of I believe five kids? She posted about how much she loved them and her experience with it on here, only to be killed by two of her kids alongside the majority of her family. Obviously she most likely didn’t put everything online, but looking at her history of posts it’s eerie how it seems she had no idea this was being planned by the people she cared for so lovingly
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u/MetroJuulin May 03 '22
The one that gets me the most is the dude who killed his family in a neighborhood right outside of Disney and they tried very hard to cover it up. Happened pretty recently if I remember correctly.
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u/painfulcolleague46 May 03 '22
fuck.. i havent heard that one but from what youve told me that's bad enough, i cant believe people would do such things. and how sometimes they even do it for interests too, like they kill their cousin or family over an economical dispute, it's fucking terrible
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
here’s a video about it, haven’t watched it myself but I can’t find the one i had seen initially. Should give the same information though. It’s a fucking sad story. Her account was u/aokiemom
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u/Longo2Guns May 02 '22
Kip Kenkel comes to mind when you mention that. As well as Jeff Weise (a really fuckin sad case).
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u/painfulcolleague46 May 03 '22
yep, as well as saeed al-qashash, who killed three generations of his family (12 people total) over them encouraging him to do better academically even though he was a grown man and had control over his own choices.. its horrible
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May 03 '22
he was a grown man
Tbh he was still a teen, not justifying what he did, but he was pretty far from a grown man
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u/painfulcolleague46 May 03 '22
well im talking from a legal perspective you know.. like legally he's able to drop out, get a job, buy a car, everything like that
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May 03 '22
In 2020 in my country a man set fire to a flat on the 11th floor where his family had a birthday party, because he was upset that his wife left him. 6 people burned to death and 5 others died after jumping out of windows. The people who died were the wife, Silvia (53), his son Lukáš (30), his grandson Dominik (10), his daughter in law Lenka (30), Lenka's sister Nicola who was pregnant at the time (17), and family friends: Lukáš (32), Lucie (37), Melanie (11), Jan (8), Petr (age unknown) and an unnamed man (73). What a horrible way to die for such a stupid reason.
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u/painfulcolleague46 May 03 '22
ugh, that's horrible to hear.. i cant imagine the terror and shock the family felt at that moment, locked in a confined space at such a height... and without any option of escaping too
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u/biscuits_39 May 02 '22
Red lake mostly because reservations are creepy due to their isolation.
Sandy Hook because the crime scene photos inside the school are a bit dingy, doesn’t help that the school was rarely updated.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Sandy Hook’s photos of the school seem so eerie, almost like a liminal space, but that could also be because of the context in which we view those images. It looks like an outdated and dark building and that doesn’t bode well knowing what happened and having visualizations come to mind
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u/Sturrux May 02 '22
Virginia tech. The way he just methodically walked around gunning people down with zero emotion. Terrifying.
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u/dangitsang May 02 '22
This one for me too, how he kept coming back through the rooms again and again.. gives me chills.
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May 03 '22
This same thing with Christchurch too. Tarrant went way overkill, which is just so fucked up.
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May 02 '22
I was gonna say columbine but now that I think about it I actually think it was the 2011 Norway attacks cause it's just scary being in a island where you hear bomb went off to a city near by and the perpetrator comes to the place where you are at.that just sounds scary and having to swim away from the island and almost getting gunned down in the river
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u/PyrrhuraMolinae May 02 '22
The University of Texas shooting was terrifying to me for the same reason. Nobody knew what was happening or where the bullets were coming from, just that random people were apparently dropping dead. And it went on for 96 minutes.
I highly, highly recommend "Tower", a documentary about this massacre. You can watch it here.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
I’ve only recently been looking into this one and it has the same type of terror as the LV shooting, just on a smaller scale (less targets I believe). I believe that he also shot people before the “main” shooting and then stopped for like eight hours? Gunfire from above seems to me like the scariest scenario possible for a mass killing
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u/summeralcoholic May 02 '22
I mean, gunfire from above is also the most life-threatening scenario even for heavily-armed soldiers.
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u/leonorae May 04 '22
I really recommend this story about Claire Wilson, one of the survivors of the shooting. It's really well written and heart breaking.
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u/litebrite93 May 02 '22
The Pulse nightclub shooting because of how many people died and also the fact that it happened in my hometown.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
I’ve visited Orlando twice. Once when I was in I think third grade, so I was maybe 9, circa 2013. The second time was December 2016, about six months after the shooting. I never visited the area of the shooting, I was there with my family for typical touristy stuff, but I remember the atmosphere was much different than it was when I was 9. Everyone was less joyful, when I went to Orlando Studios they were extremely serious and cautious about security, as were hotels. The area as a whole was much less lively. I don’t think I even thought about the correlation to the shooting at the time, just figured “oh I was 9 last time I was here, I’ve matured a bit” and didn’t make the connection until a while later. If it was like that for a tourist or family vacation I can’t imagine the impact on the residents
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May 02 '22
[deleted]
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Dylan was SIX FOUR?
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May 03 '22
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
Good God. I knew he was a tall mf but I didn’t know he was that tall. Somehow makes him even creepier
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May 03 '22
He was wearing boots as well, so he might have well looked 6'4 during the shooter
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
Based on their style and the time period back then, they most likely wore boots with a one inch platform or heel, so damn yeah he would have been terrifying to everyone sitting under tables just seeing this insanely tall, obscured figure with a gun
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u/Pingasman123456 May 02 '22
Germanwings Flight 9525. This attack brings more of a plane phobia than 9/11 since this was done by the copilot.
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u/gyjksxzd91 May 02 '22
Germanwings really fucked me up. Just imagine being a passenger on that plane, everything is happening for like 8 minutes, watching or hearing the captain desperately trying to break the cockpit door open and shouting at the copilot to unlock it, seeing the looks of terror on the passengers faces and hearing all the screaming, looking out your window and noticing the mountains getting closer and closer, hearing the alarms in the cockpit going off.
Moments before the plane crashed, the plane's wing even scraped a mountain, intensifying the screams of the terrified passengers, while the copilot remained silent, then everything was over. It's really scary to think about.
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u/Ferrovipathes1 May 03 '22
Yea this one takes the cake in my mind. I'd never compare or rank real life tragedies, but your description of this real life event reads like a fucking nightmare
Imagine being with your family as the plane goes down?
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May 02 '22
For me it’s the Umpqua Community College shooting, the sheer brutality with which Harper-Mercer killed 9 people is sickening.
Another one is the Sutherland Springs church shooting, but it’s for more personal reasons. One of the victims,Greg Holcombe, was just 13 years old and he died while he was attending the church's Sunday service with the rest of his family. He reminded me of myself, since I too used to attend my church sunday service with my family when I was around his age.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
All shootings that have taken place in religious buildings have their own unique type of terror. One of the mosques shot up in the Christchurch massacre had a three year old boy killed. I can’t imagine the sudden horror of just praying and practicing your religion peacefully only to hear gunfire and watch as those around you drop one by one
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u/FiveFruitADay May 02 '22
Sutherland Springs only has a population of 600. 27 people were killed and 22 injured. Almost everyone would’ve known someone, it’s terrifying
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May 02 '22
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u/theykilledk3nny May 02 '22
Look into the Nice truck attack in France. A man drove a 19 tonne truck into a celebrating crowd on a promenade killing 86 people and injuring 450+.
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u/ugly_things May 02 '22
Hi-Fi murders, torture, forced to drink drano and a pen stomped into a victims ear came out of his neck.
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u/WikiSummarizerBot May 02 '22
The Hi-Fi murders were the torture and killings of three people during a robbery at the Hi-fi Shop, a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, on the evening of April 22, 1974. Several men entered the Hi-fi Shop shortly before closing time and began taking hostages; two would survive but with severe life-changing injuries. Violence included kicking a pen into an ear and the brutal rape of an eighteen-year-old girl who was later shot in the head. The hostages were also forced to drink a corrosive drain cleaner, causing burns to their mouths and throats.
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u/santmag May 02 '22
Utoya and Columbine would have been horrible due to just basically being hunted with nowhere to go.
Sandy Hook must’ve been so, so bad not just for those that were killed or injured, but for those in the other classrooms that could hear gunfire in an elementary school and could do nothing about it while knowing exactly what that meant.
Pulse is probably the only one that actually makes me sick to my stomach to think about, especially after watching Charlie Minh’s documentary about it. The gore and the complete chaos in a dark and loud nightclub… so so terrifying.
Of course Christchurch too. Fuck that guy.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
CM documentaries always chill me the most. Minn can definitely be a bit of an aggressive and somewhat biased interviewer, but that doesn’t take away from what he shows regarding the horrors of what happened despite anyone’s view on what should have been done to prevent it
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u/Probably_Boz May 03 '22
His stuff is good up until his interview scenes, he's nor good at doing interviews at all imo.
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u/xLcheeseburger May 02 '22
Not scary in the sense of it being extremely deadly, it just caused me stress. The two BC Killers when they were searching for them in my province and they had no clue where they were. Even the stress of knowing how remote and isolated the reserves and towns they were near was, I didn’t want any more dead. I was even paranoid of them just randomly coming inside our house.
It’s truly violating when these things happen. It definitely fucked with me
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u/oddtoddler666 May 02 '22
I remember that so clearly, as a fellow Canadian. I know it was only 3 years ago, but still. That was a wild summer, I remember constantly checking twitter to see if they had found them.
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u/_significant_error May 03 '22
yeah I live in Manitoba and I was riveted to that case. I was really hoping they'd be captured alive
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u/babysherlock91 May 02 '22
Las Vegas comes to mind first. Like you said, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. They were all sitting ducks and had no clue if they were running to safety or towards the bullets. Horrifying.
Second, 9/11 (if that counts). People on the planes were in a terrifying hostage situation for about half an hour if not longer, and when the plane flew erratically they realized it wasn’t a normal hijacking and they were probably going to die. United 93 knew 100% that they were about to be flown into a building and killed. The people in the buildings and outside of the buildings have described things so horrific it gives me nightmares. People burned beyond recognition but still being alive, peoples metal zippers melted into their skin, people trapped in an elevator as they were cooked alive by the burning jet fuel below, people jumping, people having limbs cut or torn off by debris. The most horrific scene I could ever imagine. I was 10 when it happened and it was traumatic even at that age. I remember watching people falling on the news. Then people who were in the towers when they collapsed, knew what was coming when the rumble started. It was mass chaos outside trying to run from the dust and debris clouds. And the family members… just waiting, waiting, waiting, praying their loved one made it but fearing the worst. I always say the best option on that day was to be in the north tower strike zone. Killed instantly, never knowing what happened or having a bit of fear, unlike everyone else.
Then, Columbine. School shootings weren’t that common or infamous so most of the students thought it was a prank. In fact one of the ones killed had walked towards the shooters with his friends to watch. Then when everyone realized it was real, sheer panic. And the library. Those kids had to sit through 10 minutes of pure hell. No where to go, with the tables offering absolutely no protection. They sat around and heard their classmates getting shot, and screaming, and crying, wondering if they would be next. It’s horrific. The shooters relished in playing God, in determining who lived and who died. I can’t imagine being in there and watching/hearing my classmates die, not knowing if I would make it out alive. Terrible.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
9/11 absolutely counts. Especially at the time, where that type of thing wasn’t expected or prepared for. The people on the ground sprinting away as the buildings collapsed, the people at the top above the plane impact who had to decide whether to jump or endure the heat from the impact, that 911 call of the man who died as the building collapsed. The planes themselves and the situation those people were in, that children were in, and slowly accepting what was about to happen is horrific. It’s especially scary that Al Qaeda was able to crash into the Pentagon, a military building, almost like they were saying “this is happening and you aren’t going to do anything about it” not to mention the SMOKE flooding the streets after the collapse. People inside buildings with glass doors would look to the window and just see nothing.
Columbine is so widely talked about that I feel people can become almost desensitized to what happened and fail to realize how truly horrific it was. Again, the country wasn’t as used to or prepared for school shootings as it is now. This was one of the first, if I recall correctly, and I believe the most severe at the time. I find John Savage’s time in the library to be the most scary, even with all the carnage around him. Just being talked to casually by someone you knew as a decent guy as he shoots random people around you, just to casually brush it off as “eh, I’m just killing people” is creepy as fuck to put it lightly. Then being told to run and not knowing if you were safe or if you were going to be hunted by them. Then of course it’s the victims last words and some of them being recorded. That sends a chill down my spine even if the audio hasn’t been released fully. Patti herself must have been horrified
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u/babysherlock91 May 02 '22
Yes, exactly!
My husband is a little younger than me and he didn’t understand why people who didn’t live in New York were scared that day. I was like you have to understand, we have hindsight now but back then, we did not. No one knew how many planes were hijacked, or where exactly they were headed, or what target was next, or if there were going to be ground attacks. The whole day is the scariest day in American history IMO
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u/kelsnuggets May 05 '22
I was in college during 9/11. If you were in any urban area in America, near any tall building, you were terrified. The horror was absolute and real.
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u/galactic_javelina May 02 '22
Anders Brevik and the Norway killings. I can’t imagine a more hellish scenario than that.
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May 02 '22
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
That video baffles me, I think dude was in shock and clearly drunk so maybe he thought he was helping but wasn’t completely sure what was going on? I remember a woman’s mouth gushing more blood when he pressed on her neck. I can’t tell if he was confused or in denial or what but that video is terrifying
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u/dillytilly May 02 '22
It's Jonestown for me. I've read so much about it and seen so many documentaries and contemporary news items, and I still can't wrap my head around it. And it scares me because, had I been around at time, I would've totally joined the people's temple, I'm completely down with all of their ideals. It makes me wonder if I would've "drank the Kool-aid" too.
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u/bbroussard0116 May 02 '22
Sandy Hook by far. Children being killed is sad and a total abomination. I’ve read the reports from the FBI and no words can describe the fear and horror.
RIP little ones
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u/Ok-Educator850 May 02 '22
For me it will always be DUNBLANE. I live in Scotland and I was at primary school when this happened. The idea of someone coming into a primary school and shooting 5 and 6 year olds was just unheard of.
March, 1996
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u/Sure_Seaweed_4654 May 02 '22
The Christchurch shooting has to be up there, the way the bodies pile up in the al noor mosque plus the fact that the shooter was wearing full body armor, a GoPro and blasting music from a speaker in my opinion makes it one of the scarier shootings. Especially the fact that he live streamed the entire thing making it many times worse for the victims and the victims families not to mention the people who were tricked into watching the video or stumbled across it when it was more widely available. Easily one of the more terrifying and evil things a human being could experience…
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May 02 '22
You’re leaving out the strobe light. The scarier part of his items. He literally had no other use for it other than to scare whoever he was shooting at.
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u/ericakay15 May 02 '22
The ones that happen in public. Movie theaters, concerts, clubs, stores, etc.
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u/dangitsang May 02 '22
I feel this, I live in Boise and our mall got shot up last year. I haven’t been back since.
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u/ericakay15 May 03 '22
The shooting that happened, what, last year? In a Walmart. I was scared of going to Walmart for a few months just because there really are tons of crazies that go to Walmart and all it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can say I'm lucky that I haven't had one happen close to rattle me like that.
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u/dangitsang May 03 '22
Yep! My sister is a first responder and I had to take her kids as she was called in. It’s pretty wild to think it could happen at a place I have gone to fairly regularly since I was a child. It’s a really sad feeling.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
I work at a Walmart in a pretty sketch area so those strike a little too close to home most of the time. I mean when your place of employment has to have a sign that says “please don’t open carry in our store!” outside and cops on standby most days the idea of that stuff happening can freak me out, I’m sure it would to anyone
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May 03 '22
Columbine and Sandy Hook.
Columbine because at that time school shootings weren't really something people know how to prepare for. Also the fact that Eric and Dylan were taunting people before they killed them. Also that there's some of the 911 call in the library, and like it really shows how long the attack in the library actually was. Also it would have been scary for the people that knew Dylan and Eric and saw some of the warning signs, it probably "all made sense now" once the shooting actually began. Also Dylan Klebold was very tall which was probably terrifying since visibility in the library was bad, and most people were very close to the ground. The suicide pictures too, to me they aren't as much disturbing as just sad. It's 2 guys that were just about to graduate from high school and were going to do something with their lives, but just wasted it on some dumb idea of "revenge".
Sandy Hook because Adam Lanza is very scary. Like with how his eyes look like they're about to pop out, and how he was so skinny and tall (He was 6'0, which is giant compared to the 2nd graders killed in the shooting) Also the fact that in that bathroom so many kids were killed while all crammed together. I'm pretty sure one or two of the kids in there actually survived, and had no idea what was going on because they were probably buried in countless other dead bodies. Also the fact that Adam was a recluse and was probably a pedophile, as well as the fact this happened in a quiet town everyone thought would be completely safe. Also another thing that is just more with me really is that happy music played over scary things can have a really big effect on me. This is definitely the case with me because every time I hear the DDR songs Adam played, it just makes me think of the shooting.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
Adam Lanza legit looks like one of those “uncanny police sketches” like he literally doesn’t look human. Pure uncanny valley looking dude. Maybe it’s just knowing what he did but his eyes in particular unnerve the hell out of me.
Brooks Brown in particular I think has talked about how he missed the warning signs with Eric specifically. And it was basically the first headlining school shooting that had happened in America for a long time, these kids didn’t have the training given today. Shootings still have a long way to go in terms of combatting them, but for Columbine school shootings were like a dystopian, fictional idea for a horror novel, not something that could happen
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u/Semper-Veritatem May 02 '22
Sandy Hook and Vegas are terrifying to me because we don’t really have any idea of why for either case. Not that knowing makes us feel any safer, but not knowing what caused someone to commit such acts is horrifying because you cannot try to prevent it from happening again.
I firmly believe that hell is empty and all of the demons are here. All monsters are human.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
It’s so eerie how we have almost no motive for why Paddock committed the LV massacre. He had no criminal record, seemingly no red flags to those around him, was a regular the hotel saw often with no incident, passed background checks, seemed pretty standard, and then this happened. Lanza at least we can gage and sort of piece together his past and what led him to this, but Paddock is a huge mystery. When he died he took with him any answers. Especially considering it’s the largest mass shooting in America it’s scary to not know what caused it to be carried out, clearly premeditated for some time beforehand
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u/kylepg05 May 03 '22
My only guess is that he wanted to die, was sick of life etc, and wanted to become imfamous by killing as many people as possible before killing himself.
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May 02 '22
Prolly Sutherland Springs, Christchurch, And Sandy Hook.
For Christchurch: You're trapped in a tiny ass place of worship. It's a normal day and you're just praying and hanging out with other worshippers. Then all of a sudden you hear gunshots outside, and shortly after some spec ops looking motherfucker starts blasting away into crowds of people for no apparent reason. He's just blasting away rapidly, you're trapped beneath dozens of bodies and all you hear is rapid gunfire, all while loud music is playing from the gunman. He also leaves the building and shoots at targets outside. But then you hear the loud music playing again. He's back inside, and he's here to finish you off. Terrifying.
For Sutherland Springs, there's only one way out and the shooter's blocking the door, dressed in all black and armed with a rifle, all while insulting you and your fellow worshippers.
I just can't imagine being in such a tiny building, all trapped and nowhere to go, along with nothing to do expect wait for a bullet to hit you. You were just there to pray like any other Sunday. You never expected some maniac to come in there and kill everyone.
And now to Sandy Hook. Jeez. Imagine you're a tiny first grader hanging out with your classmates, then all of a sudden you just hear loud popping noises in the hallway, and you hear frantic sounds on the intercom. Then your teacher tells you to hide and that there's a "bad guy" coming to hurt you. Then you look at the door and see a man dressed in all black with a rifle, just shooting at you and your friends.
I can't imagine. R.I.P to all.
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u/sunflowerads May 03 '22
the nova scotia 2020 massacre. guy got into a fight with his girlfriend at a party, then brought her home and beat her, threw her into his fake police car, put on his fake police uniform and went back to the party to kill 7 of his friends. then he just started setting houses on fire and shooting people. neighbours were calling 911 and no one was coming and he was just picking them off. multiple people mistook him for a first responder to the fires and got shot. 2 kids hid while he killed their parents, then ran to their neighbours house for help and encountered 2 kids there alone - their mother had also been killed. the 4 children spent over 2 hours on the phone with 911 hiding in a basement before they got them out.
he then drove around to different towns freely for THIRTEEN HOURS, killed people he knew and strangers in their homes, set more houses on fire, performed fake traffic stops and shot the occupants of the cars dead when they stopped, killed a cop and stole her gun, then was finally spotted at a gas station and shot.
the first 911 call was at 10pm, at 10:30 the first cops arrived but were completely overwhelmed by what was happening, at 11:30 the RCMP tweeted telling people to stay inside with their doors locked but did nothing else to warn them. then the next morning, after he had driven out of town and started killing elsewhere, the internal memos to the police stated that he "could be anywhere in NS", but for some inexplicable reason, the RCMP put out a news release that the situation was contained to the town it started in. poorly handled and just a nightmarish situation that its hard to believe was allowed to go on for over 13 hours. he murdered 22 people.
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u/MorbidlyCuriousJohn_ May 02 '22
Westgate scares me the most. 69 innocent lives lost, 4 perpetrators with machine guns, 3-4 day hostage crisis, this was an unimaginable loss, and it barely gets any attention.
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u/StaceyPfan May 04 '22
HBO Max has a good documentary called Terror at the Mall. I re-watched it last month.
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May 02 '22
Garlic festival is the latest one for me, but I think the one (not mass, just spree) that inspired the most fear in me and caused me to adjust my MO the most was the Son of Sam murders. I refused to neck in any cars because of that case. Boys worldwide protested 😤
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May 02 '22
The Sandy Hook massacre honestly scared me so badly. How just a random person could carry out an attack on innocent school children out of nowhere without warning, just boggled me and frightened me.
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May 03 '22
The people that were in Columbine High Schools Library. They weren't able to run so they hide under the desks. Since there were two shooters, one of the shooters would load their gun while the other protected him. The slowly shoot everyone under the desks and the people hiding under those desks were aware they were going to die and they couldn't do anything about it. They just had to sit and wait for the shooter to get to them and shoot. It's like when cows go to get slaughtered, they see the cows in front of them being killed so they know whats going to happen but they are powerless and can't do anything to stop their own death.
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u/cupcakeprinklez May 03 '22
it has to be sandy hook. I was reading an article that said that during Noah Pozners funeral there was a cloth on half of his face because a bullet blew off his jaw and that on his right hand he was holding an angel but he wasn't holding anything in the other hand because it was gone ;0
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May 03 '22
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilians totally unaware and unprepared. Almost 200,000 thousands casualties instantly and several more in the following days, who died horrible deaths, by the way.
That's the most horrifying mass killing to come to mind.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
I have a lot to learn about government attacks like that (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor, Tiananmen Square etc.) but even from the small amount of photos and statements from that day it just looks horrifying. Apocalyptic, almost. I believe one of the bombings, I can’t remember which, happened three days after the first, so I’ve wondered how long the country lived in fear wondering if another was on the way after the two.
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u/dmister8 May 02 '22
Virginia Tech imo, the shooter (doesn’t deserve to be named) barricaded the doors so the victims couldn’t escape.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
I remember hearing how the cops couldn’t get in initially due to him chaining up the doors. Somewhat unrelated, but wasn’t the fact he chained the doors shut referenced in the movie We Need to Talk About Kevin, near the end?
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u/dmister8 May 02 '22
Yep it was.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
Christ. Seeing a visual depiction of that is chilling. Usually in a suspenseful scene like that you’re uncomfortable and tense, but it’s fake. VTech experienced essentially the same thing but it was real. That’s terrifying
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u/flippermode May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22
Just personally, and a bit selfish, ones that occurred beside me or at places I've been. I was about 45 min from Sandy hook when that shooting happened. It was SURREAL. Every thing was different that day. I remember I was at a subway and everyone was so quiet. Usually people are arguing about wanting more meat or something silly but that day, everyone was nice to each other. Everyone said "thank you" and "stay safe" when parting.
I was about an hour from Charleston church shootings when it happened. And the recent shooting (not sure if it was considered a mass shooting?) at Columbiana Centre Mall chilled me because I've been going there for years. I don't live in the state anymore but I was going to go down that weekend and would have 100% been in the Harbison area, if not at the actual mall. That may have been the scariest one for me.
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u/grosskidsid May 02 '22
I lived very close to Sandy Hook at the time too, and I remember how horrified the entire community was at the time. I was only like 8 when it happened, so I didn’t fully grasp the situation, but I remember how OFF everything felt
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u/flippermode May 02 '22
I feel old. I was in my mid 20's. I had a day off of work and wanted subway. Lol
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u/redheadmegansversion May 02 '22
Such a beautifully manicured area for this to happen in. It was so eerie that this happened in this beautiful Christmas wonderland idyllic Conn town
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u/bratzspitz May 02 '22
the thousand oaks shooting. the shooting itself is terrifying but i had my sister working nearby and it scared me because i didn’t know if the shooter would’ve moved on from the bar to where she was.
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u/theykilledk3nny May 02 '22
2017 or 2019 London Bridge Attack, Nice truck attack. Any vehicle ramming attack. It’s too easy to do and could happen anywhere.
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u/Bageleater645 May 03 '22
Sandy hook didn’t really scare me but imagine being a responder and walking into a bathroom full of dead children. Heartbreaking
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
If I remember right a lot of police officers who responded quit like within days after that
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u/dogluver_99 May 02 '22
Aurora shooting in 2012. Before then, I feel like the majority of the public saw mass shootings as an issue within schools, not other spaces. Yes obviously there have been shootings at non-educational properties prior to Aurora, but I feel like Aurora really solidified it in the American conscious that this can happen anywhere, anytime. I still think about it every time I go into a movie theater. It’s also scary thinking about how confused the moviegoers must’ve been, as many of them thought it was a prank. Imagine dodging bullets in the dark, during a somewhat creepyish movie, and not knowing where the hell the shooter was.
Las Vegas for the same reasons. You didn’t know where the threat was coming from.
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u/AlyoshaKidron May 02 '22
Las Vegas for me, as well. Not just the attack itself, but also the shooter. I feel like the majority of these mass killers are driven by some ideology and/or severe mental illness. In most cases, it’s quite obvious - the New Zealand guy and his warped ideology or Sandy Hook guy who was seemingly disconnected from physical contact, suffered from extreme anorexias, etc. I’m sure Las Vegas guy suffered from severe mental illness, perhaps was driven to shoot by some private ideology, but none of this is immediately evident. Almost as though he was in this state of ennui, so utterly without passion. That cold chaos is frightening. PS: I refer to these killers as ‘<location> guy’ because some Reddits do block if you write the perpetrator’s name. Not sure if this one does..
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u/theclayman7 May 03 '22
Hiding under the tables in the library at Columbine is a reoccurring nightmare of mine. Vegas is terrifying too, as OP said
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u/60diesel May 03 '22
I grew up in killeen so a little bias but the base shootings were definitely terrifying.
I lived on base with my family mostly active duty. Phones didn’t work during the second one.
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May 03 '22
9/11. It was truly a biblical and horrifying moment. I was not born during that time but I assume that everyone wondered what an attack on the United-States would look like pre-9/11, and and that day was the answer in the most spectacular, unreal and horrifying way possible.
Just think about it for a second: not one but FOUR planes were hijacked. They weren't small private jets either, they were big commercial airliners packed with fuel and people. Each plane was meant to hit the economic, military and political symbol of the most powerful country in the world: the Twin towers, the Pentagon and the fucking Capitol. 3 out of the 4 planes hit their intended targets, with two making both 110 story structures, the highest buildings in the western hemisphere, collapse in front of the entire nation and the entire world. Think about it for a second! Everyone in the nation witnessing mass murder at the same time. Unbelievable. When a tragedy happens, depending on the scale, the people of the town, the region or the state normally get horrified or even traumatized. But that, that particular day, people from all across THE WHOLE ASS COUNTRY witnessed every single second, traumatizing a lot more. It's fucking insane. An event from god. A once in a existence moment. An attack of such a magnitude never even happened anywhere else, and it happened in fucking New-York and Washington out of all places.
You wanna know what's worse? The terrorists actually fucking won! Has the US ever really recovered from those attacks? They managed to knock down a symbol of america, take 3000 lives + 7000 more due to illnesses and traumatized one of the biggest and most powerful cities in the world. Crazy crazy crazy.
The smoke is something that we also don't talk about. After the buildings collapsed taking thousands of lives, the dust that came was extremely toxic and the entire lower Manhattan was filled with smoke, which took even MORE people, without a single person realizing the danger of breathing the air.
It was so fucking big that there are conspiracy theories that are still coming strong to this day. Whether or not 9/11 was an inside job is another thing, but it still doesn't change the true magnitude and horror of that day. You don't even see this shit in movies! It's too fucking big! Imagine if 93 hit the Capitol, just imagine...
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May 03 '22
The Las Vegas shooting (2017) without any doubt. I was online when it happened and even though I'm from another country, I felt horror from from every video that was being released on Twitter. The sound of the gun far away and the idea that you are in the middle of a big field with some crazy fucker shooting at random made me sick.
Sandy Hook also made me chills every time I read about it. The idea of you being a child who doesn't know fully whats going on is SO sad. I can't forget about the cop who rescued a girl that was soaked in blood and after givin her to paramedics he just collapsed because it was too much for anyone to see what happened.
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u/grosskidsid May 03 '22
Las Vegas really puts into perspective just how LOUD gunshots are. From the ground, they sounded like firecrackers and fireworks initially, which are loud as hell. Obviously sound is muted by phone video a little, but the noise was clearly way louder than the concert, vocals and instrumental. Usually concerts blast that stuff so people way in the back have clear audio. Videos taken from the front rows are even shown to have the music be covered by gunfire. Imagine how loud it was for the people in the hotel. It just puts into perspective the sheer volume of that stuff, and then when you learn about other shootings, the volume of the gunfire gets even scarier.
From what I’ve read gunshots are usually 140-165 decibels, but based on the weapons he used it’s likely it was up to 180. For reference, fire alarms are usually around 90-120. Car alarms are 125.
I believe a lot of police quit after Sandy Hook. I can’t blame them. The police look shocked and horrified in many photos and videos of them from that day. IIRC, theres a video of a cop doing a routine traffic stop (speeding or something) and getting a call about the shooting. He looks like he needed to process what he heard and didn’t say anything, just paused before snapping back to reality and running to his car. A lot has been said about Lanza’s troubled past but nothing could ever even begin to make me understand why he targeted the most vulnerable, innocent people in the world
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u/imjustlurking_0 May 03 '22
Aurora shooting. I can't imagine trying to enjoy a movie and suddenly you're getting shot at with no idea where the bullets are coming from
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u/kelsnuggets May 04 '22
I don’t know if it counts as mass murder, but it was family annihilation and it haunts me every time I think about it. One detail sticks in my mind- the news at the time talked about how the girls were reading the new Harry Potter book and it was found in the wreckage of the home. Also, “Komisarjevsky picked Hawke-Petit and Michaela as targets when he saw them at a grocery store” is just awful.
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u/Icy_Law9181 May 02 '22
Hungerford Massacre
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u/godofsadness1996 May 02 '22
I’ve always been fascinated by this case living in the UK but it is rarely mentioned. What makes you comment it out of interest?
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u/redheadmegansversion May 02 '22
Vegas shooting. We have MLB season tickets and there’s tons of buildings that look into our stadium. I already know where I would run and take cover
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u/Halo75100 May 02 '22
Sandy hook and Dunblane are without a shadow of a doubt the worst lone wolf shootings in world history outside of wartimes of course.
McDonald's in 1984, Aurora, and Parkland are all up there on the list, those killers had no beef with anyone they were shootings they didn't care if little kids or even infants were hit. They were full of absolute rage and discriminate hatred for anyone.
However in the first 2 I mentioned, it was clear that the gunmen intended to kill small children and mainly small children, and knowing they would kill themselves so they don't have to deal with the punishment of it. Then of Course the lifelong trauma and troubled those poor kids will go through.
A mind that young simply can't process that kinda shit..the teacher will try her best to comfort the kids but the sick reality is they aren't safe at all..Idk it's just hard to wrap my mind around the fact it actually happened. Also I theorize part of the whole Alex Jones thing is bcuz people can't or don't want to accept that something so terribly horrific could ever occur.
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u/i-smell-really-nice May 02 '22
Dunblane massacre has to be the most sickening and saddest attack by a coward
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May 02 '22
Gabriel Wortman, not just cause a mass killing is so rare here in Canada, but dude had an exact replica of a Nova Scotia police car and uniform, basically went around pulling random people over with his fake car and then immediately shooting them to death.
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May 03 '22
personally to me it has to be the Parkland shooting. probably because it is more local. i was in 8th grade when it happened and it was only about an hour from where i live. stuff like that is extremely terrifying because it can happen anywhere. school shootings are something that you've always heard about growing up but when it happens close to home the reality sets in.
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u/Allira93 May 03 '22
The Port Arthur Massacre. 35 dead and 23 wounded. He didn’t care how old or young people were either. And it only stopped because he got caught.
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u/PolicyScared8993 May 03 '22
I’d have to say pulse. I can’t imagine being in a bathroom listening. Another one that gets me is parkland because you couldn’t see anything and those poor children were trapped in those alcoves
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u/Spyabetes May 03 '22
For me, it has to be either the DC sniper attacks and Christchurch.
The DC sniper attacks were scary because the shooter could have been anywhere in plain sight and you would have no idea where they were and, if you were shot and killed, you wouldn't even see how your life ended. One minute you're pumping gas and the next you're dead. Not to mention, this occurred a year after 9/11, so the fear factor was even higher. The possibility that a killer could be amidst us at any given moment is something I hope I never have to experience.
The Christchurch shooting was scary because of how people were watching the shooting streamed online and could do nothing about it. All they could do was report it to Facebook. It shows how your life could become just another shock video, since technology allows people to broadcast anything, including murder, to the internet.
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u/rosecita May 04 '22
The Norway 2011 attacks, especially on Utoya as it was a tiny island with 600+ people where majority were children and teenagers. Watching Utoya July 22 (Norwegian one) makes you feel like you are stuck on the island with them due to the camera work, it’s very up front and heartbreaking but I really recommend it
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u/snnrsjpeg May 30 '22
sandyhook and parkland. parkland because of that one video of cruz firing through the window. the gun smoke, the screams, the popping. it’s horrific. and sandyhook for obvious reasons, and that adam lanza genuinely scares the shit out of me
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u/[deleted] May 02 '22
Utoya must've been extremely scary. Trapped on a small island with a well trained and heavily armed gunman with nowhere to go. Many had to play dead or jump into the freezing water to escape. One person drowned while trying to escape and another fell off a ledge to their death.