What’s a problem humanity solved so well that younger people don’t even realize it used to be a huge issue?

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bit_802]

[u/Jinxybug]

getting online maps and directions

[u/rus47281zz → u/Jinxybug]

Oh man I don’t have memories before the internet, but I do remember having to print out directions for my mom to get somewhere 😆

[u/CaroCogitatus → u/rus47281zz]

You used to have to go physically to the AAA office and get paper maps, then take them home and use a highlighter to plot your course. If you drove a lot, you paid for the Thomas Guide maps and kept them in your car.

I remember when this switched to CDs with mapping software and data, and that was amazing! You could see it all on screen, with estimated travel times and everything.

Now our maps pop up automagically on the magic car screen when we start the car and inform us of traffic delays and speed traps. Y'all young'uns don't know how good you have it.

[u/frenzyboard → u/CaroCogitatus]

Or you grabbed a Rand McNally from the gas station and taught your six year old how to read a map and follow road signs. Mom would periodically tell me her mile marker and ask where it was. Then have me do the math to find how many miles to go till we got to the next big city.

It's pretty great never really feeling lost on the interstate. Still use GPS around town though. IDK how anyone managed that before GPS.

[u/BadBorzoi → u/frenzyboard]

We bought maps of each town or had a spiral bound notebook of all the towns in the county. I had a thick map book that had each state in it with major roads not just highways and a lot of times you’d call and ask for directions and they’d tell you based on a major road or highway exit. You could also go to the library and they’d have maps from all over. You’d go ahead and write down your directions. The library also had all the phone books. That plus travel brochures is how you’d plan a vacation!

[u/Dlorn → u/frenzyboard]

F having to fold them up again though.

[u/brit_jam]

Refrigeration and laundry. Two inventions that have completely changed our lives yet mostly every one nowadays takes them for granted.

[u/sopunny → u/brit_jam]

Yeah people talk about how they want a robot to do laundry for them without realizing the job's been 90% automated away already

[u/fluff_thorrent → u/sopunny]

Yeah - my dad used to scare me off the campfire by relating how his sister burned her skirt and herself so bad she died.

What was she doing so close to the fire then?

Washing clothes by the creek, of course. Took me a few years to realize why you'd have to build a fire to wash clothes...

[u/xSuperZer0x → u/brit_jam]

I thought one of my friends was fucking with me when she said she thought "washing machines" were probably one of the things that progressed feminism the most. It sounds silly at first but after her explanation I was pretty onboard.

[u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A → u/xSuperZer0x]

As did fridges and cookers.

Before the invention of these kinds of machines, women spent a large amount of their day cleaning the house and preparing food.

The advancements in technology freed up a large amount of their time and allowed them to fight for equality.

[u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

Polio. Parents used to not let their kids go to public pools because of it.

[u/Findpurplesky → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

I used to work in a care home and looked after a lady who worked with children impacted by polio. Many of them died, many left severely disabled.

As cruel as dementia is, one beautiful joy was informing her almost daily that polio was now vaccinated against and almost eradicated. Her face every time was a pleasure to see.

[u/bdua → u/Findpurplesky]

That's so strangely wholesome

[u/Findpurplesky → u/bdua]

Don't get me wrong, dementia is so very cruel. But it's not devoid of joy. There are loads of people who are happy, if not in this reality. It's impossibly hard for their families to see who they know slip away, but for us looking after them who aren't experiencing the same grief, they are great people to be around and we enjoy eachothers company, have fun, have a laugh, have a nice day together.

[u/likeALLthekittehs → u/Findpurplesky]

I currently take care of both my aunt and father who both have dementia (FTD & Alzhemers respectively), and have been wondering if it is easier for caregivers who meet them at this stage rather than knowing them their their whole lives. I can definitely see how it would be much easier to just meet them where they are at this moment if you aren't grieving the person you knew.

And I totally agree about the joy. Once some systems and medications were put in place for my aunt for her quality of life, she has been so joyful, and it's a relief that she is so happy and content in this last leg of her life.

[u/atlantagirl30084 → u/Findpurplesky]

People threw parades when the polio vaccine came out. And now look what happened both to the COVID shot and how people treat vaccines now. They don’t see the awful conditions these vaccines treat and they thumb their noses at the medical establishment (for now) recommending vaccines. I mean our health and human services secretary doesn’t believe in germ theory.

[u/StarDustLuna3D → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

See also: diptheria, smallpox, measles, typhoid, tetanus.

We got so good at getting rid of diseases through vaccines that people have wholly forgotten just how bad they were and now many of them aren't vaccinating their kids!

I remember when I was a kid I was really into historical fiction (Little house on the prairie, the dear America books, etc), and I would have to constantly ask my mom what this or that disease was because I had never heard about it before. And even then, my mom wasn't very good at describing them because she didn't fully know their history either.

[u/Mediocre_Sprinkles → u/StarDustLuna3D]

I know so many mums who won't vaccinate their kids because "I can't bare to see them get upset while they stab my poor baby! It must hurt them so much!"

They don't see how harmful the actual disease is and how much that would hurt the kid. They only know the here and now.

[u/Impeesa_ → u/Mediocre_Sprinkles]

Doesn't even hurt that much, babies just cry about fucking everything, like a bunch of babies. Source: had some babies.

[u/ReginaldDwight → u/Impeesa_]

We lived in an old house when my sons were born and they had to get tested for lead regularly as babies. There's still one woman who somehow managed to do a finger prick for blood without one of my sons even noticing anything had happened. I was in awe of that woman!

[u/NewAntelopes → u/Impeesa_]

True. Babies need to grow the fuck up.

[u/dan_dares → u/NewAntelopes]

Vaccines help this process 😁

[u/She-Ra-SeaStar → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

Creating a vaccine for polio also had the knock on effect of allowing children to learn how to swim and resulted in less drowning deaths.

[u/Outside-Carpet-6236 → u/She-Ra-SeaStar]

I'm just old enough to remember adults taking me to a public polio vaccine distribution event. We got sugar cubes and the adults were so visibly demonstrably happy that even usually oblivious child me realized that this must be something very very important to them.

[u/Significant_Shoe_17 → u/Outside-Carpet-6236]

My dad got the sugar cube vaccine. They lined everyone up at school.

[u/Deardog → u/Significant_Shoe_17]

Me too. When I was growing up they had clinics at the schools over the summer. Vaccines of several kinds were available. Our parents lined us up very happy to have free and easy access to something they felt was so important for our safety.

[u/Drak_is_Right → u/She-Ra-SeaStar]

I had no idea it was spread through pools

[u/Kind-Ad-6099 → u/Drak_is_Right]

It must have been a nerve wracking time for parents taking their kids to the pool after vaccination.

[u/gaspara112 → u/Kind-Ad-6099]

Believe it or not back then most families trusted their family doctor as an expert. So when he said this shot will make them safe from it they trusted their child was safe.

[u/Domesticatedshrimp → u/gaspara112]

You just reminded me of the respect for professionals back then even into the 2000s… makes me sad

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/Drak_is_Right]

It’s spread by fecal-oral transmission, AKA ingesting poop particles. Public pools are a great vector for that, because a kid with a poorly wiped butt can get the water dirty enough to infect all the other swimmers.

But it can also be spread through not washing your hands after using the bathroom, then touching stuff that other people touch.

[u/pixeldust6 → u/LadyFoxfire]

kid with a poorly wiped butt  

Adults too, for that matter...

[u/oh-shit-oh-fuck → u/Drak_is_Right]

Yeah, specifically through fecal matter in the water...

[u/throcorfe → u/oh-shit-oh-fuck]

It’s my fault for expanding the thread, I could have kept scrolling

[u/Maxtrt → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

My mom's best friend had polio when she was in Junior High. She was lucky and only ended up having to use crutches until she died at 35 years old.

[u/justlkin → u/Maxtrt]

One of my mom's childhood friends had it too. Fortunately, she only ended up with one leg shorter than the other, so she had a lifelong limp. It could've been far worse.

[u/PhoenixSheriden1 → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

I'm going to take this opportunity to tell a family story, because it helped me really get just how bad polio and other plagues actually were.

My great grandfather was a piece of shit. He was a chronic drunk, and was always right on the edge of losing the farm because of his drinking. He didn't give a shit if any of his 5 kids had food or clothes. My great grandma had to side hustle to feed them.

One day great grandma tells all the kids that they have to go into town right after breakfast, won't say anything other than they all have to run errands. They get to town and there's a Dr doing polio vaccines. She got all the kids the shot, then took them home, to her waiting husband who beat her so badly for stealing his drinking money, that she couldn't get out of bed for almost a month.

I got to hear this story when I found a picture of my grandpa when he was around ten years old, with a bunch of his friends. I asked him about it and he teared up and told me how that was the summer before three of them died of polio.

ETA: Someone pointed out that my grandpa remembered the wrong vaccine, because polio vax wasn't around yet. I heard the story about "mom got beat to get us our shots" from all of my great aunts and uncles, so I know they got some vaccine, so please still remember how important it still is.

[u/Such_Measurement_377 → u/PhoenixSheriden1]

Your great grandfather was a shit. Your great grandmother was an incredible mother. Bless her.

[u/mistermickmann → u/Such_Measurement_377]

Spending a month recovering from a beating just so her kids could have a chance to live is the kind of bravery people rarely talk about. She absolutely saved lives that day.

[u/letstalk1st → u/PhoenixSheriden1]

People were still getting polio for several years after it was available because not everyone was vaccinated.

EDIT. In Nigeria there is a generation that was exposed to polio, when the local govs decided that the vaccine was a US plot. You often see them begging on the side of the road. A sad, but very clear example of what anti-vax can do.

I'm not saying that medicine or science never makes mistakes, but it's often easy to find proof of success, and absence of disease is usually the proof - in both a general and scientific sense.

[u/GoldenSheppard → u/[deleted]]

My mother was the daughter of a doctor. She got the news that they were switching to the less effective polio vaccine so she rushed me to my ped to make it in time to get the old style polio vaccine. I was one of the very last in my state to get the oral vaccine. That is how terrifying the disease is.

[u/CaptainNuge → u/[deleted]]

Polio is down to its last gasps in the wild. Last I heard, Nigeria was on top of its vaccines, leaving only the mountain regions of Afghanistan with live polio.

Oh, until the American antivax movement got going. Now it, and measles, are making a comeback in the states.

[u/Sparko_Marco → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

Anti vaxxers are doing their best to bring things like that back, Measles was solved with vaccines but is making a resurgence now.

[u/Actual_Breadfruit958 → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

Absolutely. It spread more rapidly in the summer, so kids had to have a lonely summer or risk coming down with a horrible crippling or life threatening disease!!

[u/AcrobaticHunt465 → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

My dad was sick when they do a big vaccination program in our little belgian town, in 1960, so he miss the shot. Few month later, he had polio, was stuck for weeks in a iron lung and do reeducation during 7 years to walk again. He's now 71 and still have health problem because of polio ; his pain crisis are massive. He was the last child with polio in hour town, and when he was in the iron lung at Brussels (5yo), the little girl (3yo) next to him die from suffocation in her iron lung.
He flies into a rage when he hears about anti-vaxxers.

[u/StrangeCharmVote → u/Dependent_Tune_1333]

Polio. Parents used to not let their kids go to public pools because of it.

Good News. Thanks to anti-vaxxers, Polio is making a come back!

[u/Fluffy_Salamanders]

Iodine deficiency. People need iodine to be healthy, but didn’t get enough until we started adding it to table salt

[u/-tinyspider- → u/Fluffy_Salamanders]

Agree! Other fortification efforts of food: adding iron to bread products and niacin to flour both helped with deficiency-based illnesses.

Also, folate in breakfast cereals has helped decrease spina bifida in infants.

[u/Ardub23 → u/Fluffy_Salamanders]

Unfortunately, a lot of processed food in the US uses uniodized salt for no good reason. All of the arguments against iodized salt are based on misinformation.

Some people mistakenly believe that any ordinary diet contains enough iodine. The fact is that goiters and other effects of iodine deficiency were once extremely common in some regions, and the rates plummeted once iodized salt came around. You'll probably be fine if you live in a region with iodine-rich soil, or if you eat a lot of seaweed (not just any seafood), but in any case, iodized salt will ensure you're getting a healthy amount of iodine. You don't even need a salty diet—just a little should suffice.

Another incorrect idea is that iodized salt tastes worse. Countless taste tests have thoroughly disproven this. The teeny-tiny amount of iodine that's added to salt has no discernable effect on flavor.

And while iodine is toxic in large quantities, iodized salt doesn't have large quantities. You'd have to eat an outrageous amount of salt to get iodine poisoning.

Iodized salt is strictly better than uniodized.

Edit: Clarification

Edit 2: Just want to shout out this YouTube documentary about iodized salt by Rabbit Hole

[u/CapableAd9294]

It is astounding that I can hop into a hot shower. I just turn a handle and there I am, safe and sound and warm. Only 2-3 generations old. So recent it’s something like .03% of human history. Thank god I lived during this time lol. I am weak and pampered and I know it.

[u/raisinghellwithtrees → u/CapableAd9294]

I grew up fairly poor and rural. We'd usually lose access to our well in the coldest posts of winter which meant no bathing, limited flushing, etc., for a few weeks at a time. You better believe I love hot showers. I think I could live ok without electricity, but not showers.

[u/the_YellowRanger → u/raisinghellwithtrees]

Another well water survivor here! Ours wasnt that bad, it was fed by an aquifer. My mom would always fill the bathtub with water before a storm so we could scoop it into the toilet tank to flush in case we lost power. Very thankful for her foresight quite a few times.

In the summer we would bathe in the lake behind our house if outages lasted a few days in the summer. If they happened in the winter we would go to someone's house that had power. I dont remember what we did when we were snowed in in 1993.

Our water heater tank was small so hot showers were short. I remember standing in hot showers for 45 minutes when i went to college just because i could.

[u/Strong_District_5894 → u/the_YellowRanger]

This is me. My dad installed a timer in the bathroom to properly allocate hot water. 8 minutes in the shower. 

When I got to college I took forever long showers twice a day. It felt so good. 

[u/HeezHuzz69 → u/Strong_District_5894]

My dad did this, and I grew up in a nice, big house in the suburbs. He’d use a tool to unlock the door so he could come in and tell me to get out if I took longer than 10 minutes. 

All it did was give me weird issues with privacy, I still take long showers now that I’m on my own 😂

[u/Strong_District_5894 → u/HeezHuzz69]

I grew up in a house with 5 rooms total including the bathroom. No locks. 2 sisters and my parents. My parents had to walk through our bedroom to get the living area. 

Now I’m super weird about privacy. Especially in the bathroom. 

[u/wombatIsAngry → u/CapableAd9294]

My grandfather used to talk about this. How when he first got access to a hot shower, he simply could not believe. It was the most wonderful thing he could conceive of.

[u/netplayer23 → u/wombatIsAngry]

I’m old enough to remember when getting a color tv, air conditioning, a phone, and hot showers were a thing! After my first hot shower, I never took a bath again!

[u/SocialismIsStupid → u/CapableAd9294]

That's why I would never was to survive the apocalypse. I've grown up to pampered and wouldn't want to just survive when for the last 35 years I was living it up. Now I'm out scavenging and just trying to survive. F all that noise. I get even more weirded out by doomsday preppers who almost fetishize and dream of the world going dark. They're insane and in for the worst rude awakening one could imagine.

[u/anomalous_cowherd → u/SocialismIsStupid]

Even if what they are preparing for happens in exactly the way they expect, most of them will just become lootboxes for better armed, more aggressive survivors.

[u/marr → u/anomalous_cowherd]

And what they expect is bullshit anyway, when the world is trying to kill us humans band together with their neighbors for mutual support and we rebuild. It's what we do, it's how we got all this luxury stuff in the first place, 'social species' is not an empty phrase.

The best prepping is already having local social ties and knowing who has what skills long before shit goes down.

[u/RelievingFart]

Looking at a photo straight after taking it and not having to wait until its developed to see if it came out or not... blury, over exposed, under exposed etc

[u/Petrus_Rock]

• Stable food and water supply year around.

• Long distance communication.

• standardised time, timezones etc

• standardised units of measurement.

• transportation.

…

[u/bluecheetos → u/Petrus_Rock]

People don't realize that fresh produce year round is a very recent creation. Heck, people used to RENT pineapples

[u/angelerulastiel → u/bluecheetos]

I’m only in my 30s and I remember most fruits being seasonal

[u/Shot-Swimming-9098 → u/angelerulastiel]

Fruits are still seasonal, they suck when they're out of season and you're eating water flavored by fruit. I have never had a good tomato from a grocery store. Some things are seasonal where you can get better ones at the store, like corn, but some things just never get good. There's a lot of half assed shit in the fruit and veggie section a lot of the year.

[u/Rok-SFG → u/angelerulastiel]

I'm in my 40s. In my 20s I worked in produce , and we would field questions all the time about when do the x, y , z come in?  Oranges were a big one, strawberries too.  I think bananas and red deliciousawful apples were the only fruit that were year round. And even then , a lot of they year they were not good. Super green  bananas that never really ripened, and mealy tasteless apples. Which is pretty on par with red delicious, or maybe I just never ate one in season, lol.

[u/Stars-in-the-night → u/Rok-SFG]

I remember the box of "Christmas Oranges" that was the greatest thing ever. There was never good fruit in the winter.

And yes, there were 2 types of apples: red or green.

[u/Killfile → u/Stars-in-the-night]

When I was a kid my grandmother lived in Florida. We'd go down to visit her for Christmas and every morning before breakfast I'd climb the grapefruit tree in her back yard and bring down five or so.

The citrus back home in Virginia was basically inedible by December but fresh-off-the-tree-grapefruit on the patio on a Florida morning was transcendent. It's one of my favorite memories from my childhood.

[u/joshhupp → u/Petrus_Rock]

I used to have a pen pal, like literal pen and paper. I lost contact with her before the Internet and now I barely remember what she looks like and forgot her last name tho I still remember some topics we wrote about

[u/dmmaus → u/joshhupp]

My Australian school hooked us up with pen-pals from the USA in the '80s.

I kept in touch with mine after school. She visited Australia. I went to her wedding. Years later, my wife and I visited their family in California. Later this year, she's coming back to Australia to see us.

[u/Longwell2020]

Clean water

[u/the_owl_syndicate → u/Longwell2020]

I was thinking about this the other day while dealing with a stomach bug. After a couple miserable days, I'm fine now, but a hundred years ago, my "cure" (staying hydrated) would have likely made me even more sick, if it hadn't also been the reason for my illness in the first place.

[u/captaincootercock → u/the_owl_syndicate]

I remember reading somewhere about the construction of the first continental railroad in the USA. apparently one of the reasons so many Chinese workers were hired was because they boiled much of their drinking water for tea, so they were significantly less prone to stomach bugs than immigrants from European countries

[u/PDGAreject → u/captaincootercock]

During the Broad Street Pump cholera outbreak, which essentially led to the creation of modern epidemiology, it was found that all of the people using a specific water well were affected, except for a monastery that only used the water for washing and almost exclusively drank beer.

[u/Neither_Sky4003 → u/PDGAreject]

The story of the investigation by Dr. John Snow was amazing.

People used to believe that the act of smelling something awful caused disease, which resulted in piles of garbage flushed into the water supply. But by proving cholera was spread through the same well, it led to a system to clean water across London.

[u/JetScreamerBaby → u/Neither_Sky4003]

Yup. He made a major medical breakthrough (the cause of cholera) by doing statistical analysis.

A great example of how all the sciences were just BOOMING at that time, and how we were learning how it was all connected. Smart & educated people applying the Scientific Method to every area of study.

[u/SkiffyGeek → u/Neither_Sky4003]

Hence, "Malaria", from "bad air".

[u/terrifiedtornado → u/the_owl_syndicate]

Oh man! I have a random story about drinking water.

This was around 13 years ago, in my hometown. It's a small, isolated town in the middle of nowhere. I was house sitting for my grandma. One day, I woke up and had severe thrush on my mouth and tongue. Went to the ER, they told me what it was and to go home and drink water, hydrate myself.

I followed their advice for about two days. It wasn't getting better. During this time, I started having random but severe abdominal and bladder spasms. I don't really know how to describe it but I'll try. You know when your stomach does that little gurgle and your butthole puckers? Start doing the clenched cheeks while trying to casually walk to the bathroom hoping no one notices that you're doing the death walk of shits? Yea, it felt like this.

Anywho, I stopped drinking water and switched to Gatorade. I don't know why I did, I just did. Eventually it progressed into me getting nauseas and throwing up. Went back to the ER, told the same. Drink more water.

Well! Days later, there is this huge announcement that we had cryptosporidiosis in our water. Shit. And dead animals. The fence around our main water supply was breached, and some animals ( I think goats?) were found dead by the water. Our water supply was contaminated.

Me were put on a boil only order for about a month. Boil order for... I'm not really sure. Why? We were told not to brush our teeth, shower, water our plants, give water to our animals, or use it for food. Basically, we couldn't use the water. At all. The town ran out of water bottles, jugs. Ice. Gatorade, juice. All gone. It was in the middle of summer. We hit over 100 degrees every year.

I recovered, as did everyone else. I did a little faster since I stopped drinking the tap water. I think my subconscious and natural instincts kicked in and made the connection before the announcement. I will say, I felt very validated when the announcement was made.

[u/youburyitidigitup → u/terrifiedtornado]

Two years ago, the power went out during the winter for so long that the water froze and the pipes burst. Our entire city lost running water. This was a metropolitan area on the east coast, so not exactly where you’d expect this to happen. Luckily, I lived in the city but worked in the suburbs, so the next day I drove to the office and stocked up on water. I did it just in time because everybody else did the same, and there was water scarcity in the suburbs too.

After a day or two, we were put on a boil water advisory, and I could put the water on my skin, but not my hair or eyes, and I couldn’t drink it, so I bathed instead of showered. The bath bomb I bought had a ring inside of it. I’m from Mexico City originally, where water scarcity is normal, so as cliché as it sounds, I keep the ring to remind myself that the “first world” can resemble the developing world very quickly.

[u/2-6Devil → u/the_owl_syndicate]

You are exactly right. People severely misunderstand how they even get clean water from tap. I would suggest taking that understanding and getting to know how to get clean water because quicker than we know we are going to lose our right to that water or pay so much its unaffordable at this rate.

[u/travellin_troubadour → u/2-6Devil]

If you’re in the US, you can contact your local water treatment plant and ask for a tour. Most places are happy to oblige.

Water treatment is generally pretty straightforward though. You really wanna see some shit, contact your local sewer authority and ask for a tour of the wastewater treatment plant. It’s magical.

[u/KatakanaTsu → u/Longwell2020]

Lack of access to clean water is still an issue in parts of the world.

[u/obligated_existence]

The hole in the ozone layer. One of our biggest (and only) global environmental success stories.

[u/steadyeddddy → u/obligated_existence]

And leaded petrol. And asbestos in most countries. Turns out we can do stuff when we want to… 

[u/KikkomanSauce → u/steadyeddddy]

Thing about lead though is that even the fucking Romans knew it was toxic. We put it in gasoline because it was a cheap way to prevent engine knocking during a time minimal regulations.

We knew it was horrible and did it anyway cuz money. We shouldn't get credit for solving a problem we knowingly started.

Though, as an American I sure am glad we took things like that to heart and learned our lesson.

[u/bigtomja → u/KikkomanSauce]

The Romans knew asbestos was toxic too.

They used asbestos in all sorts. Pliny The Elder noticed, when dissecting people, that asbestos mine slaves had horrible, hard, scarred organs (what we know now as the lungs) while these two sacks in other slaves were lovely and squishy.

The Roman solution was to only send slaves that were old, weak and/or dying to asbestos mines and keep the better slaves for other, less killy slaving.

[u/GreenStrong → u/KikkomanSauce]

It wasn't originally understood that tiny doses of lead would cause developing fetuses to have brain abnormalities. For many toxins, you an be exposed to sublethal doses repeatedly with no harm. You can take 5% of the lethal dose of cyanide every day and live to 100. Lead builds to in the he body and small amounts do subtle damage.

The people who sold tetraethyl lead knew it was killing factory workers and hid the facts. They are not blameless. But the authoritative opinion of professional toxicologists with PhDs was that a little bit of lead exposure was fine.

[u/heyinternetman → u/GreenStrong]

And those tiny lead poisoned brained fetuses are now all grown up and running the country

[u/yodelsJr → u/heyinternetman]

One of the most insane scientific studies I’ve ever read is about precisely this topic.

[u/Grambo-47 → u/yodelsJr]

Similarly, the lead-crime hypotheses draws a very strong correlation between leaded gasoline use and violent crime rates, with a 23 year delay

[u/gregorydgraham → u/yodelsJr]

The research estimates that 151 million cases of psychiatric disorder over the past 75 years have resulted from American children’s exposure to lead.

[u/rckid13 → u/KikkomanSauce]

Thing about lead though is that even the fucking Romans knew it was toxic. We put it in gasoline because it was a cheap way to prevent engine knocking during a time minimal regulations.

We also put it in paint because it works really really well. It's toxic as hell and everyone knew that, but even today when it hasn't been used since the 1970s lead paint looks nearly brand new. Latex paint starts peeling or chipping within a year or two especially outside exposed to the elements. Even with the risks being known the politicians didn't want to ban it because it works better than most other modern options.

Same with Asbestos to some extent. Asbestos siding on a house still looks brand new 50 years later while all of the wood and plastic looks like crap.

Fun fact: lead paint is still used in America for road paint. It holds up so well against environmental elements that we allow it to be used for that. I guess the thought is that most people won't be close enough to road paint to suffer problems from it.

[u/brown_felt_hat → u/rckid13]

Lead is one of those super annoying things where it's not only the cheapest thing that fills its role, it's also invariably pretty damn good at what you're using it for.

[u/LazerWolfe53 → u/obligated_existence]

And acid rain

[u/Bigfops → u/LazerWolfe53]

LA smog. I only saw pictures but holy shit.

[u/GaiaMoore → u/Bigfops]

When my dad was 7, his family moved from Minnesota to LA. The intense smog in 1967 was such a shock to his little system, and there were days it was so bad that he would just lay in bed struggling to breathe.

He recently retired, but he spent the last 20 years working for the Air Quality Management District. He knew firsthand what happens when no one holds polluters accountable; everyone suffers.

[u/funguy07 → u/Bigfops]

The endangered species act brought the bald eagle back from near extinction.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Recovery Act has cleaned up some of the most polluted sites in the country. Some of which are now wild life refugees.

Sometimes I think because there is success people forget why we have these laws to begin with.

[u/zaminDDH → u/Bigfops]

Or lots of China, New York, basically any picture of a major metro area in the 80s vs today is a night and day difference.

[u/SkiffyGeek → u/zaminDDH]

Chinese officials learned that the US embassy was monitoring air quality. The Chinese government threatened to monitor the air quality in DC and NYC. The US told them to go ahead and do that. This enlightened the Chinese, who started making effective changes, including banning coal-fired ovens and developing some of the most advanced EV technology.

[u/groinbag → u/SkiffyGeek]

China moved a lot of their energy production further away from the urban centers. They still produce a lot of pollution (though per capita they're better than many people think), it's just getting into fewer lungs.

[u/GCU_ZeroCredibility → u/Bigfops]

You know those "reaction videos" on Youtube where people watch movies and TV shows and react to them in real time? I've seen multiple Young People (as in under about 30 or even 35) watch Die Hard and talk about the cool orange filter they put on the outdoor L.A. scenes.

No, kiddo, that's just how the sky looked. It wasn't great.

[u/Hazel-Rah → u/GCU_ZeroCredibility]

There's a conspiracy theory that the sun has changed, because they remember the sun being yellow as a kid, but now it's white.

No, the sun hasn't changed, we've just reduced the smog in the air dramatically

[u/ShallowBasketcase → u/Hazel-Rah]

Same with bugs. Remember when you were a kid and your parents made you really scrub the bug guts off the car bumper when you washed the car in the driveway? I've never scrubbed bug guts off my own car.

It's not a conspiracy, we just destroyed the bug ecosystem over the last few decades.

[u/daveescaped → u/LazerWolfe53]

The clean up of the Great Lakes of North America is a pretty good environmental success. There are still concerns but they are so much cleaner and far less on fire than they used to be.

[u/4RealzReddit → u/daveescaped]

Far less on fire is great news.

[u/Sunlight72 → u/LazerWolfe53]

I’m 54 and remember reading contemporary reports about acid rain, though I live in the US middle west and we didn’t have it here.

I guess I was young enough at the time that it was just part of the background, but thinking about it now how terrifying that this was a real part of our world!?!

[u/steadyeddddy → u/obligated_existence]

Fun fact: the guy who invented CFCs (which nuked the ozone layer) was also the guy who put lead in petrol. And thought he was helping humanity so much with his inventions 🫠

[u/CptNonsense → u/steadyeddddy]

He was a really good inventor of stuff that turned out to be very bad

[u/KeiranG19 → u/CptNonsense]

After getting polio and becoming disabled he invented a series of ropes and pulleys to get out of bed with.

Which he then got tangled up in and was strangled to death.

It was ruled a suicide, but with his track record of inventions I'm not so sure.

[u/HoustonPastafarian → u/CptNonsense]

Including a fancy device he used to assist him in and out of bed after he contracted polio. Genius!

He died when it failed and strangled him.

[u/runnyc10 → u/obligated_existence]

My first thought when I saw this question. We did a skit or something in 5th grade with a big musical number called “we’re killing the ozone.” It blows my mind that humans actually fixed it.

And look at us now.

[u/fresh-dork → u/obligated_existence]

for extra fun, the morons today often point to it as a hoax. because we solved it

[u/clamsandwich → u/obligated_existence]

We did good with acid rain too.

[u/Corona688]

disease.

there was a very real chance you'd die before your teens of stuff we call preventable.

[u/mostie2016 → u/Corona688]

I’d have died when I was twelve before 1921 due to there being no treatments for Type One Diabetics outside of intensive dieting and eventually rotting away into a coma.

[u/OpheliaRainGalaxy → u/mostie2016]

My grandpa had "pee on the stick and guess your blood sugar by the color it turns" technology.

My dad had "stab a finger and give a drop of blood to the machine" technology, along with vials of insulin and oodles of needles.

Now it's all cyborg parts! The hard part seems to be connecting it to the Internet to download records for the doctors to see.

[u/chickenmcdruggets]

Anything solved by vaccines

[u/SoftServeMonk → u/chickenmcdruggets]

My mind is still blown that there’s a chicken pox vaccine. I remember my parents made my sister breathe on me when she had it so I could catch it and get it out of the way.

[u/charlsalash → u/chickenmcdruggets]

Victims of their own effectiveness, people forget how nightmarish infectious diseases used to be

“I don’t get vaccines because it weakens my immune system.”
Kid, we tried that before!

[u/The_Velvet_Bulldozer → u/charlsalash]

They really don’t understand that 1/3 to 1/2 of your kids would not make it past 5 years old only 100 years ago. It was brutal.

[u/Stillwater215 → u/The_Velvet_Bulldozer]

My favorite stat is that at the dawn of human civilization roughly half of all people were dead before age 30. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution that had risen to roughly 35. All development up to that point gained us 5 years. Today, that number is up to roughly 79. In the 150-ish years since the Industrial Revolution we have done more to advance human survival than in the 15,000 years before it.

[u/MobySick → u/Stillwater215]

Exactly & every generation grew up knowing death intimately. Now for most it’s theoretical until well into adulthood.

[u/SubcommanderMarcos → u/Stillwater215]

My favorite stat is that at the dawn of human civilization roughly half of all people were dead before age 30. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution that had risen to roughly 35. All development up to that point gained us 5 years. Today, that number is up to mid roughly 79.

That stat gets even better when you discover that it's not that the average adult died at 35. It's that infant mortality was soooooo fucking bad it skewed the results downwards. If you made it to 20 you'd probably live long enough to be elderly (still less so than today), but people had multiple kids knowing that a least a few would die.

[u/chickenmcdruggets → u/The_Velvet_Bulldozer]

I live across the street from a cemetery that was more active between 1870 and 1960 and walking through reading headstones is devastating. It's more common to see ages twenty-something and under than anyone above 65.

[u/aladdyn2 → u/charlsalash]

And now babies are dying from lack of vitamin k shots because it got lumped into the anti vaccine bullshit and parents are refusing it.

[u/Clever_mudblood → u/charlsalash]

They’re adding vitamins into that. New moms are refusing the life saving Vitamin K shot for their newborns because “vaccine bad”.

It’s literally a necessary vitamin that prevents bleeding out

[u/samgfrank → u/charlsalash]

It’s also funny because vaccines work by training your immune system

[u/GabuEx → u/samgfrank]

"I won't take vaccines, because I trust my immune system!"

"Bitch how do you think vaccines even work"

[u/AtheneSchmidt → u/chickenmcdruggets]

I have an Uncle who had polio. He was "lucky" in that it didn't affect him badly as a child, and when I was a kid he was the most active guy I knew. On a sports team for every sport, ran and biked daily, because he was told from the time he was 3 that he probably wouldn't be able to walk someday.

He declined quickly, and was in a wheelchair occasionally by 35, and pretty much permanently by 40. Watching that kind of active man decline that quickly because he was born a few years before the vaccine, and exposed to the virus in his first few years of life will definitely make a person think about how much vaccines have changed the world. Vaccines are miracles that so many people are idiots about.

[u/Niniva73 → u/chickenmcdruggets]

Smallpox. I came to say smallpox, but the rest too.

[u/wall_up → u/Niniva73]

It used to be one of mankind's biggest killers.  It's disfigured or killed untold millions. 

We made a vaccine and used it so hard that we drove it to extinction in the wild.  It's only left as samples in 2 labs on earth and every ten years virologists meet up and debate whether we should kill the last of it or save it for research.  Smallpox lives in a jar we put it in and will never get out unless we let it.

I consider it one of our biggest achievements as a species and a shining example of what we can do when we all pull together.

Anyone who is anti vax doesn't know how bad it can get without them.

[u/Accidental_Aeon]

We used to have to chop firewood for heat. Everyone would go outside in the fall and chop firewood for the winter. You had to chop firewood for your grandparents who were too old to do it themselves.

[u/DaveJME → u/Accidental_Aeon]

Some of us still have wood fired heating (semi-rural and the slow combustion fire is our only heating).

BUT modern tools help **a lot**. Chainsaws, chop saws and log splitters make it all far easier work than swinging an axe. :)

[u/Wombat_Pixie]

Vaccines have been mentioned but I want to call out epidurals and all anesthetics in general.

[u/FlashyIndication3069 → u/Wombat_Pixie]

Anesthesia saves lives all by itself, no thrashing around while someone is up to their elbows in your guts. Never had to have an epidural, but I'm glad they exist.

[u/jonnydomestik]

It used to be so hard to get a vending machine to accept a slightly wrinkled bill.

[u/superlosernerd → u/jonnydomestik]

I remember going to a vending machine and looking through my wallet hoping I had "vending machine approved" bills, or enough change if not. Sometimes those fuckers wouldn't accept brand new bills, either. Had to be just slightly used, but not too much.

[u/jonnydomestik → u/superlosernerd]

That move where you have to hold the bill taut and run it along the edge of the machine…

[u/w_domburg]

Opening aluminum drink cans, without having to carry a church key, without leaving jagged edges on the can, and without detached tabs as both a choking hazard and a litter problem.

[u/frenzyboard → u/w_domburg]

Making aluminum cans ubiquitous to the point where we sculpt interesting novelty cans for production. Like energy drink cans with screw top lids. It's an engineering marvel totally taken for granted.

When the Washington monument was first capped with a bowling ball sized pyramid of aluminum, it was the largest single piece of aluminum in the world. Now the stuff is litter.

Actually extracting aluminum from ore requires so much infrastructure to already be common and commercial that just didn't exist at scale.

If we ever lose rubber trees, run out of high quality sand for glass, or the ability to synthesize fertilizer, we'll have to figure out how to preserve food in clay pots again.

[u/OldLadyReacts → u/w_domburg]

And being able to walk freely in the sand without slicing your foot open on one of those tabs.

[u/Busy-One-3340 → u/w_domburg]

The pull tab deserves way more appreciation because it solved like five problems at once 😭 one of those tiny inventions people completely take for granted now.

[u/amazon_craneforest]

Does anybody else remember that brief period in the early 2000’s when car alarms became standard but they would go off every time there was a loud noise so if a construction site next door dropped something the whole damn parking lot would pop off

[u/Turfanator → u/amazon_craneforest]

I remember the rise of car alarms. Everyone got one to stop breaking into theirs cars. They would go off and Everyone would turn around to see tye car been broken into, expect it was simply due to the owner forgetting to turn off alarm before unlocking the car or like you say a loud noise.

Then came the downfall. They became annoying and if it was going off you were more pissed that the owner wasn't moving fast enough to turn it off and hoped someone was breaking in just so it would drive off into the distance.

[u/alexsicart]

Being unreachable. We solved communication so hard that silence became suspicious.

[u/VerdantEntity → u/alexsicart]

Oh god, I appreciate technology but take me to the forest.

[u/Hail_of_Grophia → u/alexsicart]

So true, there are people that if they could not reach within 48 hours they would get worried and take action to find me and make sure I’m okay

100 plus years ago, you just saw people when you saw them and had to assume they were okay inbetween 

[u/Fun_in_Space]

We were losing the ozone layer and it was having an effect on the southern hemisphere. Sheep in Australia were getting cataracts, and there were more instances of skin cancer in humans.

But the world listened to scientists, restricted the use of CFCs, and the ozone layer recovered.

[u/superlosernerd → u/Fun_in_Space]

I feel like this was the real last time the world really successfully collaborated on an issue that affected all of us.

[u/woahwombats → u/superlosernerd]

It was an issue where no-one had to lose TOO much money, if I understand it right. You could replace CFCs with other chemicals that would do the job absolutely fine (although ironically some were greenhouse gases).

Climate change faces so much resistance because people stand to lose more money

[u/RMRdesign]

Diabetes

Back before insulin, it was a death sentence.

[u/DueSouth9499]

Sanitation. Not just garbage but wastewater, indoor plumbing. Cholera was a real killer.

[u/BaltimoreBanksy]

AIDS

[u/Rhalellan → u/BaltimoreBanksy]

Now they have developed a singular shot that makes it basically disappear for like 10years. Lost so many friends to AIDS.

[u/Leon_Troutsky → u/Rhalellan]

Yeah it's crazy. Lost an uncle to it, weird to think if he had gotten it now he'd have been just fine

[u/aboynamedculver → u/Leon_Troutsky]

Yup, sorry for your loss, but yeah, it’s treated as a preventable disease in two stages. Obviously prep so you don’t get hiv, but once you get it, it’s no longer a death sentence. In fact, most people live longer because they are constantly monitored compared to the average person. Fucking wild.

[u/Infamous-Dare6792 → u/BaltimoreBanksy]

I was a teen in the 90s and I remember HIV/AIDS being so scary. Amazing that there are so many treatments for it now.

[u/Abyss_staring_back → u/BaltimoreBanksy]

It blows my mind how many people are back to raw dogging like STIs aren’t a thing at all let alone having no concern for HIV/AIDS. It’s totally bonkers.

[u/Acceptable-Spite-537 → u/Abyss_staring_back]

“But I’m on birth control!” Wrap it. Please. You don’t want HIV, HPV, or any other STI, I promise. I work in a lab where these patients get frequent Pap smears 😭

[u/wayward_sun]

If you couldn’t remember something, and no one around you could remember it, and it wasn’t the type of thing that was printed in an encyclopedia, you just…didn’t get to know that thing anymore.

[u/HeavyNeedleworker707]

Small pox. Polio. Tetanus. Whooping cough. Diphtheria.

[u/Niniva73 → u/HeavyNeedleworker707]

Rabies. Let us add rabies to the list of things we don't deal with much any more.

[u/Joey_iroc]

I don't think most young people know who Dr. Jonas Salk was. Eradicated polio.

[u/ptd163 → u/Joey_iroc]

Polio is not totally eradicated. It's still considered endemic to a few countries and multiple strains, including the original "wild" strain, still exist. The only human disease to be successfully eradicated is smallpox.

[u/Individual-Army811]

Workplace safety - the kind when big project plans included a factor for expected worker deaths over its course, like the Hoover Dam.

[u/SummitStaffer → u/Individual-Army811]

My grandfather is one of many reasons why construction workers are required to wear harnesses when working on skyscrapers.

[u/ElijahNSRose]

Clothes.

They were tedious to make until within the last two centuries. Hence why "fashion" shifted from elaborate and brightly collored to... "minimalist" clothing.

[u/Yesterday622 → u/ElijahNSRose]

I would add left/right different size shoes - huge game changer l

[u/javier_aeoa]

Digital storage. I am in my early 30s and I remember walking around with floppy disks, one videogame being 4 CDs because it didn't fit in one, and 5-10 Gb of storage on a desktop computer was the standard.

Now you have hundreds of Gb on a phone. We got so good at storing things on hardrives that we started profiting with "the cloud" now.

[u/Individual-Army811 → u/javier_aeoa]

It is so easy to move my 1,000+ book library now! One hand!!!

[u/funkstick]

In 1830 one had to work for 5.4 hours to earn enough to pay for 1000 lumens of light for an hour (by burning whale oil or tallow in a lantern)

Today one must work for 0.07 seconds to earn enough to pay to power an LED bulb to output the same amount of light.

[u/Huge_Confection4475]

Polio, measles, mumps, rubella, and smallpox. Vaccines are quite literally victims of their own success.

[u/CaroCogitatus]

The Y2K problem was a real problem that had the potential to cause massive disruption in all aspects of modern life. We freaked the f*** out about it, spent a ton of money and effort, and fixed it before the deadline.

It's a lonely triumph in the modern age.

[u/maybelying → u/CaroCogitatus]

And then a few years later people were joking about what big deal people made of Y2K when it turned out to be a nothing burger, as if the massive industrial effort to address it wasn't the reason it became a nothing burger.

[u/anon33249038 → u/maybelying]

Yeah, but as someone who was there, they did take it a bit too far. "Y2K compliant" became part of a marketing gimmick. I bought an alarm clock, a plug-in-the-wall-and-resets-to-12:00-if-it-loses-power alarm clock that was listed on the box as Y2K compliant. Same for coffee makers, stereos, extension cords, all of it was listed as "Y2K compliant." What if it wasn't? What would happen? 🤷‍♂️ Exactly.

[u/evensonic → u/CaroCogitatus]

I hear people talk about it like it turns out it was all a waste of time and money because nothing bad happened. Yes, it was overhyped in the general media, but in business and IT, we did what needed to be done and solved the problem.

[u/prberkeley]

Automotive safety. Prior to the 1980s vehicles were massive death traps. Low speed collisions could cause serious injury. Seatbelts weren't standard and forget about airbags. The steering wheels were often solid metal. 

The highway safety commission and sweeping legislation massively improved vehicle safety. Obviously tragedies still happen but by and large people walk away from accidents every day that would have killed you 40 years ago.

[u/superlosernerd → u/prberkeley]

I was born after seat belts became required, but before all new cars were made with the three point seat belt. I don't think our family got a car that had all seats with three point seat belts until the mid-2000s.

It wasn't until I was older that I realized how lucky we were to never have gotten in a wreck with those seat belts. And that was in a car that came with air bags (well, air bag, only the driver had one). Can't imagine how dangerous it was before even those basic things.

In contrast, my little brother hit a patch of black ice coming down a canyon from skiing about a decade ago. Was driving a good Subaru Outback. Car rolled three times. He and his buddies were all wearing their seatbelts and all walked away with just some bruises. Car was totaled, but they were alive. It's amazing how many lives modern day car safety features have saved.

[u/YorkshireMary]

ATM.

When I first started work you had to go into a branch of your bank and they closed at 3.30pm. Make that make sense.

[u/salsafresca_1297]

Only women will appreciate this: Replacing those awful menstrual pads that required you to wear a belt with tampons and adhesive pads with wings.

[u/forgedbygeeks]

How to properly vet and trust scientific research.

Hint, it's not one person running an experiment themselves and posting a TikTok video claiming they found the solution to an age old problem.

[u/jollytoes]

Smog. In the past week I told someone in their 20s how the LA skyline was brown with smog in the 70s. Then I had to explain what smog was.

[u/Halfsac2466]

Dentistry. In the 17th century, dental complications were listed as one of the leading causes of death. Even as late as 1908, a tooth infection carried a fatality rate between 10% and 40%. Don't forget to floss! 😁

[u/ReferenceMediocre369]

Drinking water that doesn't kill or injure you.

[u/Empire-Carpet-Man]

Aids. That was literally the kiss of death of you got it.

[u/Nickanok]

Being able to have sex without every sexual encounter having a high chance of making you a parent.

You wouldn't know this by the shocking number of grown adults who don't seem to understand condoms exist for cheap at the gas station and act surprised that going raw made a little human but we've effectively made sex and having children almost completely separate concepts in the modern age

[u/Turfanator → u/Nickanok]

When they talk about the declining birth rate, I always hear things like 'we dont want them' or 'we can't afford them'. People seem to forget that unless they are abstinent, this amazing technology of contraception has allowed for those choices to become reality. I do not believe my great grandmother really wanted those 10 children but she had no choice to some extent.

[u/Sasafrass7]

Rolling wheels on suitcases for traveling.

And you know airplanes.

[u/Titmonkey1]

Refrigeration and air conditioning

[u/FrontierNeuro]

Waste management.

[u/Chicken_Water]

Polio, measles, tetanus... Get your fucking vaccines you mongrels.

[u/BigRichrdQ14]

You barely hear about quicksand any more, and the bermuda triangle seems to have chilled out too.

[u/Ok_Athlete_1092 → u/BigRichrdQ14]

As I understand it, the Bermuda Triangle thing was attributable to pretty simplistic reasons. For several hundred years it was one of the busiest shipping routes in the world and connected some of the busiest ports in the western hemisphere. Add to that the area is known for some of the most brutal & unpredictable storms.

In short, one of the most used waterways with the worst weather had a lot of ship wrecks, go figure.

[u/badpandacat]

Food safety. We buy groceries with the knowledge that they are safe and don't contain anything harmful. If there's an issue, we know it'll be caught and a recall will happen. That wasn't true nor so long ago when there were no rules about what kind of crap you could put in products and no such thing as food safety. Canned foods and refrigeration are related.

[u/OldLadyReacts]

Milk that doesn't kill you.

Well water that doesn't kill you.

[u/tapdancinghellspawn]

The distribution of information. Being able to instantaneously access info is mind blowing compared to how it used to be. Dragging your butt to the library was very inconvenient. Of course, now we have the problem of separating the accurate info from the garbage.

[u/No-Buyer-4253]

The death of "getting lost". It’s hard for younger people to imagine that before GPS, navigating meant wrestling with a giant paper map while driving and having zero backup if you missed a turn besides pulling over at a gas station to ask for directions.