what's sure to be the best decade ever, it's  2020 after all- that's as futuristic as you  

can get! We're talking hoverboards,  self-driving cars, cure for cancer,  

and at long last rumors that Keeping Up  With The Kardashians is getting canceled!

But just one month into 2020 and it  becomes obvious that 2020 is not your friend.

2020 came back with a vengeance to  kick the world in the nuts. Global pandemic, India  

and China at each other's throat, North Korea  threatening to launch nukes at everyone, and oh,  

Keeping Up With The Kardashians is getting another  season- yeah, 2020 is the scumbag Steve of years,  

but here's a bunch of other terrible crap you  probably missed in the worst year of your life. 

10. People miraculously  survived an airline disaster 

There were a handful of disasters in  the skies this year, with the worst  

one being the pre-virus mid-air explosion of  Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.  

All of the 176 people on that flight were killed,  obliterated after their plane was hit by two  

missiles fired by the Iranian armed forces. We guess most of you heard about that one,  

but you might not have heard about the disaster  that happened on May 22. That involved Pakistan  

International Airlines Flight 8303. The flight took off from Lahore and  

was in the air just over an hour when it put out  a mayday call, saying that it had lost its engines  

and it would have to make an emergency landing.  The next thing that happened was the aircraft was  

seen hurtling towards a neighborhood in Karachi.  Like a burning phoenix, its wings on fire,  

it crashed into buildings filled with people. Amazingly, only one person in the neighborhood  

died. Maybe even more amazing is the fact that two  people from the 99 passengers on board survived.  

One of them later recounted how the pilot  had told the passengers that the landing was  

likely going to be “troublesome.” He said the next  thing he knew he was climbing through the rubble  

of broken buildings and he could hear people were  crying and screaming. Someone grabbed him and he  

was whisked off to the nearest hospital. It's generally thought that the back is  

the best place to be sitting if you're on a  plane that has to make an emergency landing,  

but the two survivors were both sitting  near the front in seats 1C and 8F. 

That's just a warm-up, far worse is to come. 9. Serial killers didn't go away 

Serial killers don't generally take a break during  a pandemic, although their hunting grounds during  

lockdowns might be less densely populated. It's hard to say just how many serial killers  

are active at any given time. Some experts think  that in 2020 in the USA alone there were possibly  

2,000 serial killers. A former chief of the FBI's  Elite Serial Crime Unit said in 2015 that there  

were maybe 25 to 50 serial killers active  that year. In 2020, they didn't just go away. 

Take for instance the “smiley face  murders”, something we imagine not  

many of you have heard about. This creepy  case involves young men in the Midwest who  

were found dead in bodies of water. Did they  merely drown? Some investigators think no. 

You see, the bodies of some 45 men were  found dead in the water, but the thing was,  

they all fit a similar profile. They were young,  white, athletic, and popular. Maybe they were just  

drunk because a lot of victims had been at parties  prior to getting wet. What's super-strange,  

though, is close to where they were found there  was graffiti nearby of a smiley face. If they were  

killed, right now there is someone or some people  out there that you should be very afraid of. 

Other estimates tell us that two percent of all  murders in the U.S. each year are committed by  

serial killers. It can just take a long time to  track them down. Take the case of Samuel Little.  

He started killing in 1970 and didn't stop until  he was arrested in 2012. The FBI has said that  

he was behind at least 50 murders, but Little  himself has claimed to have killed 93 people.  

How many people like him were doing their thing  in 2020? It's likely there were quite a few. 

8. Regular murders didn't go away either 2020 isn't over yet as we write this,  

even though many of you likely wish it was.  It's too early to put together the murder  

statistics for the year, but right now the  FBI is saying in the U.S. the murder rate has  

increased by 15 percent from the rate in 2019. If you think that's bad, a report released by  

the Council on Criminal Justice stated over the  summer in 27 big cities in the U.S. the murder  

rate increased by 53 percent. Many people  have asked what is going on in some cities,  

such as Chicago and New York where  murders have dramatically increased. 

The answer is no one really knows. Maybe it was  a result of lockdowns. Maybe it was connected to  

the protests. Maybe it was the hot summer weather.  Others think that lockdowns have caused an upswing  

in domestic violence while others have said  they've interrupted the flow of illegal drugs.  

Another thing is people have been buying more  guns this year than in previous years. It will  

be interesting to see what happens in 2021. Now for something out of this world. 

7. We were nearly hit by an asteroid In August this year, NASA said the earth  

came pretty close to being whacked by an asteroid.  The Near-Earth Asteroid actually set a record in  

that it came closer to earth than any other NEA  NASA had ever seen before. It measured around 10  

to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) in width. Something  like that could cause some amount of damage  

if it were to actually hit the earth, but  the good news is that NASA said it would have  

likely broken up if it had gotten any closer. The bad news is NASA has said at some point  

the Earth is going to get slammed by a piece of  space rock big enough to do significant damage  

to a country or continent. You might have missed  this while you were watching all that virus news,  

but there were articles this year talking about  NASA's “Double Asteroid Redirection Test.” That  

basically entails firing a rocket into an asteroid  that's gotten a little too close to comfort. 

Ok, it's time to get biblical. 6. Fires, floods, famine 

If you read the bible you might be familiar with  the Book of Revelations. The writers of the texts  

promise humankind that one day there will be a  kind of reckoning. There is talk of things such as  

floods, fires, famine, pestilence, war, and blood,  a lot of blood. 2020 hasn't been a huge year for  

wars, but as for the rest, it has certainly met  its disaster quota. As you all know, it's been  

a big year for pestilence, but that's not all. This year the U.S. media said California  

experienced its worst wildfires in decades.  The LA Times wrote that the fires were bigger,  

more destructive, and they led to the worst  air quality in 20 years. Over the last decade,  

the fires in California have been bad pretty much  every year, but 2020 could have been the worst. 

Prior to the virus getting going, Australia  also experienced some of its worst wildfires.  

If you look at the fires that raged in some  parts of South East Asia, they were bad, too,  

although a lot of that had to do with agricultural  burning. All in all, it was a bad year for fires.  

It was much worse for animals, with 500 million  of them dying in fires in Australia alone. 

As for floods, it wasn't a great year, either.  Floods in East Africa took 453 lives and destroyed  

the homes of almost half a million people. In  China, at least 219 people died in floods and over  

54,000 people were left homeless. Many regions  were affected, with experts saying the floods were  

the worst since 1998. Flooding in India, Nepal,  and Bangladesh was also especially bad in 2020.  

Hundreds of people died, and around 4.5  million people were displaced from their homes. 

Was it a bad year for famine? Well, the Covid-19  pandemic had its hand in people not getting  

enough food. The World Food Program reported  in September that with a combination of Covid,  

climate change and ongoing conflicts,  close to 270 million people could starve. 

So, there you go, 2020 was a terrible year for  the threesome of fires, floods, and famine. The  

next problem is making matters much worse. 5. Locusts caused unbelievable damage 

Swarms of locusts ravaging crops are also  something you can read about in the bible.  

In case you didn't know, 2020 was a  bad year for those eating machines. 

In 2019 and 2020, a locust plague spread  through parts of the Middle East and Africa.  

Swarms of the insects also feasted in South  America. 23 countries were affected in all. 

The reason the massive swarms exist is due to  a few factors, but mainly it's because there  

was more rainfall than usual in some parts of the  world, and that created perfect conditions for the  

locusts to breed. Not only that, restrictions  on travel during the pandemic helped create a  

perfect storm. Help couldn't be received where  help was needed. Some countries have seen the  

worst infestations for decades, as people in  Ethiopia, Somalia, India, and Kenya, will attest. 

Getting sick from a virus might be the last thing  on your mind when you see a swarm of 80 million  

locusts heading towards you. Such a swarm  can eat as much in one day as 35,000 people. 

4. A hyperactive volcano It wouldn't be a bad year without at least one  

volcano erupting. That happened at the start of  the year in the Philippines. The Taal volcano blew  

its lid and scared residents senseless when they  saw great plumes of ash and steam filling the sky  

for miles above their heads. If you think you've  got problems, imagine living next to a pressure  

cooker that has the power to wipe you out. It was a big deal. The airport in Manila  

was closed. Thousands of people were told  they had to be evacuated from their homes.  

The authorities issued a level-4 warning,  and with level 5 being the worst of all,  

it meant get the hell away from that thing right  now. They also said the volcano could spew again  

soon, and the next explosion could be even worse. Unfortunately, some people couldn't just get up  

and leave. Others wanted to make  sure their cows and pigs were ok.  

That's one of the reasons people died. In all,  39 people lost their lives. Only one of them  

died as a direct result of the initial explosion,  while others perished because they stayed home. 

Now we'll talk about something  that was a world-first. 

3. The Big Bang It started with a fire at the  

Port of Beirut. The fire got bigger and there was  an explosion followed by some smaller ones. A few  

people got out their smartphones and recorded the  fire, and thanks to them and CCTV, one of the most  

shocking things ever captured on video happened. That was a massive explosion followed by a  

supersonic blastwave that wrecked buildings  in its path. Then we saw a huge mushroom cloud  

form in the air. It was remarkable.  It was like nothing we've ever seen,  

and that's why we have to include it on this  list even though you probably know all about it. 

If you don't know the ins and outs, the blast  left behind a 460 foot-wide (140 meters) crater.  

Its depth was around 141 feet (41 meters). It  destroyed just about everything in its vicinity.  

In fact, it was so powerful that it blew out  windows 5 miles (9km) away. One of the worst  

things was the explosion destroyed silos full  of grain, a loss that worsened food shortages  

in a country already suffering from a financial  crisis and the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. 

It was called one of the “largest  non-nuclear explosions in history”  

and said to be only about ten times smaller  in intensity than the nuclear bomb dropped  

on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Poor storage of ammonium nitrate was to blame,  

but the question a lot of people asked is  why weren't they told about this storage. 

In total, 204 people died. 6,500  people were injured, and it left  

300,000 people without a home. Some of those that  died were the firemen attending the original fire,  

and unfortunately for them, they didn't know  about the huge amount of ammonium nitrate. 

This next one could be a problem for the future. 2. Tweet, tweet, boom 

You should ask yourself this question: Could  problems arise if some of the most powerful  

people in the world were hacked and their social  media accounts posted content not from them? 

Yes, you're thinking, that would be a  problem. Some Twitter accounts hacked in  

July included billionaire, Elon Musk; the  richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos;  

and the second richest person, Microsoft  founder Bill Gates. Other hacked accounts  

included the then U.S. presidential candidate  Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama. 

It turned out that the masterminds behind the  hack were two young folks from the U.S. and a  

British teenager. The three kids managed to pull  off the worst social media hack of all time. Ok,  

so they only did it to scam a bit of money, but  what if someone could hack a very important person  

and post a dangerous message? The last thing we  need is a declaration of nuclear war via Twitter.  

No war would be started this way, but as some  security experts said, an account in the wrong  

hands could cause a global security crisis. 1. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 

Just kidding, after everything you've heard  today what that couple of lovebirds is doing  

isn't something you need to be thinking about. Now you need to watch this,  

“Why Is The Government Terrified Of  This Hacker?” Or, have a look at this,  

“Worst Natural Disasters in Human History.”Other  Terrifying Things That Happened in 2020