It's hard to predict the future. Even when people do it, it's hard to believe those predictions. We're always told the future is unknown and we shouldn't try to figure out what lies ahead.
For the most part, that's good advice. However, that's not always the case!
Many times in history, people predicted or warned us about disasters we may face in future, but no one listened. More often than not, those disasters struck and we were left wishing we had heeded the advice when we had it.
Curious about what some of these warnings may have been, one Redditor asked:
"Was there anyone who tried to warn us about something that happened but we didn’t listen? Who?"
Go To The Doctor
"Tried to tell mom she was sick 5 years ago"
"Miss you mom."
– Wash_zoe_mal
"Same."
"Had her convinced to go to the hospital on Wednesday, sister talked her out of it."
"Thursday she went but had to leave due to sitting so long in the waiting room. She suffered from chronic pain."
"Friday, her home nurse ignored the fact that she couldn't get a blood pressure to register, that she was confused, and her skin was turning yellow."
"Saturday I got home, I had left Wednesday night for business, and she was in the hospital. I sat with her until I had to go home to leave Sunday morning."
"She died that Sunday from sepsis due to an untreated uti that moved to her kidney and then her blood."
– ProbablyABore
Listen To The Professionals!
"They were building a big baseball stadium in Wisconsin, and it was a considerably windy day. The crane operator was tasked with lifting a large structure but refused stating dangerous gusts. The site foreman dismissed the crane operator and called in one who would do the job with no pushback. Well the crane tipped over with a load and workers were killed. Foreman and second operator were arrested, and iirc the first operator won a wrongful termination lawsuit."
– King-o-lingus
"This was a sad day in Wisconsin. I was a kid and remember everyone was devastated. Every time I went to a Brewers game, all I could think was “death has been here."
– Da5ftAssassin
Am American Hero
"Rick Rescorla, Director of Corporate Security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, published a report in 1990 detailing the vulnerability of the World Trade Center parking garage. He and a colleague found they were able to freely walk into the garage, which contained many structural support columns, unchallenged by any security. Additionally, no ID checks or screening was done on any of the entering delivery vehicles. Three years later a truck bomb was driven into the garage and detonated in an attempt to damage the structure of the building."
"Later he and his same college would correctly predict the next attack on the building would come from the air. The evacuation plan and drills he put in place are credited with saving over 2,600 lives on September 11th."
"Edited for a bit of clarity: Some are saying “but if he evacuated people, doesn’t that mean we listened?” Rick worked for one company in the building, not the Port Authority who managed the buildings overall safety plan. After the first plane crashed, the announcements from the Port Authority told everyone to shelter in place, and not evacuate. He had developed his own evacuation plan for his employees and put it place before any official word to evacuate the building was given."
– Shamrock132
"Rick died helping get people out on 9/11. One of the last people to see him said ‘you need to get out too’. He said something like ‘I will.’ but he didn’t make it. I worked for Morgan Stanley then, but in Houston. I had colleagues in the towers that day including my best friend. Watching the towers fall on TV we thought there’s no way everyone made it out, but all my local people made it out. Of 3800 MS employees at World Trade, just 13 perished thanks to crazy luck and Rick. He’s a goddam hero. I’ll never forget him."
– SpookyJones
Huh, You Don't Say?
"Roger Boisjoly - Engineer involved with the Space Shuttle program who warned his superiors for months prior to the Challenger disaster that launching in cold weather could cause the O-rings to fail."
"Care to guess what caused the Challenger disaster?"
– duhvorced
"And for his trouble, he was a pariah to future employers. Punished for his integrity."
– badwolf42
"I've heard that he refused to sign the launch orders for the doomed mission, even told his wife the night before "they're going to blow up the shuttle tomorrow". The weather that morning was unreal, it had been well below freezing overnight, there were literally icicles on the shuttle. Even a 24 hour postponement would have been enough."
– Stock_Garage_672
"It must be miserable to try to tell people about a problem and nobody listens, only for it to result in a major disaster later. Talk about an internalized sense of failure and constant grappling with the question of if you could have done more."
– NotYourSnowBunny
I Mean, Come On!
"Ignaz Semmelweis often described as the father of hand washing. In the 1800s he discovered that infant maternal mortality could be drastically reduced by doctors washing their hands between patients. He was largely ignored and his book got absolutely slated. This is supposed to have contributed to him having a mental breakdown and he died in a psychiatric hospital."
– dontbelikeyou
"Not just between patients, between working on cadavers and delivering babies."
– blorbschploble
"He was slated because of the pride of the doctors. Doctors were considered as high society, and the fact that some guy was telling them that they were "dirty" in any way was insulting to them, only poor people and beggers were "dirty", not these high-society, well-educated, rich doctors!"
"Many babies died because a**holes couldn't admit that they weren't immune to having bad sh*t on their hands."
– jakeandcupcakes
"Not just infant mortality. Pregnant women in Vienna came to know that you didn't want to be treated by the "First Clinic" (for teaching medical students) but rather the "Second Clinic" (for teaching midwives). The "First Clinic" had over TWICE the rate of maternal deaths as the "Second Clinic." Some years, the "First Clinic" had a 16% rate of maternal mortality. Imagine a 16% chance of death for childbirth-- a greater than 1 in 7 chance of dying! I imagine the doctors in denial of Semmelweis's findings and saying "Damn it, not another one!" after each maternal death."
"Reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
– danceswithtree
He Was Right Before
"H G Wells said he wanted his epitaph to be "I told you so. You damned fools!""
"In The Land Ironclads (1903) he had written about a stalemated war fought by trench warfare that was broken by the invention of tanks, predicting what would happen in WW1."
"In The War in the Air (1907) he predicted how airplanes would be used in war, including aerial bombardment of cities, and saw his predictions come true in WW2."
– radams78
"*nervously side-eyes a copy of War of the Worlds*"
– JanuaryDynamite
"Then he wrote War of the Worlds where a virus saves us from aliens?"
– T-MinusGiraffe
Missed By A Few Months
"(Edit* Colleen) Rowley--warned her FBI superiors in June 01 that names on their jihadi watch list were taking flying lessons but not interested in learning how to land"
"Her report didn't get read until October"
– occamhanlon
Covid Was Coming
"Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor who tried to warn people through his private social media about Covid-19 in December 30 2019. Was summoned by the police in China for ‘spreading disinformation.’ The Chinese government had been the first Covid deniers during the virus’s earliest stage and contributed greatly to the global pandemic. Li died of Covid in Wuhan on February 7th 2020."
– Puzzleheaded_Time599
"I remember watching a clip on reddit in December of 2019. The caption was something like “Chinese government building hospitals overnight” with a time-lapse video of buildings being built, non-stop, day and night. IIRC it was on r/DamnThatsInteresting. At the time, I wondered what the significance was and considered it not interesting at all. Flash forward less than 90 days, and none of our lives are ever going to be the same."
– marsh_mellow_moon
The Best Advice
"Billy Mitchell. He predicted a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the 1920s, and warned the Navy that they needed to spend more money on air defenses and less on ships."
– FireFlinger
Warned From The Start
"George Washington"
"Washington strongly didn’t want a two party system governing the United States… well, here we are now and look how that turned out. Nobody can come to a single consistent agreement."
– Competitive_Simple40
If we listened...and listened...and listened.