What Scares Americans: Going Broke, Terrorism and Sometimes Zombies

A new survey discovered Americans' biggest fears.

— -- Is the thought of going broke keeping you up at night? Or maybe it's a fear of robots taking over your job? Or a zombie apocalypse?

If you have any of these fears, you can at least take comfort in the fact that you are far from being alone -- thanks to a new survey.

The kinds of fears were broken down into different domains, including crime, personal anxieties, daily life and natural disasters. A sample of 1,541 American adults were surveyed about various fears ranging from a fear of judgment over their appearance to a fear of nuclear attacks.

Conspicuously missing from the top ten fears was the most inevitable of life's realities -- death. Instead, more people fear reptiles (33 percent) and public speaking (28.4 percent) than the percentage of people who fear dying (21.9 percent).

The survey also revealed that some Americans fear the supernatural, with 9.7 percent of people have a strong fear of ghosts and 8.5 percent dreading zombies.

Robots are also unnerving for many and made multiple appearances on the list, with people fearing a workforce being replaced by robots (28.9 percent), artificial intelligence (22.2), and simply robots themselves (23.9 percent).

Among the least reported fears was fears of being judged by others on age (5.9 percent), gender (4.5 percent) and how you dress (4.2 percent).

Also, 6.8 percent of people reported a deep fear of clowns. So, if you're planning on scaring people this Halloween, the zombie outfit trumps clowns -- and the Nixon outfit trumps them all.