6 Dangerous Situations People Escaped In The Craziest Way Possible

6 Woman Pretended To Have COVID-19 To Fend Off A Rapist

Even in movies, it's rare to see a sex-criminal stupid enough to break into a woman's home during a pandemic quarantine. Alas, real sex-criminals are much dumber. In Hubei, China, the source and then the epicenter of COVID-19, Yi was trying to avoid catching corona by staying home and catching some Zs. She woke up to find an asshole named Xiao on her bed, creep-staring like the kid from The Grudge.

Xiao cupped Yi's mouth and nose to muffle any screams for help. As the Jingshan police's official statement, he then "attempted to commit an act of obscenity towards her." Since she was alone in her house and Xiao was also strangling her, Yi racked her still groggy brain and started coughing. She then told him that she had just returned from Wuhan and was under self-quarantine after experiencing symptoms of COVID-19. 

Xiao bought the woman's bluff and settled for the phone and 80RMB (about $11) in her bag. Xiao eventually came to the police with his father to turn himself in. We assume after thoroughly washing his hands first.

5 George Dimopolous Fought A Wildfire With Wine

Most Greeks living in the country's rural areas have their own wine recipes that have been passed down through generations. They choose to tell those overpriced fancy wines to go to hell and make swimming pool amounts of their own booze instead. During a raging wildfire in 2007, hundreds of liters of wine saved not only one of those people but also his house and a few of his neighbors' homes for good measure. 

When catastrophic wildfires hit Greece, they killed 63 people and burnt down over a thousand homes; everybody was logically fleeing for their lives. Well, almost everybody. George Dimopoulos, of the village of Makistos, decided to stay and defend his property like half-Smokey Bear/half-Kevin McCallister. But, he was facing a huge dilemma. A power outage disabled the village's water pumps, meaning he had no water access, which seems fairly essential in fighting a fire.

Fortunately, the years of traditional winemaking gave him 300 liters of available wine stock, and as the great man said, "What could I do? This was all I have."  Did he drink it to give him courage on his last stand pursuit? We have no idea. But, he did pour all of it into his fertilizer pump and stood his ground for 17 hours. Yes, wine can douse fires. While Dimopolous lost in future drunkenness, he gained in current not burning aliveness.

4 Six People Escaped An Elevator On 9/11 Using A Squeegee

9/11 no longer needs an introduction as it has etched itself into most of our brains. (There's always the possibility of some weirdo who has always missed it when channel and social surfing.) Like a tiny life preserver in the sea of horrible 9/11 stories, there's the story about a squeegee, the rubber hero that clears all stains, saving the lives of six men. 

When a plane struck WTC One, the elevator went haywire and plunged. Veteran window washer Jan Demczur and five other men hit the emergency brake and were left stranded around the 50th floor. The men managed to jimmy the door apart and prop it open with Demczur's squeegee pole, but their elevator wasn't supposed to stop on that floor, so they were still trapped by a layer of drywall.

One of the tiny perks of cleaning the tower's neverending windows for more than a decade was knowing your way around. Demczur knew that the wall was actually made of easy to cut plasterboard. Demczur removed the blade of his handy dandy squeegee and used it as a knife to slowly carve through the drywall. Like some heist movie (Ocean's 9/11?), breaking through didn't come smoothly. At one point, he slipped and dropped the blade down the elevator shaft. The men switched to scraping away with the squeegee's brass handle until they could kick the barrier down, escaping through the wall of a men's room. With the help of firefighters, they managed to get out of the building five minutes before it collapsed. Leaving Demczur to presumably write the squeegee the greatest product review in history as a sign of respect.

3 Lost Man Was About To Freeze To Death Until He Started Chopping Down Power Lines

When Mother Nature decides to crank up the A/C, it's probably the best to cocoon in a blanket, turn on the heater, and drink some hot cocoa. In 2010, a dude in Saskatchewan decided, "Screw that noise." According to him, he was out on his boat when White Walker season dropped. He was then stranded on an ice lake, in below-freezing weather, without any means of communication. By that time, he could only choose to end up like Jack Nicholson in The Shining or wreck shit and hope for someone to check it out.

He chopped down four nearby power poles, cutting the electricity in nearby communities. Since Saskatchewan winters are basically Mr. Freeze's frozen wet dream, people tend to notice when the heat goes out for more than a day. The power company sent a helicopter to see why their toilets had turned into mini ice-rinks. 

Under normal circumstances, a company would suck every penny with a lawsuit, leaving the man on the hook for around a hundred grand in damages. Fortunately, the power company was apparently still getting over their brain freeze -- the fact that he was literally dying helped -- and he got off with nothing more than the worst case of shrinkage possible.

2 Sleeping Inside A Horse Carcass To Survive The Cold

Leonardo DiCaprio has made a Boston cop likable, dominated Wall Street, and a shit ton of other roles. Still, it took climbing inside a real horse belly to finally get him that stupid gold statue of a bald man. Decades ago, Richard Dailey did the same thing, but he wasn't interested in a Hollywood hood ornament. He just wanted to live.

Back in 1983, Dailey was a 35-year old outdoor-loving fireman. Right before winter, he thought it was a great idea to camp in the mountains for a few days and hunt, which, thanks to that power pole guy, we know is a pretty bad idea. Things were fine during the first few days, but it all went downhill when they scored a big buck on the third day. Dailey's horse, She's A'Bligin, didn't do much obligin' as the horse's saddle broke due to the weight. Dailey and his friend didn't want to leave their prize, so they devised a plan to go to a friend's ranch, deliver the smaller deer they hunted, borrow a saddle, and return to fetch the grand prize. But, night caught up before they reached the truck, and they got lost. 

Instead of trying to further get lost, Dailey and his friend decided to stay the night and hope not to end up like Leo's role in Titanic. He had some fuel, tinder, and kindling, but the winds weren't allowing him to build a fire. Since nothing was working out, Dailey figured to channel everything into the cause of the problem -- She's A'Bligin. Dailey had his friend shoot their horses, then they gutted them out and turned them into comfy horse sleeping bags. What does it feel like sleeping inside a dead horse when hypothermia is starting to kick in? Dailey said, "You can't imagine how good it felt. It immediately warmed you up."

1 Joanne Barnaby Tricks A Wolf Into Fighting A Bear

When Joanne Barnaby and her dog went foraging for mushrooms, they found a wolf. With big bad blocking Barnaby's way to her truck, Barnaby's dog, Joey, took its chances against the wolf. But, the wolf is still higher on the Pokemon evolution chain and whooped the domesticated canine's ass. 

On the plus side, the wolf that stalked them for a painstaking 12 hours was old and skinny. On the negative side, the wolf wasn't dumb. It was making sure to lead Barnaby and her dog as far as it could from the highway. The wolf's tactic was working. After half a day of walking, Barnaby was very dehydrated, tired, and on the brink of a mental breakdown ... Then, she heard the growl of a mama bear. 

Logically, running away from the bear while screaming and flailing both hands up in the air was the default plan of action, but Barnaby had a better idea. She saw that the mama bear had a cub. She approached the cub and prayed to all divine beings for some miraculous happenstance. Just like a charm, Barnaby heard a big crash behind her. The wolf and the bear engaged in a fight. Who started it? Who cares? Barnaby took the opportunity to escape, eventually finding her way back to the highway and a search party looking for her.

Top image Scott E. Read/Shutterstock