73 Of The Toughest People In History As Shared In This Online Thread

"Everyone's mentioning historical figures and people who made the news but I want to nominate my dad's cat who took buckshot to the chest, shattering his leg and leaving gaping wounds in his chest cavity who then played on literal survival mode for a fortnight before making it home, with an infected (gangrenous almost?) hole in his chest. The buckshot just barely missed his heart from the vet's inspection (he got anaesthetic whilst they cleaned up the infection and closed up the entry and exit wounds)

He lived a relatively long and very happy life afterwards with his pegleg and passed on from old age. RIP Puds."

"Maybe not the most, but definitely an honorable mention: Stanislav Petrov. The man who saved the world from an all-out nuclear war in 1983."

"Desmond Doss. An army medic in WWII who was constantly belittled and abused by his battalion and superiors for refusing to use a weapon as it went against his beliefs. Then, when he landed in Okinawa and more than half of his battalion were shredded by Japanese machine gun fire, Desmond Doss crawled through the dirt over the course of several days to as many of his injured allies as he could and dragged them all the way back to the 40ft cliff they had scaled up from, then lowered them to safety. Some of these injured men were lying 15ft from the enemy machine gun itself, and all the while Doss wore his medic helmet, which stood out like a giant bullseye on a battlefield where the Japanese soldiers were ordered to kill doctors first to crush morale. In the end he had saved the lives of 75 men, and survived with an arm fracture from a sniper round and several pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body from when he tried to kick a grenade away from him and his men."

"Definitely Major Hugh Thompson. I'm sure there are people who have done similarly brave things, but not that I know about. In 1968, Thompson managed to stop the My Lai massacre almost single handedly. He arrived after many civilians had already been killed, and couldn't understand how they had died.

After realising his fellow American soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians, he landed his helicopter between the Vietnamese and the soldiers. He then told the troops that if they continued to do what they were doing, he and his crew would open fire on them. After getting back to base, he filed a complaint about what he had witnessed. His complaint was covered up, and he was shunned as a traitor. It wasn't until 1998 that the army acknowledged he did the right thing.

It's common to be brave in war when you know that you'll be lauded as a hero - it's another thing entirely to do it knowing you'll be seen as a traitor. He turned against his troops and country to protect innocent lives, despite what it would cost him, and I think that's about as brave as you can get."

"Mr. Rogers.
Created a television show for children that lasted decades and was copied the world round affecting a billion children. Made the puppets, wrote the songs, wrote the script, ad libbed.

Went up against a senator known for being critical of anything and everything and single-handedly saved PBS.

Was awarded a national medal for his show.

Was the subject of several viral YouTube videos

Was the subject of major motion picture starring a major star

Is still beloved by millions and millions of people decades after his death. Still has a foundation in his name."

"The firemen running up the stairs of the WTC after the attack.

Not a single person, but I think they collectively need to be mentioned. The level of badassery that day was immense."

"Ba Van Nguyen.
Basically, the US pulled out of Vietnam, leaving this guy and his family to be slaughtered by the Vietcong. So my dude steals a Chinook helicopter, flies it to his house to pick up his wife and kids, invites his neighbors to come along, then flies out to sea to find a ship that will allow him to land. On fumes, he finds a US navy ship, but it's not nearly big enough to land. Over the radio he asks for help and the ship allows him to approach. With precision piloting skills he hovers over the deck of the ship. He then orders the adult to yeet the kids out of the helicopter into the arms of the sailors below. I think there was even a baby. He then orders all the adults to jump. He then files the helicopter out of harms way of the ship. He was wearing a flight suit, which would drag him under water. So he somehow manages to remove the suite while still flying the helicopter. It's my understanding that you need both feet to control a Chinook, so I have no idea how he managed that. Anyway, he crashes the helicopter into the ocean, somehow without dying, and gets rescued onto the ship. Somehow he gets US citizenship for him and his family, and just becomes this humble dude, like somehow none of that was a big deal."

"Raoul Wallenberg.

During WW2 he posed as a Swedish ambassador and confidently lied through his teeth at Nazis for years to save tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.

There were instances of him flagging down trains bound for death camps, and yelling at the machine-gun-toting SS men that Swedish citizens were on board, handing out homemade fake passport documents to as many Jews as possible as he went. He got away with it for so long because Fascists have a thing for confident authority figures.

The guy was captured by the red army in ‘45 and likely died in a Gulag."

"Mary Vincent! She was attacked with an axe in an attempted murder, losing both hands and then dumped off a cliff. She survived and walked almost three miles to go find help. All when she was FIFTEEN.

She’s in an episode of “I Survived” and her story is… unbelievable. She is such a BAMF."

Commenter No.1 wrote:
"Helge Meyer, also known as "God's Rambo". A danish special forces officer who bought a 1972 Camaro and turned it into an uparmored beast so he could deliver humanitarian aid in war torn Yugoslavia during the civil war and ethnic cleansing."

cfmdobbie replied:
"Well, you can't mention Helge Meyer without giving some details about the car...

1979 Chevrolet Camaro, metal-reinforced windows, Kevlar panelling, mine-clearing under-structure, stealth paint, infra-red headlights, run-flat tyres, mil-spec GPS and a nitrous system. It was hard to detect, hard to chase and it shrugged off bullets. Oh, and it had a little yellow rubber duck wedged in the front grill."

"Harriet Tubman. She was barely 5 feet tall, experienced "spells" because of a traumatic brain injury, repeatedly snuck into the south to free slaves, was a spy and lead an armed assault during the Civil War."

"Marie Curie. First woman to win a Nobel prize and first person to win TWO Nobel prizes (chemistry and physics), coined the term “radioactivity,” discovered 2 elements (radium and polonium) and ended up dying for her work (from radiation poisoning). Her belongings will still be radioactive for another 1500 years!! Dead set legend."

"Witold Pilecki volunteered to Auschwitz death camp and escaped it to report what was happening there to allies of Poland."

"Boudica.

A Celtic queen who lost her kingdom when her husband died and his will was ignored by the Romans. She was flogged and put into slavery, her daughters raped, so she raised an army that very nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. She brutally took down almost 80,000 people, either Roman or people who'd succumbed to their rule. You can still see the ruins of Verulamium next to the city of St Albans, and the layer of ash from when the city was burnt to the ground was visible to archeologists excavating the site.

One of the stories of her death was that when the revolt failed, she drank poison to die free."

"Jonas Salk, created a vaccine that saved a billion people world wide and gave it away for free."

"Martin Luther King Jr. - Won a war against a massive, armed, hyper-violent, state supported enemy army, with no weapons, only an group of well trained, and disciplined, non-violent activist."

"That teenage girl that was the sole survivor of a plane crash and made her way through the Amazon... She’s definitely up there!"

"Maurice Hillman. Who? The guy invented more vaccines that anyone, saving billions of people from death and disease."

"Ching Shih. A Chinese prostitute who became a pirate queen and the most successful pirate in history. She led over 800 ships and was never defeated. She issued a ruling that none of her pirates could rape and was from all accounts a great leader and genius businesswoman. Realizing her luck was not going to last forever, she negotiated a surrender with the Chinese government where she and her pirates would take retirement, remaining rich and free.

I heard a This American Life about her, and it blew my mind. She is my idol. I think it's a combo of racism and sexism that we hear about pirates like Bluebeard but we never hear of the far more amazing Ching Shih."

ParsifalJones wrote:
"Audie Murphy was pretty damned badass."

MisterGoo replied:
"LOL, when I read the first lines of his Wikipedia "at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.", I thought "wow, dude must have anger issues..."

Then later in Wikipedia : "As a child, Murphy was a loner with mood swings and an explosive temper.' Ah ah! Called it!"