Life is precious. But that doesn't stop humans from trying to throw it away in the pursuit of thrills. Something in our brain makes us crave the endorphin rush that comes from flirting with death -- or at least from watching somebody else do it. Since the dawn of time, daredevils have pushed the envelope of sanity with insane stunts, and in this feature we'll run down the most insane ever attempted. Notice that we didn't say "completed" there.
167 MPH Bicycle Ride![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, fred rompelberg 167 mph bicycle]()
Quick question: how fast can you move your feet? We'd bet cyclist Fred Rompelberg has you beat. Fred holds a world record for one of the most insane stunts we've ever heard about -- bicycling in the air pocket created by a speeding dragster at 167 mph. Average human bicycle speed is a little under 10 mph, just for reference. Rompelberg set up the
bizarre stunt at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, riding a specially modified bike with a lowered center of gravity. When the pace car took off, Rompelberg essentially "drifted" in its wake to make his wind resistance virtually zero, allowing him to get his ride to insane speeds. Oh, and he was also the oldest professional cyclist in the world when he did this, just to make you feel even more inadequate.
Wingsuiting Through A Human-Sized Hole![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, uli emanuele wingsuit stunt]()
Even though many of these stunts are dependent on the human body more than technology, you can't argue that it helps. The development of the wingsuit in the mid-'90s enabled stunt people to get closer to the skies than ever before, leading to some pretty insane feats. One of the coolest and craziest we've ever seen happened in 2014, when pilot and base jumper Uli Emanuele
leapt off the top of a Swiss mountain and threaded his body like a needle through a hole barely six feet wide. The amount of skill it took to prevent his body from being smashed to gory bits on the rock face is unbelievable, and the footage from a GoPro mounted on his head will give you a heart attack.
Jumping 15 Greyhound Buses On A Harley![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, bubba blackwell 15 greyhound buses jump]()
If you're a motorcycle jumper, there's one name that you revere more than all others -- Evel Knievel, the legendary '70s daredevil who made a career out of vaulting things on his Harley-Davidson. Knievel's record for jumping 13 and a half Greyhound buses was one that nobody thought would ever be broken -- that is, until Bubba Blackwell came to town. In 1999, Blackwell lined up 15 full-sized tour buses on the Las Vegas strip, climbed aboard his patriotic chopper and
took flight for what might be one of the most insane jumps ever performed on two wheels. With gouts of fire spraying in the background, Bubba managed to launch his Harley a record-breaking 157 feet over the buses, setting a new bar that future daredevils will be hard-pressed to reach.
Free Diving 831 Feet![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, herbert nitsch freedive]()
The ocean is a mysterious and dangerous place for us mere humans. Not only does it lack the free-flowing oxygen we need to breathe, the intense pressures that it brings in the lower depths can crush us like bloody eggshells. So when Austrian freediver Herbert Nitsch set out to
break the world record for submersing himself, he was taking an incredible risk. Free divers use a weighted sled to plummet as deep as they can and then release it and use an air-filled balloon to bring them up. In 2012, Nitsch tackled his most daring dive yet off the coast of Greece, plunging a staggering 818.6 feet deep. On the way back up, Nitsch began suffering intense nitrogen narcosis and blacked out, but his safety divers got him to the surface successfully. He was immediately airlifted to a decompression chamber to allow his battered system to recover.
World Trade Center Tightrope Walk![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, philippe petit world trade center tightrope]()
After the events of 9/11, no human being will ever be able to duplicate Philippe Petit's
insane tightrope walk between the World Trade Towers, but we doubt any would even want to. In 1974, the French tightrope artist embarked upon what may be the gutsiest, craziest stunt ever performed. He illegally accessed the roofs of the buildings with fake IDs to set up his gear, and on the morning of August 7, used a bow and arrow to shoot a line from one building to the other. A little after 7 a.m., with no fanfare, Petit stepped out on the wire a staggering 1,350 feet off the ground with no safety net. He crossed between the towers eight times, stopping to sit, lay down and dance on the wire. When it started to rain, he stopped and let the NYPD take him away.
Snake River Canyon Jump![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, evel knievel snake river canyon jump]()
Not all crazy stunts work out as planned. We touched a little on Evel Knievel earlier in this piece, but we wanted to tell you about the jump that would have been his crowning achievement -- if he had made it. In 1974, the daredevil announced that, with the aid of a custom-built, steam-powered rocketcycle, he would
vault over the mile-wide Snake River Canyon. Unfortunately for Knievel, when he made the attempt on September 8, his parachute deployed too early, causing his speed to rapidly decrease. The nosecone of the rocketcycle hit the far rim and it, and Knievel, fell to the canyon floor 500 feet below. Remarkably, he wasn't injured, but he never tried a stunt like that again.
Skydiving Without A Parachute![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, gary connery no parachute skydive]()
We know what you're thinking: Isn't that called falling to your death? In 2012, Gary Connery
shocked the world by being the first person to willingly jump from a helicopter and land uninjured without a parachute. How'd he do it? Well, he was wearing a wingsuit, which let him control his direction and momentum during the 2,400 foot fall. It also helped that a massive pile of over 18,000 cardboard boxes had been set up for him to land in. That said, Connery did reach a speed of over 75 miles an hour during his dive, which we don't think any number of cardboard boxes could really help with. Connery, a professional stuntman, had previously worked on the Harry Potter and Batman movies.
21-Story Building Slide![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, jackie chan building slide]()
If you're a world-famous actor, it's likely that you don't do your own stunts. Sure, you might show up for a fight scene or something, but when the script calls for you to, say,
slide down a 21-story glass building facade, you leave that to the experts. That is, unless you're Jackie Chan. For the filming of "Who Am I?" the Chinese acting legend tackled one of the most balls-out crazy things he's ever done. After his character drops an important floppy disk off the side of the building, he fearlessly leaps over the side and navigates the slanted surface all the way to the ground, with no safety harness. And Jackie isn't just sitting and sliding, either -- he's flipping, tumbling, and at one point even running down the face of the building like The Flash.
Steam Rocket Launch![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, mad mike hughes steam rocket launch]()
We've got a need for speed, and acceleration is a big goal for stuntmen and daredevils. "Mad" Mike Hughes wants to pick up where Evel Knievel left off, and his steam-powered rocket flights are already in the record books. In January 2014, Hughes (who used to fix vehicles for NASCAR)
blasted off inside his missile a record-setting 1,374 feet. The thing with rocket jumping as opposed to other stunt jumps is that there are no controls inside the thing. All you can do is pray that it keeps to the course and doesn't run into anything hard. After the success of that launch, Mad Mike has been trying to set up other stunts across notable bodies of water—he currently wants to vault the St. Lawrence River from New York to Canada.
Stratos Jump![craziest stunts ever attempted, crazy stunts, insane stunts, felix baumgartner stratos jump]()
Launching your body off of a high place is one of the most primitive of stunts, but skydiver Felix Baumgartner took it to a completely unprecedented level in 2012 when he
bailed out of a helium balloon 24 miles above the Earth's surface. With live streaming cameras monitoring his every move, the diver saluted before stepping off into the void. Clad in a pressure suit, Baumgartner was in free fall for a terrifying four minutes and 19 seconds before he pulled the ripcord on his parachute. During that fall, he reached a maximum velocity of 834 mph, and barely pulled himself out of an uncontrolled spin that, if left unchecked, could have killed him. His descent went incredibly smoothly, all things considered, and Baumgartner landed on his feet in New Mexico without any damage.
