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This Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2012, Travis Pastrana and the rest of the Nitro Circus crew will be bringing their adrenaline-filled antics to the big screen in "Nitro Circus: The Movie 3D."
The Nitro Circus team has been blowing minds with their stunts on DVD, their MTV series and a live tour that allowed fans to witness the insane action -- like that pictured here -- in person. The Nitro Circus crew is constantly raising the bar for adrenaline junkies all around the world.
They aren't the only ones to partake in reckless danger, however. Other adventurers and daredevils around the world have pushed the limits of the human body in some totally maniacal ways. Come with us on a spectacular journey through the seven continents as we spotlight 10 insane stunts that you won't believe happened.
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Gary Connery, United Kingdom, 2012
Parachutes: who needs them? They're so ungainly. That's why we have to give props to Gary Connery, who currently holds the world record for the longest free-fall in a wingsuit. Connery, a 42-year-old stuntman and veteran of several James Bond films, jumped out of a helicopter 2,400 feet in the air (almost twice the height of the Empire State Building) with nothing but a high-tech wingsuit to brake his fall.
Connery needed to flare the suit when he was less than 200 feet from the ground to adequately manage his fall, a feat of incredible timing that few could pull off. His fall had him reaching speeds of 80 mph as he plummeted towards the ground. -
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Yves Rossy, Switzerland, 2010
From the first time we saw a bird gliding freely through the air, man has yearned to fly. Most of us settle for doing it inside airplanes, but Swiss inventor and jet pilot Yves Rossy wanted to get a little closer. Rossy is the first human being to fly solo with a jet-powered wing attached to his back. He's taken the carbon-fiber wing on several successful flights, but one of his most impressive came in his native Switzerland.
Jumping from a hot-air balloon at 7,900 feet, he flew for an astounding 18 minutes, and performed a pair of loop-the-loops before coming down for a safe landing. -
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Alain Robert, Taiwan, 2004
The thing that unites many of these daredevils is that they'll get their thrills whether the law wants them to or not. French climber Alain Robert is so obsessed with scaling skyscrapers that he's happy to be arrested and pay the penalty after most of his illegal stunts. In 2004, he was actually authorized to climb the terrifying sloping face of Taipei 101, at that point the newly-opened tallest building in the world. Robert's 1,667-foot climb was accomplished with no special tools, just the insane strength in his arms and legs. -
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Hezi Din, Israel, 2010
This next stunt is chilling. Literally. Surviving extreme cold can be incredibly taxing on the human body, as it's easy to lose appendages to frostbite. So when Israeli magician Hezi Din announced that he was going to attempt to break David Blaine's record for being entombed in sub-zero ice, people were pretty worried.
The eight-ton ice prison was built in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square in December, and clad in just jeans and a T-shirt, Din survived 64 hours in the ice block without pause. At the stroke of midnight, assistants cut him out and rushed him to the hospital to recover. -
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Keith Malcolm, United Kingdom, 2009
Of all the stunt records that we've wanted to try to beat, "running the longest distance while being on fire" is pretty low on the list. And yet, there are several people competing for it. The current record holder is a British stuntman named Keith Malcolm, who in 2009 managed 259 feet in a straight sprint before being doused.
It's not about how long you can stand having 1,000 degree flames raging all over your body (which for Malcolm was about seventeen seconds), it's about how much distance you can cover. Malcolm was wearing layers of protective material but still barely survived the blazing charge. -
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Falko Traber, Germany, 2002
There are a number of very impressive German stunt performers, but none brought the kind of dedication to their craft that Falko Traber did. The high-wire master has set a number of world records in his time, but his most impressive feat came in 2002, when Traber climbed up a high wire and proceeded to spend 13 days and nights up there.
Traber was allowed a five-minute break every hour, but had to sleep in a narrow bed that was attached to the wire and could have easily toppled to the ground. He was only about 30 feet in the air, but underneath him was a wildlife enclosure populated by hungry white tigers. That'll give you a reason to not fall. -
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David Smith, Italy, 2011
The art of the human cannonball is one that's not practiced much in this Internet age, but thankfully, David "The Bullet" Smith is still out there showing us how it's done. The son of a world-record holder for human cannonball distance, Smith broke his own father's record in Milan on March 10, 2011.
Smith climbed into a custom-made, eight-foot cannon loaded with a custom pneumatic mechanism, and was blasted at almost 75 mph for a distance of more than 193 feet, landing in a large net 20 feet off the ground. The stunt is incredibly dangerous, with dozens of fatalities on record from less-talented human cannonballs. -
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Darren Taylor, Norway, 2011
When you have a nickname like "Professor Splash," odds are that you earned it. For high diver Darren Taylor, he earned it for shallow water diving, plummeting tremendous distances into scarily small bodies of water. In the frosty fjords of Trondheim, Taylor perpetrated his most insane stunt yet, diving from a height of 36 feet into just 11.8 inches of water. 11.8 inches is about the length of your forearm if you're an adult male of average height. Even crazier, the pool that he dove into wasn't even allowed to be inflated, and yet the mad professor managed to make the dive and walk away without even a concussion. -
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Jackie Chan, Netherlands, 1997
You didn't think we'd let this list pass by without a mention of Jackie Chan, did you? The legendary Chinese actor came to fame by putting his body through some of the most insane stunts ever captured on film, and selecting just one to spotlight is a difficult task. For our money, the craziest came in his 1998 film, "Who Am I?" which was filmed all over the world. For one of the movie's climactic stunts, Jackie Chan needs to make an escape from the Willemswerf building, a sharply-angled piece of modernist rubbish.
How does he do it? By sliding down the building's outer facade, all 21 stories of it. It took Chan two weeks to work up the balls to do it, but of course he pulled it off perfectly, and it's absolutely terrifying to watch. -
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Joaquin Ortega, Spain, 2006
Many of these terrifying stunts require some special equipment to pull off, But for Joaquin Ortega's 2006 triumph, which landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records, all it took was a serious tolerance for pain. On Nov. 17, Ortega walked to the top of the 400-step staircase at the Hermitage of the Christ of Bielva in Cantabria and flung himself down, trying to beat the world record for most stairs fallen down in a purposeful fall. He didn't make it all the way to the bottom, but his bruised and battered body came to a stop 134 steps down, enough to earn him the record. And a trip to the hospital.