6 Normal People Who Became Crazy Badasses When Facing Danger

Facts

Cub Scout Mom Tells Terrorists How Much They Suck (To Their Faces)

On May 22, 2013, in the Woolwich district of London, 48-year-old Ingrid Loyau-Kennett was riding the bus when she saw a man lying in the street. She jumped off to assist him and found that he had no pulse -- and no head. Then she realized she was standing next to a pair of men with a revolver, a hand axe, and huge, bloody knives. At which point Loyau-Kennett did not avert her eyes and jaywalk the fuck outta there like so many of us would've.

Nope, as a leader of boys' survival and leadership groups, she was a veteran of dealing with the rude and irrational. Two armed men standing over a corpse? Positively tickety-boo. And so, drawing from a reservoir of bravery so deep we can barely fathom its fathoms, Loyau-Kennett decided to investigate these two exceedingly armed men and see what they had to say for themselves.

iTV News"Trust me, there are no merit badges to be gained here."

The first man told her to get away from the body so they could hack at it some more, but she just asked him what his goal there was. "We want to start a war in London tonight," was the answer. The killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were homegrown Islamist radicals angry about Western military action in Afghanistan. While bystanders began to clump together more and more, Loyau-Kennett flat-out told the terrorists, "Right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose, what would you like to do?" The killer again said he wanted to stay and fight. All righty then. No sale. So, she turned to the second man and calmly asked, "What about you? Would you like to give me what you have in your hands?"

BBC NewsThat was a knife, for the record.

In a movie, this would be the villain's chance to say, "Sure!" and stab/shoot/bash the brave heroine with his weapon. In real life, he was too shy to do much more than continue to be cowed by Loyau-Kennett's can-do, no-nonsense courage. She kept both men at bay for endless minutes. (That is, until police finally turned up and gave them what they wanted: some brand new bullet-shaped holes.)

A Totally Random Volunteer Takes Down Clock Tower Sniper

In 1966, Charles Whitman (an ex-sharpshooter with the USMC) gave everyone a new metaphor for being slightly disgruntled with your colleagues by climbing the clock tower in the center of the University of Texas campus and opening fire on the people below. By the end of his rampage, 17 people were dead and another 30 were injured -- a total that could've easily been a lot higher if the police hadn't managed to storm his impenetrable sniper's nest and take him out.

And by "the police," we mean "the police and some random dude that they ran into on the street": Allen Crum, full-time bookseller and extra-full-time badass.