6 Normal People Who Became Crazy Badasses When Facing Danger

Facts

Ted Powers/APAnd fantastic tie-buyer.

Crum was working in his store when he saw a bloodied 17-year-old being dragged to cover. Thinking that there'd been a fight and that there were hoodlums to disperse, he stepped outside ... and heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire alongside a shitload of screaming. Crum promptly made his way to the base of the clock tower and got himself a rifle by just asking a trooper for one. Since he was on a roll, he also asked to be deputized as he and a small posse of officers ascended towards the madman's lair. They complied. And that's how he became the substitute teacher-equivalent of the police assault squad.

The group finished climbing the tower and stormed the observation desk, where a police shotgun soon put paid to Whitman. The danger wasn't over yet, however. The police then came under fire from the gun-toting members of the crowd below who wanted to help out any way they could, even if it meant accidentally landing a shot inches from an officer's head (which really happened). It was Crum who stopped the onslaught by dangling himself over the side of the deck and waving a handkerchief. Ned Beatty would later portray him in the inevitable movie, which is the best thing any of us can ever hope to get out of life.

MGM TelevisionSo Christopher Reeve wasn't the most badass hero in Superman.

Insanely Brave Guy Sacrifices Himself By Driving A Burning Train Of TNT

Jesus Garcia was only 23 -- by Millennial reckoning, that's somewhere between college and that room mom and stepdad can't wait to turn into an Airbnb -- when his heroic moment arrived. It was 1907, a time of trains, dynamite, and sepia. (Think Mad Max: Fury Road in early 20th Century Mexico.) He worked in a world in which things could (and did) blow up with enough regularity to cement that aspect of life into western movies forever.

Wiki CommonsHe looks more rugged at 23 than Charles Bronson at 73.

Garcia was a brakeman at a train yard in the center of the town of Nacozari, an old-timey metropolis with a population of 5,000. While on break on November 7, 1907, Garcia noticed the absolute last thing a man driving a train full of 70 crates of dynamite needs: burning hay. Several of the cars were carrying the stuff, and sparks from the chimney stack had blown into them and set them a-blazin'. And that's just half of the equation. The train was surrounded by gas tanks, dynamite stores, and other desert train yard accoutrements in the center of Sonora's heritage hotspot.

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