Toughest guy irl...

[CavLancer]

Roy Benavidez for the win. This guy deserved the metal of honor which he received, a real life superhero. Who you got from your country who is a superhero?

There are 5 tough people here, Roy is #1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esgs5XqLW2Q

I'm a sexist dog, it should say 'person' in the title, not guy.

 

[warpus]

My dad, he came up with a plan to escape from Soviet occupied communist Poland through the Iron Curtain, to the west, and to bring his entire family, all 5 of us, with him. The plan took many years to put into place, and me and my sisters didn't even know about it (and nobody else except my parents did either) until we were on the other side of the cold war, in West Germany. Safely.

So there's probably people who are technically more of a badass than that, but I'm going with "my dad", even though technically my mom deserves half of the credit herself. She's not male though, so for the purposes of the thread I'm going with "Dad". Unless "guys" includes both genders, in which case I'm going with "my parents".

Which seems like a stupid answer, but I'm giving it anyway.

 

[sophie]

This dude: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h1js95/drunk-history-daniel-inouye-s-heroic-moment

 

[CavLancer]

Great answer warpus, and amazing people and story.

Funny Owen, and America was certainly not just to Japanese Americans but being treated badly doesn't make one a hero imo.

 

[BvBPL]

This guy might be the toughest guy in comedy.


Link to video.

But, personally, I vote for this guy.


Link to video.

 

[CavLancer]

Gutsy!

 

[BvBPL]

Blue is really impressive when he isn't on network TV and can work, well, blue.

 

[Hygro]

Funny Owen, and America was certainly not just to Japanese Americans but being treated badly doesn't make one a hero imo.

The video was about this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye

As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach. Ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and his Thompson submachine gun. When informed of the severity of his wound, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.[11]


Inouye as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army
As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, coming within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade, a German soldier inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade, which struck his right elbow, nearly severing most of his arm and leaving his primed grenade reflexively "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore".[12] Inouye's horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the enemy soldier aimed his rifle at him, Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. He awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. His only comment before being carried away was to order them back to their positions, saying "nobody called off the war!"[13]

The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him.[14]

If he's not enough a Tough Guy for you CavLancer, I don't even know.

I was gonna bold parts of the text above but the whole thing is amazing.

 

[Phrossack]

Wait--he was shot through the gut with a rifle and nearly lost his arm in the same engagement?

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

My dad, he came up with a plan to escape from Soviet occupied communist Poland through the Iron Curtain

When you are bad and can't integrate, you invent problems to project and blame the society, the system, or whatever else external and bigger than you. It is easier than becoming better yourself. Then you use it as an excuse to run away to a place where you work less, care less and get more (in a theory at least). Typical.

And if you are really tough and if there are real problems around you, you make an effort to solve those problems, to influence and build the society, system or whatever, or at least you mearly build up your own life and family in your place of birth as millions other people which lack of the exclusiveness complex do.

 

[warpus]

That's nice.

Spoiler :

 

[red_elk]

Who you got from your country who is a superhero?

Off the top of my head:
1. Leonid Rogozov, a surgeon who performed appendectomy on himself while being in service on Novolazarevskaya research station in Antarctic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov

2. Boris Kapustin and Yuri Yanov, pilots of Yak-28 plane.

It was in a Yak-28 that Captain Boris Kapustin and Lieutenant Yuri Yanov performed an heroic act on 6 April 1966; when one of the engines on their aircraft stopped, they managed to divert their aircraft from a housing estate in West Berlin into Lake Stößensee. Both heroes were posthumously awarded the medal of the Red Banner. Their bodies, along with the wreckage, were raised from the lake by British troops, while British 'Brixmis' agents covertly retrieved important top secret material from the plane[2] including the engines, (which were flown back to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, England,) and the radar system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-28#Operational_history

Germans made a memorial table honoring them:

 

[CavLancer]

The video was about this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye



If he's not enough a Tough Guy for you CavLancer, I don't even know.

I was gonna bold parts of the text above but the whole thing is amazing.

Definitely an irl superhero, and thank you Hygro for enlightening me. :b:

Aleksey_aka_al, even with not considering the personal judgements you made about people you likely don't know...fixing the Soviet Union?

Excellent choices red_elk! :b:

 

[bhavv]

Erm, chuck Norris?

 

[BvBPL]

Dieter Dengler was a serious tough guy. As a child in German he saw American war plans strafing his town and thought "I want to fly those." So he emigrated to the US and became a pilot in the Navy during the Vietnam War. During a soiree he was shot down and subsequently captured by the Laotians. After transfer back to a Vietnamese POW camp he, and seven others, escaped from the camp.

 

[CavLancer]

Erm, chuck Norris?

Irl meaning 'In real life' as in not in the movies or mind numbing pop culture. Does Norris still apply? If so I'd like to hear the story.

For instance dunno if its true but I've read that Stalone of Rambo fame layed low during Vietnam by staying in Switzerland where he taught girls volleyball. If that's the case in hindsight he might have made some good decisions there but definitely would not belong on this list.


BvBPL, in escaping the camp did he also escape the country?

 

[BvBPL]

Dengler, along w/ another POW, eventually made it back to American troops and escaped alive and well (or as well as someone who endured the horrific tortures the Laotians and Vietnamese inflicted upon him). Dengler was the first US airman to escape from a Vietnam POW camp and make it back to his troops.

Personally, I would classify real-life Chuck Norris as a tough guy. He, at least at his prime, did not seem to be the kind of guy you wanted to bump into a dark alley at night (and I should know, I am not the kind of guy most people want to bump into in a dark alley at night).

Maybe not the toughest guy. Certainly not the toughest guy. But a tough guy.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I knew a guy who worked off his debt to a drug dealer at Terra Haute Federal Prison by doing collections. Whenever I needed a shoulder to cry on I went to him since I knew he was never gonna buy any "tough guy" act I might construct anyway so there was nothing to lose.

 

[CavLancer]

Did you watch the vid in the OP and get to #1? That guy, Roy Benavidez, might not have the cut abs so beloved by fans of action movies but just imagine what he achieved. When done the only way he could still express the fact he wasn't dead was to spit and by so doing avoided getting zipped up in a body bag. Once you watch that tell me Norris deserves mention in the same thread and why and maybe I'll go for it. Not wanting to run into him in a dark alley isn't going to get it done however.

 

[BvBPL]

Let's get some distaff action here.

In 1987, Lynne Cox, then 30, swam across the Bering Strait in two hours and five minutes. The water was three degrees. Cox had spent twelve years and a significant amount of money to arrange the crossing. She did it in the cause of peace and friendship between the US and the USSR at a time when the relationship between the two was very much in flux. And it worked. Cox was cheered on by both American and Russian observers and was given a military escort by the Soviets during her crossing. When Gorbachev came to Washington later that year to sign an arms treaty, he and Regan raised their glasses in toast to Cox. (Of course Russians will use damn near any excuse for a toast.)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg battled sexism in her profession for years before becoming a Supreme Court Justice. She was one of nine women in her class of five hundred at Harvard Law. She was the first woman to be an editor on two major law reviews. She applied for a clerkship w/ J. Frankfurter, but he turned her down because of her sex. She went on to found the first law journal focused on women's issues and the ACLU's women's legal department. She argued many cased before the Supreme Court as a litigator, including some very important cases that helped the law move towards parity between men's and women's rights. During her confirmation hearings, she stood up to the Senate by refusing to answer questions regarding a variety of legal issues thus establishing a new standard for how Supreme Court justices are vetted by the legislature. You know she's tough as nails because no wimp could pull off that lacy collar thing she wears.