#escapology 101

[howtohero]

#237 Escapology 101

Superheroes often find themselves in situations they’d much rather not be in: Hanging upside down over a vat of acid and radioactive sharks; being hounded by adoring fans (this one isn’t relevant to you, but it is for other, better heroes); listening to a lecture on the Paleozoic era from Professor Paleontologist. Situations that you’re going to want to make hasty yet graceful exits from. Which means you need a lesson in escapology.

As we all know, the best defense is a strong offense, so the best way to escape any situation is not to get caught in it in the first place. Idiot. Do you know how much of my time I spend not dangling over a vat of acid sharks or dealing with adoring- wait. Whatever, it’s almost all of my time. Not getting stuck in dicey situations is so easy I basically do it in my sleep. In fact, I do it in my sleep! I wake up almost every morning not in a precarious or dangerous or undesirable situation. Only once did I wake up tied up in the back of what has come to be known as The Sentient Murder Van, but that was a fluke and I try not to make a regular habit of it!

If, like a loser, somehow, like a loser, you’ve, like a loser, gotten yourself into a sticky situation the first thing you need to do is take stock of your surroundings. An expert escapologist knows that the world is just a jumble of oddly shaped keys. Glass table shaped like a warthog? That’s a key. An entire ham? That’s a key. Framed oil painting of an elderly turtle? That’s two keys. Frame and painting baby! Frame. And. Painting. (Escapologist tip: A skilled artist can take a canvas and, using the paints they no doubt keep in their utility belt, can create an image so realistic they can use it to get out of anywhere. Paint yourself still in bonds so the bad guys don’t look for you while you escape their lair. Paint yourself getting sick so the guards rush in to make sure you don’t die and then, when they realize they are looking at a painting, kick them in the head and steal their keys. The possibilities are endless!) So take a gander at the keys around you. If you’re a real pro you’ll already have plenty of escapology accoutrements in your utility belt or on your person: Lock picks, laser pointers (that shoot real lasers, don’t use these during your PowerPoint presentations!), a variety of animal whistles that can summon helpful beasts to pick locks or shoot lasers for you. If you’re versatile and forward thinking enough, you’ll find that you can pick your way out of any jam. (There’s a sweet spot between forward thinking enough to not get captured in the first place and being so bad at forward thinking that you left your lock pick set on your kitchen counter and that’s where you’re going to want to be operating.) 

Your costume will often times be the greatest key in your arsenal. There are lots of ways to build a keen ability to escape anything right into your everyday dress. For starters, as our follower @agasar1412 pointed out on one of our posts last year, gauntlet spikes are a godsend. Not only can they be used to cut bindings that have been placed around your wrist, but in a pinch they can be used to pick some locks as well. Once your wrists are free you’ll find that freeing the rest of you is a piece of cake (escapologist tip: three out of every five cakes contains within it a nail file that you can use to break out of most prisons on the continental United States). Another way to ensure that your wrists are always one fancy trick away from being free is to wear very bulky gauntlets. Supervillains, because they are dumb, will often just slap any wrist restraints on to a hero over their gauntlets, meaning all you need to do to break free is to just, y’know, remove your big gloves. That’s it! Plus there’s always the time-tested trick of wearing butter-bracelets. These are, of course, bracelets with buttered up insides that make your wrists very slippery, allowing you to slip off nearly any kind of cuff bad guys can throw at you. Then, with your hands free, you can undo or dismantle any other restraints on you. 

If you find yourself tied up and hanging from your feet over something nasty like many jagged rocks or a mosasaurus or a big target that says “losers land here” written on it and you would like to exit that situation before you are dropped no problem! All you need to do is cut any ropes around your arms using your gauntlet blades or wrist mounted laser pointer and then, using those sick stomach muscles you’ve built up from doing millions of crunches and sit-ups every day, swing yourself, like a pendulum away from the danger zone. Then, once you’re swinging precariously through the air, use your laser pointer or blades to cut the ropes around your feet and whatever is keeping you suspended. Odds are pretty good that you’ll land somewhere safe, just tuck and roll to make sure you don’t hurt yourself on the fall. (Escapologist tip: Always keep the remnants of whatever binding or traps you find yourself destroying during your daring escapes, these things can be used as keys for future escapes!)  

Even your very own human flesh body can be used as a key! (Escapologist tip: tattoo a map of any building you need to escape directly onto your body! This way, if you get lost while you escape, all you need to do is get undressed and find a mirror!) Being able to pop your shoulders out of their sockets or otherwise lightly maim or disfigure yourself are invaluable skills to have if you want to be a master escape artist. Most villains assume that heroes are not going to horribly injure themselves just to get out of listening to a monologue. Those villains are obviously very stupid. Of course you’d rather break your thumbs to avoid having to listen to another story about why this villain just has to merge all of the world’s mountain lions together into one giant mountain lion because as a child they were bullied by a girl who had a mountain lion sticker on her shirt. You’ve heard that story like a dozen times already from eight different supervillains. Yeah, this little girl got around folks. Being bullied by this small child is the 59th most common reason for becoming a supervillain. (Number 15 is being thrown a surprise party they didn’t want but number 68 will really blow you away!) So start practicing dislocating any joint you can. Even if it won’t get you out of your shackles or cell, this trick can get you out of parties or social gatherings that you do not want to be at! (Escapologist tip: Even your teeth can be used as keys under the proper circumstances! Teeth are the hardest part of the human body, so next time you find yourself trapped in an abandoned nuclear power plant filled with evil henchmen and without any of your weapons, rip your teeth straight out of your gums, tie them around your knuckles with your shoe laces and viola! Homemade brass knuckles! Sort of! {don’t worry about not having teeth, they’ll grow back as long as you’re a baby.})

Superpowers are, of course, the best keys you can ask for. Depending on your powerset, and your skill level, you can use them to escape from any number of restraints, manacles and door- and windowless rooms. So if you ever find yourself trapped with other superhumans, you all need to be upfront about all of your abilities. Even your most embarrassing superpower can be crucial to escaping captivity. Use your glitter projection to blind guards, your ability to grow exactly one inch taller or shorter to escape from straight jackets or other tight restraints, your ability to talk to worms to set off motion sensors to distract your guards. (Escapologist tip: worms are always a useful backup plan for any escape. You see, they eat dirt, which means they’re always in the middle of some sort of daring Shawshank-esque prison-break. Keep a few in your pocket and drop them on the floor when you find yourself thrown in a cell. If you can’t find a way out, you can take solace in the fact that eventually your wormy pals will dig you a way out.) The possibilities are endless when you learn to think like an escapologist. 

Life is just full of situations we’d rather not be in and that goes even more so for superheroes who have plenty of people who would love nothing more than to capture them. Just remember that the world is your toolkit and your lock pick and you’ll be fine! In fact, as a good prep exercise, take a look at everything around you. How can you use the items you use in your every day life to escape fiendish traps? 

[jupitermelichios]

Smaville S1 E20

This is the kind of episode that should kill a writers career stone dead, and yet never seems to.

Sidenote: at this point I would legit purchase and wear a Team Whitney shirt even knowing it’s a decade and a half too late to influence the writers. He deserved so much better

- They must be using up all their leftover budget from the season, because that was a legit helicopter shot

- Whitney is seriously the best boyfriend

- Lana: *sees gas main about to catch fire.* *Doesn’t feel the need to run.* You had better not complain about being injured bitch, because this is your own fucking fault

- Oh hey, is someone going to kill Chloe?! It seems unlikely, but I live in hope.

- Jonathan Kent, purveyor of casual misogyny to the masses

- Lex is thirsty for that stern fatherly approval. It’s a shame he’s too old to be adopted by Bruce Wayne

- The fact that Lana is dating the nicest boy in the school honestly doesn’t seem to occur to anyone as a reason why Clark should stop hitting on Lana

- When Lana says she had a vivid dream about Chloe, you can just see the porn playing in Clark’s head...

- The show doesn’t even bother to actually show us Chloe being kidnapped, it just assumes we’ll believe Lana’s dream sequence...

- I wish I didn’t know you were an asshole Pete, I’d be pleased for you having a hot date if I didn’t hate you

- Never tie someone up without safety sheers, that’s bondage 101!

- Apparently escapology is one of Chloe’s hobbies, good job girl. I mean, it was totally ineffectual, but you got that duct-tape off impressively quickly

- FFS Lana, what the hell did you think would happen if you told the police you had a psychic vision of your friend being kidnapped?!

- Seriously Lex? The National Enquirer says there are aliens in Smallville and you don’t dismiss it out of hand? The fact that they’re right doesn’t make it any less unbelievable

- Clark has supersenses and superspeed, but searching for his kidnapped friend apparently hasn’t occurred to him.

- It’s nice that we’re getting so much backstory for Chloe’s kidnapper... Lol. Literally all we know about the dude is that he exists. At this point it’s almost being framed like Chloe is faking it.

- Okay, where the fuck did the kidnapper get a coffin with a crucifix shaped window in the top?! WHO MAKES COFFINS WITH WINDOWS?!

- “I saw Chloe being buried alive. There was a windmill. I don’t know where it was.” It has been a whole 5 episodes since you told Clark that climbing that thing was your greatest ambition, and you’ve already forgotten where it is. I know your personality consists entirely of blandness and plot convenience but that is some high-level bullshit. Do you just want Chloe to die? Because that’s a motivation I could get behind.

- “I’m going to write an exclusive about my traumatic kidnapping and near death for the school paper” I know the Principle is dead, but there’s no fucking way you’re going to get away with putting that in a school paper. And nor should you.

- Lex I love you, but maybe don’t dig up people’s fields without permission?

- You deserve to lose everything Jonathan, you really do

- “We don’t know if the meteors are dangerous” WHY DO GIEGER COUNTERS NOT EXISTS IN THIS UNIVERSE?!

- “If they find anything, they’ll trace it straight back to you Clark” How? Unless Clark starts giving voluntary blood samples, fucking how?!

- TELL. LEX. THE. TRUTH. YOU. MORON!

- Oh good, Clark taking over running the Torch apparently means he also takes over the insane dream logic duties!

- “Groups of people huddling together during the London Blitz would often find themselves psychically linked.” Oh yeah, that well-known phenomenon, I remember learning all about this in history lessons. It’s actually super common in the UK. We’re all low level psychic.

- “Who would suspect a Cop?” It’s 2017. All sane people.

- “I could have been a great cop, the best cop this town has ever seen” It’s got 3000 inhabitants max. You are already one of the top three police officers BECAUSE IT ONLY HAS THREE POLICE OFFICERS! Why does he think serial kidnappings and murders of middle class white teenage girls would get left to the local beat cops? What the fuck does he think the FBI are even for?

- I want to see a redo of this episode where Lana gets psychically linked to a random nice dude and gets to watch him make oatmeal, pee and watch bad tv while Chloe quietly dies off-screen

- “It’s an alloy that doesn’t exist on earth” Then how do you know it’s an alloy dumbass? Also call NASA. Why does no one in this show ever call NASA? I hate you all and so does science.

- Oh shit, is Jonathan killing people? Who the hell else would have a reason to kill the dude who saw Clark’s spaceship? I always knew he’d crack in the end!