5

A World War II Pilot Used Jell-O to Copy a Map

So it's World War II. You've been sent into a secret Axis meeting room to obtain top-secret maps of the enemy's troop movements. You can't steal the maps because that would raise suspicions and you can't write down the coordinates because you're retarded. Or you don't have a pencil. Whichever is easier for you to believe.

All you've got is a wooden tray and a pocket full of Jell-O you snuck out of the mess tent. You don't know why you stole a handful of Jell-O, and you especially don't know why you stored it in your pocket, but there's no turning back now. You can hear guards moving in and you've only got a few minutes to get what you came for. What should you do other than have the most pathetic last meal of all time?

4

Two Inmates Escape Prison With Dental Floss

Apparently, flossing is extremely dangerous. We at Cracked have held a rabid anti-floss position for years now and it looks like our cause will finally gain momentum. Admittedly, we only took this stance due to equal parts of laziness and cheapness, but it's nice to learn that we've been unconsciously avoiding accidentally flossing our faces off all this time.

3

Three Inmates Escape Alcatraz On A Raft Of Raincoats

2

A Professor Uses Shrinky Dinks To Make Scientific Breakthrough

So far, these devices have been used to get people out of jams and tight spots when a matter of seconds drew the line between life and certain death. This one doesn't involve death, per say, unless you replace a "matter of seconds that draws the line between life and death" With "losing a million dollar grant that draws the line between winning the Nobel Prize for engineering and teaching high school chemistry to idiots."

Professor Michelle Khine of the University of California, Merced was doing a study of microfluidics, which from the word, you can guess is the study of fluids in tiny things (like the inside of computer chips). Unfortunately, she didn't have much to work with in terms of materials. So she turned to Shrinky Dinks, those childhood toys that encourage children to color and stick their hands in ovens.

According to Wired magazine, she designed several microfluidic patterns on actual Shrinky Dinks plastic, put them in her own oven at home and found it worked perfectly because the tubes through which the fluid ran actually enlarged as the plastic got smaller. Thus she managed to do something that companies such as Intel spend millions of dollars a year, and to do it on the budget of a kid who saved up his allowance.

Could MacGyver Have Done it Better?

We can't fathom a situation where MacGyver would have to build a microfluidic device. But if there was a lady in the room, we're guessing he'd use it as an excuse to remove his pants:

1

Astronauts Build an Air Scrubber Out of Random Junk

When it comes to pulling off the ultimate MacGyverism, no one can do it better than NASA. Their engineers have to be ready at a moment's notice to find new ways to build complicated machines and mechanisms out of everyday objects because, as the Apollo 13 mission proved, you never know if you'll have an emergency that won't have a contingency plan in place and (as every other mission has since proved) you never know what NASA is going to cut out of their budgets next.

When astronauts Jim Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise had to move from the command module to the LEM in order to conserve power to run their navigational computer, they didn't realize the calculations for oxygen consumption were only made for two people instead of three. So their carbon dioxide levels began to skyrocket. They had a lithium hydroxide canister on board. However, the plug for the canister on the LEM was round and the canister itself was square.

NASA Flight Controller Gene Krantz (for those of you who haven't picked up a history textbook since elementary school, he was played by Ed Harris in the Apollo 13 movie) wrote in his book Failure is Not an Option that their only option--not including failure--was to get their engineers to build a makeshift air scrubber out of things they had laying around the ship.

Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Kevin Bacon

The crew didn't, as we would have done, admit defeat, light cigarettes and try to bone something one last time before their slow and painful death, which is just one major difference between the Cracked staff and NASA astronauts. Instead, working for an entire day and a half without sleep, they came up with this: The plastic flight cover would act as a funnel through which the lithium hydroxide was pumped through a suit hose, into a fan and then through a sock, which acted as the filter. The whole thing was held together with duct tape.

Yes, this sounds like something out of a cartoon. But it worked, saving the lives of three astronauts and ensuring that Tom Hanks would go on to become an Oscar-nomination machine.

Could MacGyver Have Done it Better?

Unless Hollywood buys our MacGyver in Space! screenplay, we may never know how he would handle himself in a space shuttle. Further, We can't find an episode where the Gyver had to clear out a smoke-filled room. We're guessing having to build an air filter would be too many steps for him to handle.

However, since he knows a thing or two about creating smoke screens (episode 102: he uses fire ash, rice alcohol and a car exhaust to create a painful wall of tear gas, episode 116: he burns pesticide, soap flakes and tile cleaner in a saucepan to create a smokescreen, etc.), we're convinced he could at least build an ingenious device to kill a capsule full of astronauts. Or at least build the world's most kick-ass bong.

(Note to Hollywood: we also have a Cheech and MacGyver in Space script in the works if you do decide to go with the bong angle.)