7 Mothers Who Went Insane (To Protect Their Kids)

Now, if you find yourself falling from a great height and you have only a few seconds to decide which part of you should strike the concrete first, your back is the third-worst option, behind "head" and "groin." But Simoes was thinking only of her child, even as her spine detonated against the pavement.

Cameron came away from the ordeal completely unharmed, but his mother was told that she would never walk again. This story has a happy ending, though, because Simoes is walking again after extensive surgery paid for in part by a successful GoFundMe campaign. And she says that she would do it again, too, although we sincerely hope she means "only if absolutely necessary," rather than, you know, for shits and giggles.

In 2014, Chelsi Camp was pet-sitting for a family friend when the dog abruptly transformed from panting doofus into small-child shredder. Camp decided to fight back with the only weapons that nature granted to us pitiful humans: her fists and teeth. This wasn't Queen's Rules boxing, either: At one point, Chelsi bit off the dog's goddamn ear. After it finally released her daughter, Camp continued the attack by punching it in the throat ... from the inside. She rammed her fist down its mouth, hopefully while snarling "eat me."

Camp's daughter was taken to the hospital and survived her injuries, as did Camp herself. To this day, she remains the Undisputed International Mom vs. Dog Champion.

In June 2015, Allene Callahan awoke to find that her house was on fire, which is generally a bad thing to happen when you're inside of it. Naturally, she followed her motherly instincts and carried her daughter to safety. What makes this story amazing is that Allene Callahan is 87 years old, and her daughter is 67 and suffers from cerebral palsy. Oh, and Callahan was also recovering from a heart attack at the time.

Callahan grabbed a hose and started spraying down the flames blocking her escape. After clearing an exit, she somehow managed to pick up her immobile, fully adult daughter and carry her to safety. They didn't make it out.

Oh no, don't start that suicide note yet; we didn't mean it that way. Fire and rescue crews arrived so quickly that the pair didn't get a chance to exit the house first. When they found Callahan, she was only most of the way to achieving what skilled firefighters are trained to do, decades after retirement, and with a heart condition.

The same thing happened to 22-year-old Mindy Tran of Lawrence, Massachusetts who in 2014 put her car in park and got out, assuming for some reason that it was "parked." It began to roll backward toward heavy traffic while her two daughters were secured in the back. Tran dived behind the moving car, breaking one leg and dislocating the other, but managed to slow it enough for neighbors to get inside and bring it to a complete stop.

So if there's one lesson we learned here, it's that human beings make better parking brakes than actual parking brakes.

Imagine strapping your child into a stroller and turning your back for a second, only to find it rolling into the path of an oncoming train when you turn around. It sounds like a nightmare, but that's exactly what happened in London in 2014. The identity of the baby and mother in question is unknown, but camera footage at the train station reveals the terrible moment that a gust of wind pushed the stroller toward the tracks, Final Destination-style.

The mother launched into action by throwing herself in front of the oncoming train without a second thought -- which is noble, though we cannot endorse it as a sound plan of action. Trains need bigger parking brakes than, say, cars. Luckily, both were rescued before they could become train food. We, uh ... we don't really know how trains work.

In July 2014, heavy rain in the Indian village of Malin caused a landslide so severe that it basically wiped out the entire community, like God shaking an Etch-a-Sketch. Over a hundred people died, but it could have been a lot more if not for baby Rudra Lemde, who wouldn't stop crying, as babies are wont to do. Especially if you put them in front of a landslide. But the fact that Rudra survived to cry at all came down to the quick thinking of his mother, Pramila.

Pramila was feeding Rudra when she heard a sound like thunder, which was in fact the nearby mountain quitting its one and only job of continuing to be a mountain. Pramila threw herself over her child and protected him as the mudslide overtook them. They stayed buried in the muck for upwards of eight hours while rescue crews searched for survivors.

Reportedly, it was the incessant crying of the baby that led the crews not only to Pramila and her child, but also to several other nearby victims. Who presumably immediately asked to be seated away from the crying baby.

When a tornado landed in Indiana in March of 2012, Stephanie Decker and her two young children were smack-dab in the path of destruction. She did what you're supposed to do and led her family into the basement, but this wasn't one of those tornadoes that moves a dog a yard over before petering out. This was a Category 4. The tornado scale does not range from 0 to 10 -- it tops out at 5. A Category 4 is just short of "peel your skin off and bury it in a tree three states over." Like, maybe only two states over.

Decker threw a comforter over her kids and leaped on top of it, hoping that soft cotton and supple human flesh would be enough to deflect both the forces of nature and the weight of an entire house crashing down on top of them. Fortunately, she was right ... sort of. The storm destroyed their house, but both children were spared without injury. Decker took the full brunt of the collapsing debris on her body, mostly her legs. When the tornado passed, Decker was pinned under the rubble. She sent her children to seek help, but she fully expected that she was going to die.

Joke's on you, Stephanie! You get to live! Rescuers discovered her in the debris with a punctured lung, broken ribs, and two ruined legs. Decker now uses prosthetic legs and gives TED talks about how she lost them while smacking a damn tornado away from her children.

Deep inside us all -- behind our political leanings, our moral codes, and our private biases -- there is a cause so colossally stupid that we surprise ourselves with how much we care. Whether it's toilet paper position, fedoras on men, or Oxford commas, we each harbor a preference so powerful we can't help but proselytize to the world. In this episode of the Cracked podcast, guest host Soren Bowie is joined by Cody Johnston, Michael Swaim, and comedian Annie Lederman to discuss the most trivial things we will argue about until the day we die. Get your tickets here!

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