The 6 Most Terrifying Morning Commutes In The World

The 200-odd people who live in Yushan in southeast China don't have to imagine. The village -- described by the elder as being "located where normally only eagles would be prepared to make their homes" -- is surrounded by a landscape so steep and so treacherous that running out to, say, grab some Fanta and a lotto ticket once meant spending an entire day navigating perilous footpaths. That's why, back in 1997, the villagers picked up a secondhand cable from a European ski resort, stretched it a full kilometer between two cliff faces, and rigged up their own makeshift cable car in which to ride across. They use it to transport everything from large sacks of rice to the their precious, fragile children.

The question you're probably asking yourself right about now -- as the villagers no doubt do for the entirety of their time spent dangling precariously above a canyon -- is "What if it breaks?" Well, the answer is that it doesn't, and that's all thanks to the hard work and incredible trouser cherries of this man:

That's Zhang Xinjian. He's kept the cable car painstakingly maintained (a term which here means "dangling from a rusty platform to oil the cable every day without benefit of anything remotely resembling safety equipment") since the day it opened, mainly because he's the only one left who knows how. Job security can be a wonderful thing.

We mean, not in this case. But it can be.

Spruce Creek is what's known as a fly-in community, meaning the only way for residents to get home is to -- get this -- fly in. The whole place is centered around a runway, where residents land their planes before taxiing them right on down the streets to their houses, most of which come equipped with small hangars where garages should be.

As you've probably already deduced from the fact that every-damn-body there owns a damn airplane, Spruce Creek isn't exactly an impoverished town -- the community consists almost entirely of upper-middle-aged white people rich enough to, you know, own their own damn airplanes.

This is perhaps best illustrated by spotlighting one of the town's former residents: none other than Operating Thetan and talking baby movie star John Travolta. We say "former" because his neighbors formed up a pitchfork brigade and forced the man out due to his insistence on landing his Boeing 707 jet airliner on an airstrip designed for small enthusiast planes.

That's why the skyline of this picturesque, quiet bit of French countryside now hosts the Millau Viaduct, a structure straight out of the backdrop of a sci-fi film and a ginormous steel middle finger to God himself.

Looks like a normal bridge, right? Let's zoom in a little and note the tiny, tiny trees below:

Now here's a pic of some dudes working on one of the piles:

Yeah, each one is about as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Here's one of those under construction:

Starting to get an idea?

When engineers were faced with completing the puzzle that was the A75 autoroute (the highway connecting Paris to the Mediterranean), they decided to go all-out and build the biggest goddamned cable-stayed bridge in the world. If you were to stand atop its highest pylon, you'd be looking down into the valley from a height of about 900 feet. The road surface itself is three times higher than the full height of the Brooklyn Bridge.

But don't worry, we're sure none of that will pass through your mind as you race across the bridge with only a guardrail (made of mostly clear plastic) protecting you from plummeting down from skyscraper height. Here's a clip of some dudes getting a nice clear look for you:

For the rest of you, meet your new friend the paternoster. He'll be visiting you tonight as you lie awake in bed.

The paternoster is an entirely outdated cousin of the modern elevators which hordes of office workers still use to get to their floors and back every single day. It consists of a series of continually looping two-person, doorless compartments -- step into one side to go up, step into the other side to go down. Though they've been largely superseded by regular elevators of the doored variety, there are still hundreds of them in service throughout Eastern Europe today. That's because they're what a German engineer might describe as "efficient," and a Cenobite might describe as "your reward for solving the puzzle box."

Here, watch as a passenger rides throughout the entire loop, its hungry inner workings fully exposed to probing by unwary fingers:

If you think we're playing up the danger of these proto-elevators for comedic effect, don't. Construction of new paternosters has been banned in most sensible locales, largely due to incidents such as one in 2015, in which an elderly Danish man tripped and got his head utterly crushed as a group of helpless witnesses looked on in horror. Because the paternoster stops for no man. The paternoster is eternal. The paternoster will break you, and feel nothing.

That's life as usual for the residents of Jakarta, Indonesia, where the public transit system is woefully inadequate to accommodate the nearly 400,000 commuters who need to use it at any given time. This results in passengers climbing into and onto every available nook and cranny of the trains ... much to the displeasure of local officials, who've tried everything from hiring bands to play catchy safety songs to straight-up spray-painting illegal riders.

None of it did a bit of good, probably because people still need to get to their jobs, regardless of what petty consequences they're threatened with. But you know what they always say: When all else fails, crush a motherfucker's skull with a ball of concrete.

In a last-ditch effort to discourage train surfing, authorities dangled rows of grapefruit-sized concrete balls above train stations and rail crossings, thereby ensuring that only the most insane / most well-armored of train surfers will still attempt an illegal commute. Which they undoubtedly will, because, as one local shopkeeper put it, "We like it up there, it's windy, really nice." When you think about it, it's no different from riding down the highway in a convertible, when you put it that way -- if, as you drove said convertible, the heavens occasionally launched a bowling ball straight at your braincase.

Think Nana and Pop-Pop's loving 60-year monogamous relationship is quaint and old-fashioned? First off, sorry for that disturbing image, but we've got some news for you: the monogamous sexual relationship is actually brand new relative to how long humans have been around. Secondly, it's about to get worse from here: monkey sex.

On this month's live podcast, Jack O'Brien and the Cracked staff welcome Dr. Christopher Ryan, podcaster and author of 'Sex at Dawn', onto the show for a lively Valentine's Day discussion about love, sex, why our genitals are where they are, and why we're more like chimps and bonobos than you think.

Get your tickets here:

For more reasons that your work life might not be that bad, check out The 6 Most Terrifying Work Commutes In The World and 5 Horrifying Ways Insane Bosses Tried To Motivate People.

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