5 Badass Photos of People Walking Through Insane Situations

5 Milk Ain't Gonna Deliver Itself

The world is gone. The great works of man -- his presumptuous buildings and arrogant roads -- lie in utter devastation. All around, the people despair. You can see them there, in the background, just despairing it up. Those little brown shapes way back there, all lamenting and wailing and probably even forlorning (time permitting).

But you have to look pretty hard to see them beyond the immaculate white coat, ivory bottles, gentle smile and shining, pristine haircut of the milkman gingerly picking his way through the fucking Blitz. Look there, to his right:

See those guys? They're not just milling about. They're holding a hose between them, and that's steam shooting up from just off camera. Either those two are soldiers who've given up hope and figure they're going to die as they lived -- playing in a sprinkler -- or else those are firemen putting out the flames from the bombing raid that literally just happened. It's the latter, of course: This wreckage wasn't sitting there for days, giving the jaded milkman time to get over the destruction of society. The world blew up right in front of him, and he said "Pardon me" and politely stepped around the apocalypse, because somebody, somewhere, was about to open a box of cereal and he had a goddamn job to do.

4 The Somali Shark Strut

Either somebody's got some weird mods installed in their Fallout game, or this is Somalia.

This is Mogadishu, to be precise, where the men are men and the sharks are fashion accessories. The guy in the blue-and-yellow polo is willing to muss up his only nice shirt for two things: wrestling an intact Bryan Adams CD away from the other pirates (dude's huge in Somalia; nobody really knows why. Maybe it's because life's not much worth living there anyway, so, you know, fuck it: Bryan Adams), and of course, to fire-carry an apex predator through what looks like a Mad Max sequel.

There's kind of an explanation for this: The reason piracy is so big in Somalia is that their navy collapsed, which foreign corporations took as license to do whatever the hell they wanted. They illegally overfished Somali waters and began dumping toxic waste in the oceans (another theory for the strange abundance of Waking Up the Neighbours). But since the Somali pirates started keelhauling the ever-loving crap out of the Gorton's Fisherman, people mostly leave their waters alone. Unsupervised and unsanctioned, the people are free to catch and eat whatever they damn well please.

But surely a man wearing a full-sized, wholly intact shark like a winter scarf is not a common thing. It's not like everybody in the Somali capital is strolling about town with the ocean's greatest predator about their necks like a jaunty little asco-

3 Roosevelt Is Displeased

That's Teddy Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States, and Cracked's position on the man is pretty clear: He's somewhere between a Chuck Norris joke and the Messiah. Everything he did was the most badass anything anybody has ever done. His softest chuckle was the most badass metal album ever recorded; his gentlest crap was the most badass POW escape in history. He gets whatever spot he wants on whatever list he likes because we're sure not going to fucking stop him.

Do you blame us? Look at that magnificent bastard up there. It's like somebody crossbred a walrus with the spirit of war. He makes a top hat and coattails look like the battlemech from Aliens. And now look at the rest of the picture. Notice anything strange? Nobody's even walking in the same direction as the president. In fact, it looks as if they may all be fleeing in fear ...

Either that guy is intensely terrified of Roosevelt's ass (we wouldn't blame him), or Mothra surfaced just out of frame. And while the general populace panicked and fled, Teddy saw the gargantuan flying murder-beast and merely recalled that he hadn't had breakfast yet.

2 Who Said Armageddon Couldn't Be Fabulous?

That's Father Void, in a rare snapshot capturing him emerging from his volcanic lair in the Ashmaw for a jaunty Sunday stroll. When this reporter asked for comment about his role in the Great Reaping last week, Father Void had this to say: "eeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE." He went on to clarify this statement by removing his sunglasses and letting three damned souls escape from the place where his eyes should be. They hound this reporter's slumber to this very day, whispering all of the awful things his loved ones really think about him. This reporter would just like to go on record as saying: The torment of truth truly is the worst torture. And at the risk of editorializing, All Shall Embrace the Void.

That's actually Karl Lagerfeld, a designer for Chanel, and what he's walking through, despite appearances, is not the smoldering ruins of all who opposed him in life. That's just the catwalk of a 2011 fashion show at Paris Fashion Week. I know it's disappointing that he's just a puny designer and not the iron-fisted ruler of a nuclear border town. But if it's any consolation, he's totally bugfuck crazy and sure talks like a bond villain. When asked about the middle class, he once replied, "The middle has not enough class that I think about the middle class." When asked about supermodels presenting an unhealthy body image, he answered, "There are nearly 30 percent of young people who are too fat. So let's take care of the zillions of the too fat before we talk about the percentage that's left."

"Let's take care of the too fat."

"The percentage that's left."

I'm pretty sure he's saying he's going to purge the chubby from the face of the Earth. And since his idea of haute couture is "crazy evil volcano preacher," I would take him seriously.

1 Just Playin' a Little Ball

The Libyan rebels were like a real-life A-Team: They were spunky, underfunded and innovative, and they had justice on their side.

But unlike the A-Team, it wasn't all driving at somebody until they dove out of the way and trapping corrupt mining officials in nets. There was a lot of death, and a lot of destruction. But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that, despite all of their research and years of careful study, the Libyans never could find a good way to give a solid fuck.

Look at that guy! He went to war in an Ikea bed sheet and slippers. He's carrying one small box of loot and two assault rifles. That building that he's casually kicking a soccer ball away from, as it bursts into the most epic inferno I have ever seen -- those are the ruins of Gadhafi's compound. Soccer Warrior just overthrew the government of an entire country and destroyed the power base of a corrupt dictator -- "just" as in "just now," flames still raging -- and he's not even pausing to celebrate. He's merely shuffling on home, idly kicking a soccer ball to keep entertained along the way, because the flaming climax of a bloody revolution bores him.

Hey, you know what they say: "It's not the journey; it's the destination."

Or in this case: "It's not the flaming ruins; it's that you lit the fire."

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Check out more from Brockway in The 5 Most Badass Man vs. Nature Showdowns Ever Photographed and The 8 Most Ridiculously Badass Protesters Ever Photographed.