Top Ten Real People Who Couldn’t Be Killed

While most of us will go quietly into that good night, a few notable people throughout history have given death a bony middle finger and, in spite of everything stacked against them, survived. Below are ten of the most durable mofos in history.

1) Grigori Rasputin

This counsel to the Russian Czar was probably most famous for his sexual dalliances and prodigiously large member (he was packing around a foot), but he was also famously hard to kill. One of the things Rasputin did better than anybody was make serious enemies, so it was no surprise that someone would finally try to kill him. But it wasn’t easy. After one assassination attempt, in which he was knifed in the gut by a prostitute and survived, Rasputin was poisoned at a dinner, shot, castrated, bound with rope, and tossed in a frozen river. When his body was found three days later in the river, he was discovered to have worked free from his bonds. The Mad Monk had  been scratching at the ice, trying to get out of the water. He had almost escaped death once more.

2) Nikki Sixx

In December 1987, this member of Motley Crue took a heroic dose of heroin in Slash’s hotel room, passed out, then clinically died on his way to the hospital. Everyone in the ambulance had written him off as another rock and roll fatality. But one of the paramedics was a Crue fan and wouldn’t let the Sixxster die. According to Sixx, “the paramedic took one look at me and said, ‘No one’s gonna die in my ambulance.’” He gave Nikki two shots of adrenaline, Pulp Fiction-style, and Nikki came back to life. It inspired Sixx to write “Kickstart my Heart,” though it didn’t inspire him to clean up immediately.

3) Edward Teach AKA Blackbeard

The famous pirate just wouldn’t go down. After years of terrorizing the Atlantic seaboard, Blackbeard got into a fight he couldn’t win. He was tracked by two ships sent to kill him. Rather than run, he actually boarded one of the ships. Old Blackbeard was stabbed twenty times and shot at least five times by his pursuers. He was reloading his pistol when he finally bled out.

4) Pablo Escobar

A man whose name became synonymous with ultimate success in the drug business, Escobar nonetheless went out hiding in barrios in Medellin, just another fugitive. In 1989 he was listed by Forbes as the seventh richest man in the world (a little embarrassing), but by 1993 the world was after him.  But it wasn’t easy. The people of Colombia loved Escobar for the money he had brought into the community, and the US government was getting embarrassed at how hard he was to find.. Eventually, it took a series of electronic triangulations to find him. After a chase across Medellin’s rooftops, Escobar reportedly turned a gun on himself after avoiding literally thousands of bullets.

5) Charles Bukowski

The “poet laureate of the lowlife” drank enough booze during his life to paralyze an elephant, but it never did him in. In his thirties, he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer that almost killed him. His doctors told him any more alcohol would finish him off. Never one to listen to good reason, he went straight to a bar. A chronic smoker as well, Bukowski spent the rest of his life writing and going on heroic benders for months at a time. After finding success late in life, Bukowski “cut down” to a bottle of whiskey a day. He finally succumbed to leukemia at age 73.

6) William S. Burroughs

Another great drunk writer, Burroughs was a heroin addict to boot. At his height, he was shooting heroin roughly a dozen times a day, but somehow found the energy to write Naked Lunch. Did we mention he was fond of getting into fights, carrying guns and frequenting male prostitutes in third world countries? In spite of living the definition of high-risk, Burroughs died quietly in his Lawrence, Kansas home at age 83.

7) Fidel Castro

Oh, how this just bugs the hell out of the US government. The dictator of Cuba was  in power from 1959-2006, and has survived a failed invasion, exploding cigars, double agents, poisoned body cream, and just about everything pro-Western governments have thrown at him. While his brother Raul is nominally in charge now, Castro keeps on trucking, saying once, “”If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”

8 ) General Zogu

The former leader of Albania, described by one British politician as “the cleverest man I have ever met,” survived his country being invaded by Italy during WWII and 55 assassination attempts before finally succumbing to an illness at age 65.  Not too shabby.

9) Ned Kelly

Australia’s version of Jesse James got caught and killed eventually, but not before leading British authorities on a wild, two year chase through the bush. One of the things Kelly was best known for was homemade armor he wore which supposedly could deflect bullets. During his final confrontation with police, he could not be brought down until he took a shot in his unprotected naughty bits.

10) Phineas Gage

One of the most famous head trauma cases in history, Gage survived having a 14-inch rod propelled by dynamited go through his head behind his eye socket. He was conscious during the removal process. It looked kind of like this:

Gage was fine except having unexplainable mood swings for the rest of his life. Doctors today are still baffled as to how he survived. But like the other great survivors, he just did.