The Guards Must Be Crazy: Difference between revisions

* There is a [[Ninja]] technique, the name of which translates as "throwing the toothpick", to distract guards. To be fair, if it's done properly, the guards never see ''anything'', they just hear a sound.

* During [[World War II]], there were plenty of stories of people hiding in basements from the Nazis and not being captured. (Nazi troops invading other countries were ordered to kill any Jews they saw but many didn't because it wasted bullets and took too much time.)

* In 1982, [[wikipedia:Michael Fagan incident|an unhinged man climbed the wall of Buckingham palace.]] Someone saw him and reported it, but by the time guards came to look, he was gone and they decided he must have left already; they raised no alarm. When he went through a window, the security system alerted a policeman on duty, who assumed it was a malfunction and '''silenced the alarm twice in a row'''. Wandering through the halls, he passed a housekeeper, who '''greeted him'''. He eventually made it to the Queen's chamber, where she was sleeping unguarded, woke her up, and chatted to her as she tried to get help by two different methods (a button and the phone); nobody came for ten minutes. As Hollywood writer [[William Goldman]] said it, if you would put this in a movie, people probably would throw rotten eggs at the screen for breaking their [[Suspension of Disbelief]].

** [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|He also got cigarettes upon request.]]

** Even better, they only crime he was charged with was stealing a bottle of cheap wine, because, at the time, trespassing was a civil offense rather than a criminal one. The charge was dropped when he was committed to a mental hospital.

* Gilber Galvan escaped an American prison by waiting in a rec area until the guards left for coffee, then using a pool cue to open the drawer of their desk and fish out the keys. He later went on to be known as Canada's "Phantom Bandit".

* [[wikipedia:Mas Selamat bin Kastari|Mas Selamat bin Kastari]], one of the most influential terrorists in Southeast Asia escaped Singapore's most well-guarded prison by going to the toilet, changing quickly, and climbing out the window. When he was recaptured more than a year later, it was revealed that he climbed into the storm drains, went 20+ kilometers north in 3 days, created improvised flotation devices from trash, and swam across from Singapore to Malaysia and met up with other operatives. Apparently, it was so unexpected, that theories ranged from his escape a cover for the fact that he had died in detention, he used black magic to get out, or he was allowed to escape so that he could lead authorities to other terrorists.

* A notable aversion [http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Packers-linebacker-forgets-ID-can-t-get-into-Wh?urn=nfl-wp5018 when the Green Bay Packers went to the White House to be congratulated] on their [[Super Bowl]] Victory in 2011. Linebacker Desmond Bishop lost his photo ID on the plane and was thus denied entry to the White House. Before you say "But he was on national television in the Super Bowl! He was with his team! How could they deny him entry?!!?", remember how often in fiction the "lost my ID" ruse works - and it works in [[Real Life]] too, due to this trope - and obviously no place should have better security than than the headquarters. So good job, guards!

* In 1987 a 18-year-old West German aviator named Mathias Rust managed to fly straight through several supposedly impregnable layers of Soviet air-defense systems and land his Cessna [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TXIGfL2iFw near the center of Red Square]. What made this worse was that he was spotted on several occasions by air defense crews and interceptors, but most of them either assumed he was friendly, thought he had crashed shortly afterwords, or otherwise failed to gain permission to shoot him down. The event ended up irreparably damaging the credibility of the Soviet military and led to the firing of many senior officers.

** In one regard, he was either brilliant or very lucky: his aircraft was so small that radar registered him as a helicopter.

 

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[[Category:Insecurity System]]

[[Category:Older Than Print]]

{{related|Conspicuously Selective Perception}}

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