Afrogalaxy

Alisha Rich

Most meteorites burn out in the atmosphere before hitting the earth, and perhaps this one just took a little longer to disintegrate.
It’s a bit unnerving knowing that an unidentified object has been seen crashing down to earth and no one can confirm what it is or its whereabouts. Either way, it has all of our attention – now we just need to wait for answers.

By Chris Bucholz
To defend yourselves from this certainty, you could hire some security expert with a South African accent and forearms thicker than your neck to train you in kidnapping-survival techniques. But this training is expensive, often meant for executives, foreign aid workers, or wealthy blonde teens. So what are the rest of us to do?
Collect tips off the Internet, that's what. I did just that, gathering the hottest, freest tips on surviving a kidnapping I could find. Then, in the interest of presenting you with the best possible information, I decided to get myself kidnapped to find out if any of this advice actually works. Here's what happened next.

#7. Do Your Homework

As we'll see in later tips, understanding your kidnappers and what's motivating them is key to surviving a kidnapping. But you don't have to wait until you're kidnapped to begin this learning process. You can probably guess who might be kidnapping you before it even happens, unless you're wildly unpopular among many different groups.
If you're an executive working in a country full of revolutionaries, you can learn who those revolutionaries are, what they care about, and what they tend to do with hostages. Ditto if you're a social worker in a country full of people that hate you. Are your parents wealthy? Then if you ever find yourself in a sack, it's probably because of money.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
Although I have many enemies who'd be willing to kidnap me, including Marxists, Capitalists, the Girl Scouts, time travelers, and my own family, I didn't want to give any of them the satisfaction.
Instead, I chose to better simulate the shock and uncertainty most kidnapping victims feel by selecting a kidnapping-of-me target at random. After walking around the parking lot of a mall trying car doors until I found one unlocked, I climbed into the trunk and began excitedly weeping. What kind of psychopath or political idealist or unsuspecting housewife would do this to me?

#6. Pay Attention

Once you've been kidnapped, you need to immediately calm down and open your eyes and ears if possible. Nostrils too.
If you're being taken somewhere, try to figure out where. Count the number of turns, length of time between the turns, and the sound the engine is making. With a bit of knowledge about the area, you might be able to guess where they're taking you, which could be useful information if you need to attempt an escape.
Pay attention to your kidnappers themselves. What do they look like? How do they talk? What brand of cigarettes are they extinguishing on your flesh? Do they make eye contact? Are they somewhat inclined to treat you like a human being? Or are you just an object for them? This can help you gauge their mood and ultimate motivation, in particular whether they need you dead or alive.
If this kidnapping goes on for some time, pay attention to patterns. Are your guards working on an obvious shift system? Are you always fed at the same time? If you're ever released, this might be useful information to relay to the authorities to help rescue any other hostages.
And even if none of this information turns out to be practically useful, gathering it will serve one other important purpose: It will help to keep you sane. By giving yourself something to do, you'll resist falling into a spell of hopelessness, which can do more damage than the kidnappers themselves.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
I thought I was doing pretty good at figuring out where my kidnapper was taking me, but it turned out I had left and right backwards, and then I forgot how East worked for a bit, and, long story short, by the time I was confidently certain we were driving across the middle of the ocean, I realized that that was a dumb idea and that I had no idea where I was.
Trapped in their trunk, I was also unable to make any direct observations of my kidnapper's habits, tics, or political views. I eventually settled on "Alien Nazi ISIS agent," because it seemed pretty plausible and also because I'd probably inhaled just a smidge of carbon monoxide by that point.

#5. Cooperate

Your greatest priority during the early stages of a kidnapping is to simply survive. Your chance of surviving a kidnapping tends to increase as time passes, so in the first few minutes and hours, don't do anything to aggravate your kidnappers. Comply with their requests and, within reason, try to make their lives easier.
A related piece of advice: If you happen to have been kidnapped or held hostage with a group, you don't want to be identified as the troublemaker. If anyone's getting killed to prove the kidnappers are serious, it's going to be that one hostage no one can stand. Can you stand the company of every other hostage in your party? Then watch out, because the irritating one is you.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
I resolved to behave as well as I could during our transit, a decision aided by an unexpected loss of consciousness (that carbon monoxide again). I awoke, still in the trunk, some six hours later, the most dangerous part of the kidnapping well behind me.
I smiled. Everything was going according to plan and it was a good plan and I had nothing to regret from embarking upon it.

#4. Become Their Friend

As time passes, you'll want to establish a rapport with your captors. The simple passage of time will be on your side here -- this is why it's so important to survive those first few hours and days -- as continued exposure to you and your hilarious jokes and wailings and smells will make you seem more like a human in their eyes.
Sergiy Tryapitsyn/iStock/Getty
"Damn you capitalist dogs and your beefy, capitalist farts."
You will still have to use a bit of guile while doing this. Your kidnappers will become suspicious of you if you appear overly cooperative or friendly, so work up to friendship slowly. Ask for a single, small favor first. Nothing suspicious.
Try asking for something like a blanket first. Not only will this make them sympathize with you as a human being (everyone gets cold), it will make bedtime a lot more fun.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
I decided after regaining consciousness that this situation was stable enough to ask for a favor. A pillow or a small plate of nachos was what I had in mind, so after finding the emergency trunk release, I made my way out of the dimly lit garage I found myself in, crept through a deserted suburban house, and found my captors plotting their next move from the bed they were sleeping in. I made my simple, earnest request, crossed my fingers, and let the chips fall where they may.
They didn't really fall where I'd hoped.

#3. Fight For Your New Master

This is kind of a special case as far as kidnapping scenarios go, but it happens often enough that it deserves to be mentioned. If you happen to be a scientist, there's an 80 percent chance that at some point in your career you will be kidnapped and forced to build a superweapon to save your family's lives. Depending on how precious your family is to you -- they are technically replaceable, in a way that, say, the Eastern seaboard isn't -- you're going to have to decide for yourself what to do here. No one will judge you.
Also, if you happen to, say, breath fire or have a tail that shoots lightning bolts, there's a good chance you will eventually be kidnapped by a small child to fight on its behalf in various proxy wars with similarly armed children. You don't really have much choice in this matter; try to have fun with it.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
My captor was apparently running some kind of underground, multi-species kumite, where men fought dogs for his twisted amusement. Or, perhaps, it was just his regular dog that attacked me.
I fought bravely, like a lion, the only way I know how, but I was no match for the pretty scary barking of my opponent. I fled back to my cell in my captor's garage, terrified of what hell would confront me next.

#2. Escape Is A Difficult Decision

Whether to escape or not is a personal decision, greatly influenced by your particular circumstances. Many experts insist you should never attempt it, citing statistics that your chances of survival are far greater by simply waiting for rescue or release. But this ignores the possibility that you're being held by someone intent only on killing you. Assuming you've stayed calm throughout this ordeal, you're going to be the best judge of the risks of escape versus the risks of staying put, and certainly a better judge than some ivory tower kidnapping expert.
So ascertain the risk. Are you being held for ransom? Then your captor needs you alive and will be reluctant to kill you during an escape attempt. Are you one of 20 hostages? Your life ain't worth much, then. Are you being held in a suburb full of friendly people who will aid your escape? Good. Or are you in a jungle full of snake monsters? Less so.
So I'll leave it to your best judgment and only remind you to try to make any escape attempts while calm, and also, obviously, if you have powers influenced by the phase of the moon, in accordance with the current lunar cycle.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
My captor insisted I leave his garage at once, a certain trap. I'd deduced, from his attempt to murder me with his murder dog ...
... that he was holding me for sport, wanting me to escape only for the thrill of hunting me down. Even his repeated threats to call the police were only a bluff -- what would I have to fear from them? No, I crawled safely back into the trunk, dreading the abuse that would result, but knowing it was my only chance of survival.

#1. The Rescue Is The Most Dangerous Part

Counterintuitively, one of the most dangerous times during a kidnapping situation is during a rescue attempt. There's a good chance people are going to get shot, and pants are going to get shat, and you'd like only one of those things, if any, to happen to you.
Under no circumstances should you run -- there's a very good chance of you being confused for a bad guy. Stay low. Hit the floor, get behind heavy furniture, and cover whatever part of your body you value most.
Once everything calms down, don't be surprised if your rescuers immediately put you in handcuffs or other restraints. In these sorts of situations, kidnappers often disguise themselves as their hostages, and it can take a while to sort out who's who. Just relax, and know that everything is about to get a lot better.
How I Managed When I Was Kidnapped:
As anticipated, the rescue was loud, the rescuers unforgiving, and the pants were definitely shat. The aftermath was also as confusing as the experts have stated, and my kidnapper, along with his accomplices -- his wife and family -- managed to trick the police somehow. In short order I found myself in the back of another car, essentially being kidnapped again.
Fortunately for me, this wasn't the first time I'd been kidnapped that day, and using my expertise, I was able to win my freedom in exchange for little more than a $5,000 ransom and a promise to come back later, like I'd ever do that.
So I guess if there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that advice on the Internet is generally correct, and you should follow it all without fail, and that "failure to appear" is a made-up crime.
Happy Kidnap Surviving!
Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and an expert in whatever you need him to be. His first novel, Severance, is incredible and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.
Looking for more super practical advice from Bucholz? Take a look at How To Win A Fight Against 20 Children and its spiritual successor 5 Ways To Attack Children With A Stick. What have we done?

By Jacopo della Quercia ,  Kel Zhang,  CR McNeil

Picture the most fantastical setting you can imagine. Odds are that place exists. Because coming up with entirely new stuff is super hard, while simply slapping a funny name on an existing island is way easier. As we've shown you twice before, you could hop on a plane right now and visit....

#6. Rivendell From Lord Of The Rings

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings novels, Rivendell is the home of the elves, located inside a grand valley where evil dare not venture. We're not sure if evil dare not venture into Switzerland (though Hitler was compellingly reluctant), but that's where Rivendell is:
When he was 19, Tolkien visited the spectacular valley of Lauterbrunnen. Decades later, when he wrote The Hobbit, he described Rivendell, and illustrated it as well. And although he never explicitly identified the Lauterbrunnen Valley as the inspiration for Rivendell, well ... it ain't like this kind of majesty can be found in inner Philly.
It was fans and scholars of Tolkien who fingered Lauterbrunnen as the real Rivendell in the '90s, based not only on the descriptions and images that Tolkien provided, but also other clues in the text itself. Notably, in the books, the English name for the river that flows through the valley is "Loudwater," and the Elvish name is "Bruinen."
Loudwater. Bruinen. Lauterbrunnen. Somewhere, the ghost of Tolkien is coyly inserting a pinky into the corner of his mouth and barely suppressing an amused chortle.

#5. The Planet Naboo From Star Wars

You might be surprised to learn that less than 100 percent of the Star Wars prequels were CGI. In fact, some of the most striking locations on Naboo are real places that were hardly touched up at all.
Scenes in Theed Palace, where the Queen lives, were filmed in the Palace of Caserta, Italy (shown above) and Plaza de Espana, Spain.
And while some of the exterior shots were heavily retouched...
They're still based on real places. For example, the lake retreat where Anakin and Padme undertake the least convincing romance in the history of the galaxy is another real location in Italy -- the Villa del Balbianello, Naboo-ified with some CGI domes:
The official Star Wars blog offers travel information for these and other Naboo locations, including the meadow where Anakin and Padme have a picnic. Of course, only the most diehard fans are likely to embark on a tour to relive the absolute weakest side plot out of all six films, but the option is there.

#4. The Kingdom In Tangled

Disney's Tangled is set in the fictional kingdom of Corona, a city situated on an island, accessible from the mainland only by a single bridge. But the animators at Disney have admitted that they ripped the design of Corona from Mont St. Michel in northern France:
The medieval monastery started out as a small church, but the owners kept making additions until they wound up building an 8th-century Death Star, complete with walls to protect it from invading Huns or Gauls or Lannisters or whatever they had to worry about back then.
Animator Glen Keane said that he knew the instant he visited the island that it was going to be adapted into a Disney-style fantasy kingdom. Look at the place. You know it's positively lousy with snarky mice and big-chinned villains.

#3. Hogwarts From Harry Potter

Several sites across the British Isles were used to create Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the Harry Potter films, but Oxford University has the most. For example, that iconic Great Hall where most of the exposition happens is Oxford's Christ Church Hall. Just take down all the paintings and add some magical floating candles to set that inappropriately romantic mood ...
Oxford's Bodleian Library stood in for the Hogwarts library (and that awkward dance practice studio in Goblet Of Fire.)
If that last photograph of the Bodleian's Divinity School looks familiar, it should. It was also used for the infirmary where Hermione's Time-Turner rendered the whole goddamn plot a complete waste of time.

#2. The Spirit World From Spirited Away

Spirited Away takes place in another dimension, so that (and the fact that it's a cartoon) means you can't literally visit the setting. But you can come close. The spirit world that the heroine wanders around in was based on the town of Jiufen in Taiwan. Director Hayao Miyazaki visited the town and was inspired by how bonkers it looks at night:
The gigantic bathhouse where most of the story takes place is based on the Jiufen teahouse.
And here's the marketplace that inspired the one from the film:
Visitors to Jiufen should find the setting almost unwelcomely familiar, even down to the freaky disembodied heads:

#1. Arendelle From Frozen

Frozen's kingdom of Arendelle is essentially the real Norwegian city of Bergen.
Most of the city scenes in Frozen take place at Bergen's Bryggen Wharf (Bergen Bryggen? Really? Not doing much to dispel those goofy-accented stereotypes, Norway), a world heritage site that you can see here, not trapped in an endless magical winter:
But Bergen lacks those towering mountains that made Arendelle so striking. Don't worry, though: For only a few thousand dollars, Adventures by Disney will haul your ass over to Geirangerfjord and Naeroyfjord to see the real things. Because how could you possibly make up something as outlandish as ... a mountain?
Yeah, "Imagineers" our ass.
Visit CR McNeil's website, where you can watch new fictional settings come to life and guess which ones will appear in Real Fictional Places (Part 18). Please follow Jacopo on Twitter and read his novels The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy and License to Quill!
It turns out a lot of things we think are fantastical probably exist in some form or another in the real world. Like Cthulhu totally exists -- albeit much smaller and way cuter. See what we're talking about in 24 Terrifying Real-World Monsters You Won't Believe Exist. Or see some of the people in Hollywood who still care enough to bring our dreams to life in 6 Mind-Blowing Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI.