If you’ve ever read a history book, you probably know that the past was filled with men and women who laughed in the face of death, then punched the sucker in the balls and went on to do a dozen other insane things, like fight grizzly bears and save all of humanity from certain doom. In fact there are so many ancient bad-asses that we don’t even have enough time to marvel over how awesome they were. In an attempt to remind the world of humanities past glory moment, we’ve selected some of the most incredible and generally unknown people of the past and we’ll tell you exactly why they are more intense than Bruce Lee.

Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhipov: Two Men Who Saved the World

The stories of Lieutenant Petrov and Vice Admiral Arkhipov are similar in that they were both average soviet soldiers who managed to single handedly prevent a nuclear Armageddon. For saving all of humanity they were rewarded with an investigation by the soviet army under suspicion of treason, and their stories were hidden from the public for years. It all goes to show that saving the world will just get you in more trouble than it’s worth.

Are you crazy? The paperwork would take weeks to get through…

Petrov was one of the men in charge of the early detection system in Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow. The main function of the facility was to identify any potential nuclear warheads launched from the US and start a counter-offensive. In other words, Petrov’s job was to press the big red button, shake his fist at the capitalist pigs and die in a huge ball of fire, along with the rest of civilization.

Jokes aside, the shit almost hit the fan on September 26, 1983 when the early detection system went off announcing that the U.S. had launched a nuclear rocket targeted straight at the motherland. Not wanting to be the ones responsible for ending the world everyone in the bunker turned towards Petrov. With everyone waiting for him to give the launch order and a computer promising imminent destruction, Petrov weighed the situation and decided to disobey all military protocol, risk the lives of everyone he knew and basically just wait.

Since the whole situation wasn’t bad enough, the alarms went off four more times, showing a total of five nuclear warheads heading straight for Russia. Soon, Petrov’s superiors were on the phone screaming contradicting orders, everyone was freaking out and klaxons were ringing. However, none of this fazed Petrov, who stood by his gut feeling that this whole nuclear bomb thing was just a malfunction. Later on he declared that he simply didn’t trust the computer, thus proving to the whole world that man is still better than machine.

Needless to say you are still alive and reading this article because Petrov was right, and the early detection system was basically identifying the sun rays as American rockets. For being right Petrov was marginalized and ended up in a small village where he couldn’t even find work. In the end, once the story became popular, he received an award of one thousand dollars and a trophy.

In an eerily similar story Arkhipov was a vice admiral on board one of the submarines involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In case you’re not familiar with this 1962 event, all you need to know is that during the whole crisis the world was about an inch away from complete nuclear holocaust.

In fact one soviet submarine was already convinced that war had started and the captain ordered the nuclear warheads be aimed and armed. When a U.S. ship tried to get the submarine to emerge from underwater the captain ordered the launch of the missiles. At this point everyone on board said: “Yes sir! I didn’t like being alive anyway,” except for Arkhipov who argued that maybe, just maybe, shooting atomic weapons, without knowing for a fact that the third world war started, is a bad idea.

Recently declassified documents show that Arkhipov single-handedly convinced the captain of his submarine cancel the order of launching nuclear warheads. For this he received absolutely no honors and his name is only known to a few scholars, most of the world remaining convinced that the Cuban Crisis was averted solely by JFK.

Zahir-ud-din Mohammad Babur

Probably none of you ever heard of Babur the man who founded the Mughal Empire back in the late 1400’s. However, the man should be required study material in any history course, along with other great rulers like Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones.

Babur is thought to be the descendant of both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, both of which were incredibly bad-ass. However, Babur, took the whole science of badassery a step further. While his ancestors are mostly remembered as violent, ruthless rulers Babur remained in the history books as an incredible military strategist and a renowned scholar.

When he was kicked out of Uzbekistan at the age of fourteen Babur crossed the mountains and conquered most of modern day Afghanistan, gathering an army so he could go back. Let us say that again, at an age when most people sulk over their LiveJournal this dude was already organizing his army and conquering India.

Since being a virtually unstoppable warlord was not enough, Babur decided to take up an insanely rigorous training schedule. In attempt to become the strongest man alive he would carry people under his arms as he was running on the walls of his castle. Imagine this, you would be talking with him and the man would just lift you up and start jogging, why? For the same reason that he swam across every river in India: he was a badass.

However, he was not just hardcore, that wouldn’t have gotten him on this list. Babur combined the Persian culture and scientific knowledge with the Indian one in order to create one of the most incredible civilizations known to man. The Mughal Empire combined different sources of knowledge resulting in significant advances in technology, astronomy and mathematics as well as art and architecture. This is mostly due to the fact that Babur always encouraged the pursuit of knowledge, his memoirs being a significant source of geographical and historical sources.

Giuseppe Garibaldi

In case you’re Italian you probably never heard of Garibaldi, although the man was one of the most unique and intense freedom fighters in all of history. He started out as a sailor at the age of fifteen– yeah sure he was older than our friend Babur, but still it’s pretty impressive. After about twenty years sailing the seven seas Garibaldi joined a revolutionary movement in Genoa. The purpose of the organization, named the Italian Unification Movement, was to unite all of Italy into one country. When the revolution failed, Garibaldi sailed to to Brazil, where one of his first actions was to get shot in the neck during an ambush.

Now, we don’t know about you, but if we’re getting shot in the neck we’d say: “screw it!” and probably die while making horrible choking sounds. Garibaldi shrugged that shit off and organized a revolution in Uruguay. He married a fellow revolutionary and together traveled through South America organizing revolutions left and right.

Once he had enough experience bringing freedom to people Garibaldi returned to Italy and conquered Sicily with only a thousand, untrained, un-experienced men. When Italian nobles tried to bribe him with land and a title he rejected them and continued his conquering spree, eventually uniting all of Italy. This took the better part of his life and he lost everything including his wife during the battle, but Garibaldi would not be stopped.

During his campaign he fought against the French, the Austians, the pope and various Italian nobles, winning despite incredible odds, but in case that’s not enough he is also considered one of the greatest free thinkers. He pressed for free education, a broad suffrage and women’s rights, he fought against slavery and never took advantage of his position by pillaging from the peasants he protected.

Hell, if anyone should be on those “revolutionary” shirts it should be him, not Che. At least he has a mountain named after him, so that’s something.