The apocalypse could happen at any moment, so it’s best to be prepared. This list is a small assortment of techniques and tools to turn everyday household items into either deadly or extremely helpful tools of survival.

All these techniques are alternative, creative uses for these items. With the information provided in this article, we hope you can outlive the apocalypse or any sort of survival scenario that may occur.

10 Toilet Paper

With the lack of factories making medical equipment during the apocalypse, it is important to know what can be used to replace the bandage, our most common medical tool. Turns out that toilet paper, paper towels, and tissue paper can all be used as bandages in cases of absolute emergency.

However, you need to be cautious when using these tools to treat open wounds. First, any paper product will break down and leave behind fragments whenever it comes in contact with liquid. Also, many paper products are not sterile and may cause infection if used to treat the wound.

To avoid this problem, combine the paper product with a mixture of clean water and soap. Soap is a “basic” compound, so it will kill any bacteria on it. Do not use alcohol or hydrogen peroxide as they can be a health hazard if they enter the bloodstream.

Once you dissolve the toilet paper or tissue paper in the soapy water, apply the pulp lightly to the abrasion. Do not force the pulp into the cut. Just lay it on the surface of the wound. Once the pulp is secure, wrap it in dry paper to hold it there. If the wound bleeds, start over with new paper.^[1]

9 Safety Pins

Many people know that you can pick locks with bobby pins. But there is an even better way if you have some tweezers or a little patience. Lock picking is an extremely useful skill to have during the apocalypse as it gives you access to places and resources that others may not have already claimed.

Safety pins can be better for picking locks than bobby pins. For one, safety pins are skinnier and have more flexibility. Two safety pins have a broad circular point on them, which is easier to hold when used as a tension wrench.

If you have some tweezers, bend and twist the two pins apart. Be careful not to break either the broad safety case or the flat wire circle. Then pry the sharp point of the pin down like an “L” angle—this will be your tension wrench. The pin with the big broad safety case at the end will be your pick. You may want to make a slight “V” shaped bend in it for the sake of ease while lock picking.

If you don’t have tweezers, it will take a significantly greater amount of time to complete. Once you have the lock pick constructed, you want to hold each pin by the broad side and insert the narrow side into the lock. Put the tension wrench in at the bottom of the lock and give slight pressure. Then “rake” your pick across the lock’s tumblers until it opens.^[2]

8 Glass Bottles

As everyone knows, glass bottles, bowls, and vases are very good for holding water and transporting liquids. However, during the apocalypse, glass may have a far more useful and ultimately deadly application.

If society were to fall into anarchy, you’d need to defend your home and family at all costs. Some of the simplest yet most effective defenses come in the form of booby-trapping your own home.

Making your home a labyrinth of deadly or dangerous traps will make it severely unappealing for looters or marauders. Not everyone has guns, knives, and other weapons lying around. Some people may not even own the tools to make these weapons.

However, many people have glass items in their homes. If you shatter glass, you instantly have a deadly weapon. But be careful when working with broken glass. If possible, use something thick and bulky to protect your hands.

Once you have a bunch of broken glass, you have many methods of using it. First is a glass carpet, where you simply lay glass all over the ground so that people cannot walk there without foot protection.^[3]

If you have the means, an effective deterrent is to crush glass into dust and then construct dust bombs or pouches. Broken-down glass dust is extremely dangerous and can easily cause asphyxiation. You can also develop projectiles or pole weapons from broken glass so that you can fight at a range.

7 Shower Curtains

If you have to worry about fallout during a nuclear apocalypse, you may not have access to a radiation suit. Fortunately, you can easily devise a makeshift suit out of several items, including your shower curtain.

The most important material you’ll need is polyester or nylon. Either is good because each is waterproof. If you can find raincoats, windbreakers, shower curtains, and waterproof jacks that contain no organic fabrics, any of them would work fine.

If you find any metal or other absorbent fibers sutured into your suit, they must be removed or covered by the aforementioned materials. With the combination of plastic twine or duct tape, you may be able to tailor a wearable suit to keep fallout off and outside your body.

If you do not have a gas mask, it is best to put some fabric of any kind over your mouth and nose. Don’t reuse any fabrics exposed to fallout radiation. If you venture into an area contaminated with fallout while in your suit, make sure to wash down and remove any dirt or particles from your body when you return. This is why you must use either nylon or polyester waterproof fabrics.^[4]

6 Hair Conditioner

It is a lesser-known fact that hair conditioner strongly binds to radioactive fallout particles. The chemical composition of hair conditioner makes its atomic structure bind with any particle of heavily ionized or radioactive material. Knowing this, we can prevent harm to ourselves and use the highly radioactive substance against any enemies.

All sorts of weapons using pure radiation in small doses will strictly have to be employed for the long game as the effects of radiation sickness can take several weeks to years to begin. If you have an especially concentrated batch of irradiated hair conditioner, you can do one of two things to inflict harm on another person.

First, you can poison him by slowly having him ingest the compound. Alternatively, you can find a way to get the compound mixed in with his hair. If irradiated conditioner contacts human hair, it will bind the radioactive isotopes to that person’s hair, which would constantly poison him and eventually lead to an early death.^[5]

A nonhostile use for hair conditioner is to collect fallout particles to cleanse something of radiation. If you coat an object in hair conditioner, then the chemicals in the conditioner will extract most of the radioactive fallout from the object. Then you would need to thoroughly cleanse the item with water and scrubbers to remove the radioactive conditioner from the object.

5 Sugar

“Kill them with sugar” is truer than many think. The chemical composite of common table sugar is actually used in many formulas for low-yield exothermic reactions. Sugar is a prime ingredient of solid-form rocket fuel.^[6]

When you combine table sugar with potassium nitrate, which is a salt found in many home products, then you have highly flammable, superhot burning rocket fuel. Once you have created rocket fuel, there are many possibilities.

Solid rocket fuel can be used to create a lot of heat and light quickly, which is helpful with applications such as forging, melting, camping, smiting, lighting, alarming, and signaling.

As a final use for rocket fuel, you can strap little rocket packets to arrows and then create rocket-propelled arrowheads. If you create enough rocket arrows and set them up with other trapping devices, you can easily defend your home or hunt for food.

4 Notebooks

Notebooks, especially the metal-bound ones, are filled with incredibly useful items. First, the metallic spine found on most college-ruled notebooks can be removed and used for many tricks and traps. The metal coil is very flimsy and malleable, so you could use it as twine to bind two objects together.

If wrapped around with other coils, the notebook coil could be long enough to make a sturdy trip wire frame. If you had the means or the patience to dismantle and sever the metal wire, then you could also create makeshift needles, sutures, and nails from the metal fragments.^[7]

The next steps can also be applied to notebooks without metal spines because the paper and cardboard covers also have many uses. You can create makeshift window shutters with the cardboard covers. As each cover already has punctured holes in it, all you have to do is weave string through the holes and attach the string to a pulley.

The paper inside the notebook also has several uses, with one of the biggest being fuel. As the notebook companies design the paper so that it won’t burn easily, the best way to set the paper ablaze is to take each page and crumple it into a ball. This allows enough oxygen to get to the fire so that it can burn the rest of the paper.

If you have too many paper balls, they can be used as an alarm system. If someone is trying to sneak through an area, littering the space with bunches of crunchy paper balls would make it much more difficult to be silent.

3 Lighters

Pocket lighters have obvious uses such as providing light or fire. But there are many more tricks you can do with these little lighters. The first trick is a reminder that the lighter that burns twice as bright lasts half as long.

There is a special technique to make the flame on your lighter twice as big as it would be normally. First, you need tweezers or some patience if you’re doing this by hand. Remove the small plastic brace at the top of the lighter. (This only applies to the cheap plastic lighters.)

After you remove the top, you want to find the small lever that controls the height of the flame and push it all the way over to full. Then lift the lever up from its track, put it back to small, and then push the lever to full again.^[8]

The resulting flame will be twice as big and bright compared to the original flame produced by the lighter. This is useful if you need a more powerful flame for lighting something or if you are in a very dark area and need brighter light to see.

A diversionary trick with these lighters involves creating small light flashes. There are small bars of flint that look similar to pencil lead. If you heat these up and throw them against the ground, they will explode into a bright flash. You can also use empty lighters because the flint inside them is still good. Also, the more flint they have, the brighter the flash.

2 Brooms Or Mops

The most powerful and versatile weapon or tool on this list is the broomstick. It doesn’t matter if it’s metal or wood. A hefty wooden pole for bashing people is the very least of what these items can do.

Pole arms may become the best melee weapon once again in the aftermath of an apocalypse. Before the invention of the firearm, pole arms ruled the medieval battlefield. Best of all, you most likely already have one in your house.

The method is simple. Find your broom or mop handle, and remove the bristle end. Yes, it’s that easy. You now have a quarter staff with many different applications in a postapocalyptic world. If you’re clever, you can forge or “MacGyver” a spearhead onto the end of your pole. This increases its deadliness tenfold.^[9]

If you don’t use the staff as a spear or weapon, it makes a good hiking stick or an even better trap detector. A pole arm can be effectively used as an extension of your body. You can safely put your pole through suspected traps and dangers because it is better to lose the pole rather than your arm or hand.

If you are absolutely swamped with these poles or you find some nicely sized tree branches, they can all be used for defense as well. Simply sharpen the ends, stick one end of each in the ground, line rows of them up, and you have basic wooden fortifications.

1 Silverware

If the apocalypse rolls around, silverware can be used for much more than eating. However, if it’s made of actual silver and there is fallout radiation, then do not use it. Silver absorbs radioactive isotopes, easily binds to them, and becomes radioactive itself.

Each type of silverware has different applications during the apocalypse. Obviously, knives are practical as stabbing or defense weapons, but they become leagues deadlier if they are attached to poles and made into spears or pole arms for defense.

A steak knife or even a sharpened butter knife is flawed due to its short range. So you need to put them on an object that can extend your reach, which is extremely helpful in defeating foes during close encounters. Forks are helpful for stabbing your enemies as well as making effective trap devices.^[10]

With a fork, the flat end with the prongs is easily secured into flat stationary objects. This would allow you to sharpen the handle of the fork and then put the fork in the ground, secured by its prongs, to forge a sturdy stake ready for an unknowing thug to step on and gore his foot.

Spoons reinforce your pole arm or walking sick. You take 3–5 spoons and flatten them all out. Then you bend the flattened spoon parts into right angles to the handles. Melt all the spoons together on the blunt end of your pole arm. When they have all cooled, secure the spoons with twine or small nails. Now you have a sturdy, blunt melt reinforcement to your pole arm.

I am a history and science enthusiast, keenly interested in the progress and future of mankind. I have knowledge in the fields of physics, chemistry, psychology, prehistory, medieval history, European history, and American history. I am currently attending my second year of college and working toward my AS in general science. Then I hope to get my bachelor’s in psychology. I have a strong passion for writing and teaching others about the world they live in.

Most of the treatments on this list are prescribed by proponents of so-called “natural medicine.” However, more often than not, they are simply quacks, a term derived from the Dutch word quacksalver, which means “hawker of salves.” Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian and musician, summed it up best: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” That’s not to say that research into alternative medicine shouldn’t be done; rather, once a form of alternative medicine has been proven ineffective, it should be discarded as a viable treatment.

10Laetrile

A chemical sibling of amygdalin, a substance commonly found in the pits of apricots and other fruits, as well as almonds, Laetrile is often purported to greatly assist in the treatment of cancer. First created in the middle of the 20th century (the exact origins are unknown), it was allegedly synthesized by a man named Dr. Ernst T. Krebs Jr. However, at least a dozen separate experiments have been done on the substance, with no anti-tumor evidence produced.

The most common rationale for the reason for Laetrile’s “effectiveness” is that cancer cells have a certain enzyme which is not as present in regular, healthy cells. Therefore, the medication, which basically consists of cyanide poisoning, affects only the cancer cells. However, this is categorically false, and a number of cases of death due to cyanide poisoning have been documented. Because of this danger, and due to the fact that it is ineffective as a treatment, Laetrile has been banned from being transported into the US, though it is still used throughout the world.

9Colloidal Silver

Colloidal silver is a popular treatment for a number of serious illnesses, such as cancer, HIV, herpes, and other bacterial and viral infections. Basically, a colloidal substance consists of microscopic particles suspended in a liquid. It’s usually taken orally, although some colloidal silver products are salves or injections. (In fact, topical drugs containing silver have been shown to actually benefit burn victims.) Research has been done to examine the claimed effectiveness of oral colloidal silver treatments, but so far no benefits have ever been observed.

The most common side effect of the oral ingestion of colloidal silver is the buildup of silver in a person’s body tissues, which normally results in a condition known as argyria. Usually untreatable and irreversible, argyria doesn’t pose a serious health risk, but it does create a cosmetic problem: The sufferer’s skin, eyes, and internal organs will all become discolored, normally a sickly blue. Excessive amounts of colloidal silver can also result in kidney damage and various neurological problems.

8Yohimbe

Extracted from the bark of a species of evergreen tree native to western Africa, yohimbe has long been a traditional aphrodisiac for the local inhabitants. Touted by “experts” as having beneficial antioxidant properties designed to prevent heart attacks, it can actually lead to medical complications, including increased heart rate or kidney failure. Brought over to Europe at the end of the 19th century, Western medicine used the extract for treating impotence, a popular idea which persisted until other medications, such as Viagra, were introduced.

Unfortunately, the evidence for whether or not it even helps with impotence is spotty at best. Numerous trials have come up with either inconclusive or contradictory data. That not only makes it worthless as a treatment for its primary use, it turns it into nothing more than a potentially life-threatening placebo.

7Aveloz

Aveloz is an herbal extract made from the sap of a Brazilian shrub. For nearly 2,500 years, practitioners of folk medicine have used it as a remedy, thanks in no small part to its corrosive properties. Relatively obscure until the 1980s, aveloz has now become a much more popular extract. Often diluted into water or tea, the chemical makeup has never been analyzed, as it was long seen as an afterthought in the fight against alternative medicine hucksters.

Its proponents claim that it can kill tumors, whether taken orally or used on the skin. (It is supposed to be highly effective against cancers on the face.) Unfortunately, the sap can actually burn the skin, mouth, and throat of anyone desperate enough to use it. Not only is aveloz useless as a treatment for cancer, some studies have shown that it may actually promote the growth of tumors. However, showing again why research is important, certain extracts of the family that aveloz belongs to have shown antileukemic properties.

6Colonic Irrigation

Colonic irrigation, also known as colon cleansing, is a procedure in which liquid—sometimes water and sometimes other substances, such as coffee—is shot through a tube into a person’s rectum, often in high quantities. Its proponents often claim that colonic irrigation “detoxifies” the body, suggesting that nearly all diseases originate in the colon. For most of humanity’s history with medicine, the colon, thanks to its duties in our waste system, has been seen as the bane of our existence. In fact, a form of colonic irrigation dates back to the ancient Egyptians.

However, doctors have been fighting public perceptions about colonic irrigation for years, although there hadn’t been many studies on the practice. Recently, a new study done by Georgetown University has concluded that it is worse than useless. During the procedure, kidney and liver failures occur, as well as rectal perforations. After a number of them, patients can lose the ability to even have bowel movements, rendering them forever dependent on enemas.

5Germanium

Sold under a number of different names, including vitamin O or germanium sesquioxide, germanium is a metalloid, similar to tin or silicon. Commonly used in fiber-optic systems or in solar cells, tiny amounts of organic (meaning not man-made) germanium can be found in a few plants, which is where proponents get their reasoning for its necessity in the human body. Luckily, the amounts found naturally in our foods don’t appear to have any negative effect.

Hyped as a cancer cure as well as a treatment for a number of other diseases such as asthma, diabetes, and hepatitis, germanium has been outlawed for import for human consumption in the United States by the FDA. Various studies have been undertaken, and only one single case study has shown anything to suggest that germanium helps cure cancer. Proponents claim that it also stimulates the body’s production of interferon, an anti-cancer compound, and certain types of white blood cells. It’s actually been shown that chronic use of germanium, even at the recommended dosage, has led to kidney damage and death.

4Escharotics

Otherwise known as black or yellow salves, escharotics are any number of ointments made of corrosive agents which are claimed to be able to “draw out” the cancer in a person’s body. Some of them are even used as treatments for various STDs. Given their name because of the trademark scab they produce (known as an eschar), they have been used for at least a few hundred years, if not even longer, and they were very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.

While there have been some substances proven to be effective in treating superficial skin cancers, standard treatment is preferred because the cure rate is nearly 100 percent either way, and standard treatments do little or no damage to the nearby area. On the other hand, escharotics often burn normal tissue, usually resulting in unnecessary scars. In addition, nearly all escharotics on the market have no scientific evidence proving their effectiveness, with a multitude of reports of damage caused by their use.

3Chelation Therapy

While it is proven to be helpful with heavy metal poisoning, especially mercury or arsenic, chelation therapy makes this list because practitioners of alternative medicine utilize it for a number of disorders and diseases, including autism. The procedure involves injecting a chemical that binds with heavy metals and allows them to be flushed out of the body. At-home chelation kits are extremely risky, as the procedure, even when performed in a hospital, can have any number of complications, especially with the kidneys. In addition, children are at a higher risk for complications since they are often the ones who are targeted for its unfounded use as a treatment for autism.

A recent study at Baylor University concluded that chelation is not only ineffective in curing autism, but it is also incredibly dangerous. Its use as a treatment stems from the groundless theory that mercury is the cause of autism. To make matters worse, chelation therapy can remove helpful metals, such as calcium, from the body, further harming those who are given it thanks to useless studies which had any number of issues.

2Cellular Medicine

The brainchild of a quack named Matthias Rath, cellular medicine is touted as the study of “the role of micronutrients as biocatalysts in a multitude of metabolic reactions at the cellular level.” Promoting his own special vitamin pills, Rath’s organization has been sued in a number of different countries, with various governments condemning his claims. Touted as a cure for cancer as well as AIDS and a number of other diseases, cellular medicine has never been proven to be effective at anything. A few studies involving things like huge doses of Vitamin C have failed to show any promise in treating cancer or any other disease.

One of Rath’s biggest and most public failures was his venture into South Africa and his attempt to sell his “medicine” as a cure for AIDS. Using newspaper ads to denounce modern-day medicine as toxic, Rath endangered thousands of lives by keeping patients from getting free AIDS drugs given out by the government.

1Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS)

Created by a man named Jim Humble, who, ironically enough, once compared himself to Jesus, Miracle Mineral Solution is a 28-percent solution of sodium chlorite, a compound used primarily in the bleaching and stripping of paper. Followed to the letter, the instructions given by Humble say to mix MMS with an acid like citrus juice. This generates chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleach which, when taken orally, causes nausea and diarrhea, among other things.

Banned in a few countries already, MMS has been linked to a number of deaths. However, that hasn’t swayed the proponents of MMS, who have even recently begun to claim that it is a viable treatment for autism in addition to its alleged success against cancer and AIDS. Not only are oral treatments prescribed, but there are also protocols for enemas and baths using what is essentially industrial-strength bleach.

Some call them conspiracy theories. Loony or not, many hypotheses about history contain more than just a glimmer of truth. From secret societies to unrecorded interactions, the possibilities of alternative history are many. These 10 are just some of the more fascinating examples.

10The Knights Templar And The Mandaeans

The Mandaeans are an enthno-religious people native to southern Iraq and southwestwern Iran. Their religion, Mandaeanism, closely resembles the Gnostic faith of Manichaeism. According to some scholars, the Mandaeans first appeared either before or during the arrival of Christianity.

During the time of the Crusades, the Mandaeans were known as skilled goldsmiths. This trade may have brought them into close contact with the Knights Templar, the legendary warrior-monks who frequently relied on local trade to survive. The Mandaeans worship John the Baptist as the world’s true savior. In the Gospels, St. John the Baptist is decapitated and is presented to the vicious Salome, the step-daughter of Herod Antipas. Interestingly, after they were rounded up by the French King Philip IV, the Templars were accused of worshiping a severed and embalmed head.

Could this be a relic of St. John the Baptist? Did the Templars adopt some Gnostic traditions after their long residence in the Middle East?

9The Ismailis And The ‘Islamic Golden Age’

Unlike the largest sect of Islam, Sunni Islam, the Ismailis belong to the Shia branch. However, unlike orthodox Shias, Ismailis are not “Twelvers,” so they do not subscribe to the belief in the Twelve Imams as the true spiritual successors of Muhammad. Furthermore, the Ismaili community openly accepts certain non-Muslim traditions, including Christian ethics and Greek philosophy. Because of this, the Ismailis are frequently persecuted in many fundamentalist countries.

During the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171), Ismaili caliphs ruled the empire while Ismaili da’is (scholars) produced a wealth of Ismaili texts that incorporated Western and Eastern esotericism, Gnosticism, and classical learning. Because of this, it has been suggested that open-minded Ismailism brought about Islam’s Golden Age and facilitated the Arabic and Persian translations of Jewish, Greek, and Roman texts. Unfortunately, thanks to the Abbasid Caliphate and the entrenched power of Sunni Islam, the Ismailis were suppressed and forced to go underground for many centuries.

8The Bear Cult Hypothesis

Historians have theorized that the ancient Indo-Europeans had two primary cults that all tribes shared. These two cults recognized wolves and bears as sacred animals. Whereas the wolf symbolized masculinity, virility, and the power of the tribe, the bear represented motherhood and fertility. By the time of Sanskrit “Rigveda,” the power of the bear cult had noticeably declined.

However, in looking through other ancient texts, echoes of the bear cult remain. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf is similar to the Icelandic saga of Bodvar Bjarki, whose name translates to “Battle Bear.” The Nordic “berserker” warriors also highlight this ancient European appreciation of the bear.

7The Original Koreans Of Japan

Currently, almost a million “Zainichi Koreans” live in Japan. Many are the descendants of workers who moved to Japan following World War II, while others came earlier after the Japanese conquest of Korea in 1910. Most speak Japanese as their first language. According to a genetic survey produced by the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan, modern Japanese people may in fact be the descendants of Koreans themselves.

Specifically, researchers believe that the Japanese language and culture developed after the native settlers of the archipelago (the Jomon people) intermarried with the Yayoi people who crossed the strait from what is today Korea. Obviously, given the sometimes contentious relations between Japan and South Korea, this theory is not accepted by everyone in Japan.

6The Baltic Origins Of The Ancient Greeks

The notion that the ancient Greeks may have had some deep connections to the Baltic is mostly supported by certain readings of The Iliad and The Odyssey. According to believers, Homer’s epic poems recount faded memories of Greece’s Baltic ancestors coming down through the Danube and other rivers to settle in Greece. Furthermore, these scholars claim the geography of The Odyssey only makes sense in the Baltic or North Sea, not the Mediterranean.

Because this theory reminds many of “Nordicism,” or the theory that the ancient Greeks were racially “Nordic,” it is not generally popular or widely accepted. The main proponent of this theory, Italian engineer and amateur historian Felice Vinci, has presented some evidence to back up this theory.

5The Masonic Conspiracies Of France

The Freemasons have always been the targets of numerous conspiracy theorists throughout the ages. Because of their secrecy, their slightly disturbing rituals, and their popularity among the wealthy and powerful, the Freemasons are easy targets. In France during the 19th century, right-wing nationalists and Catholic conservatives latched onto certain Freemason conspiracies to explain France’s martial and political decline following the Franco-Prussian War. One of the more outlandish theories was put forth by Leo Taxil, a known hoaxer and a convert to Catholicism who wrote a book that claimed that Freemasons worship the devil.

Interestingly, all of this attention on the Freemasons revealed serious connections between Masonic rituals and Gnostic Christianity. Therefore, French and other writers have openly wondered whether the Freemasons are somehow connected to the same esoteric lineage as the Knights Templar or the Ismailis.

4The Lost Jews And Muslims Of The New World

Beginning in the 1980s, word spread that many longtime residents of New Mexico believed they were descendants of Spanish Conversos. During the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or face severe persecution. Many of these Conversos continued to practice their ancient Jewish faith in secret, however. Therefore, many believe that these Conversos continued to practice Judaism in the Spanish colony of New Mexico. DNA tests released in the early 2000s confirmed that many modern Latinos have Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

Jews were not the only religious group who may have landed in the New World. Spanish Muslims, known as “moriscos,” also likely intermarried with native tribes and Spanish Catholics, Thus, many Latinos may also have DNA that links them to Morocco and Algeria.

3Are Modern Lebanese The True Descendants Of Phoenicia?

In 2016, a team representing the University of Otago and the Lebanese American University found for the first time ever a complete mitochondrial genome of a Phoenician individual. This 2,500-year-old man known as the “Young Man of Byrsa” was found in the hillsides of Carthage, Tunisia. According to the two primary scientists, the Phoenicians, who were native to what is now coastal Lebanon, contained the European U5b2cl haplogroup, so Phoenicians may have been both the descendants of European hunter-gatherers and the first people to introduce European DNA to North Africa.

This interesting find unleashed another question—how much Phoenician DNA is left among the Lebanese? According to certain researchers, today’s Christian and Muslim populations of Lebanon still have traces of Phoenician DNA. In the political realm, this finding has underscored the fairly common belief among Lebanese people that they are not Arabic and do not share a cultural affinity with the Arab world.

2William Shakespeare, Spy

The idea that famous playwright William Shakespeare worked for Her Majesty is part of the wider theory that Shakespeare was not the true author of his plays. One theory, which claims that William Stanley, the sixth Earl of Derby, wrote the Bard’s plays, bases itself on the pen of a Jesuit spy named George Fenner. In a letter dated from 1599, Fenner claims bluntly that Stanley was the true author.

This connection to espionage is interesting, for many believe that Shakespeare was himself a spy. One camp believes he was a secret Catholic who spied on English Protestants, while others believe that he worked directly for London as a “gentleman agent.” Most of the evidence for these suppositions are based on some of Shakespeare’s letters, which read like intelligence reports about the wealthy gentry in the English countryside.

1Aleister Crowley, Spy And Occult Interrogator

The “Wickedest Man in the World” is generally considered one of the Western world’s foremost occultists. “The Great Beast” was a great proponent of sex magick, which, to modern eyes, looks like perversion dressed up in mumbo-jumbo. Some historians have claimed that this was part of Crowley’s cover, for the chubby man from Warwickshire was a secret agent for the British Empire. Richard B. Spence’s “Secret Agent 666” points out that Crowley’s ability to always travel well without a clear source of income, plus his connections to the pro-German element in America during World War I, are clear indications that he was a spy.

One of the more popular beliefs is that during World War II, Crowley was tapped by Naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming (the author of James Bond) to interrogate Rudolf Hess in Scotland. Hess, Hitler’s deputy and a known occultist, was supposedly grilled by Crowley for hours and subjected to Crowley’s extremely spicy curry. Years later, Crowley would appear in the first James Bond novel as the villain Le Chiffre.

The United States government has long been accused of withholding lifesaving treatments from the people it serves. Concerned citizens have looked on in dismay as supposed wonder drugs and innovative therapies have inevitably earned the ire of public institutions like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Subsequent sanctions imposed on these alternative medical treatments have resulted in the imprisonment of their inventors, the discrediting of their effects, and the demonization of their use.

While it’s undeniably vital to the public health to keep truly dangerous treatments out of the reach of those who might otherwise be harmed, it also can’t be denied that there’s more money to be made in keeping people sick than there is in making them well. If pharmaceutical corporations and medical institutions happened to gain undue influence on the legislative process of the US government, it stands to reason that they would use this leverage to promote their own agendas in lieu of protecting the health of the people. If the FDA and the DEA have been compromised and are no longer the defenders of public safety that they claim to be, then the following ten treatments may have been wrongfully maligned by a corrupt government.

10 Cyanide

Large doses of cyanide are guaranteed to kill you, but some researchers believe that low doses of this toxic substance might kill your cancer instead. Popularized in the 1950s by a product called laetrile, vitamin B17 contains small amounts of cyanide.^[1] Proponents claim that B17, which can be found in apricot kernels, bitter almonds, and bean sprouts, has anticarcinogenic properties and is harmless to your health when ingested sparingly.

After several unsuccessful attempts to approve laetrile in the 1970s, the FDA cracked down on all forms of B17, and it’s now illegal to use this vitamin for the treatment of cancer in the United States. But with the most widely accepted contemporary treatment for cancer consisting of bombarding the body with massive amounts of radiation, it’s understandable to question how bad a little bit of cyanide could really be.

9 DMSO

As a by-product of paper manufacturing, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is an unlikely candidate for miracle drug status. Yet thousands of people around the world attest to this smelly gel’s capacity to reduce pain, accelerate healing, and even cure cancer. DMSO adherents ran afoul of the FDA in the mid-1960s with their claims of the efficacy of the drug as an anticarcinogen, leading to a decades-long stigmatization of the use of DMSO for medical purposes. The FDA went on to approve DMSO for interstitial cystitis in 1978 and again for veterinary purposes in 1980, but the thousands of testimonials given by those who successfully used DMSO to treat cancer go unheeded to this day.

Though a generic form of DMSO was approved in 2002,^[2] there’s still no sign that the FDA will approve DMSO for specific prescription treatments anytime soon. Though detractors of the drug warn of side effects like skin irritation, nausea, and loss of vision, side effects of similar severity haven’t stopped the FDA from approving hundreds of seemingly unsafe drugs that bear the critical distinction of having been developed and marketed by pharmaceutical corporations.

8 Orgone Therapy

In 1954, the FDA filed an injunction against Austrian-born psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. The government agency had heard about Reich’s pioneering work with an energy field he called “orgone” and had resolved to put a stop to it. It’s unclear why the FDA viewed Reich as such a threat, since his two orgone machines, the orgone accumulator and the cloudbuster, had no history of harming anyone. Nonetheless, Reich was ordered to stop the production and distribution of his inventions, and the FDA began a merciless campaign of modern-day book burning.

Any book written by Reich, or any book with the word “orgone” in it, was rounded up by the FDA and destroyed. When the FDA caught wind that Reich had thumbed his nose at their injunction and was continuing to make and sell orgone accumulators, they promptly had him arrested. Reich vocally opposed this treatment, arguing that the FDA had no jurisdiction over “primordial, preatomic cosmic orgone energy.”^[3] The FDA begged to differ, and Reich was sentenced to two years in prison.

Reich didn’t survive his prison sentence, but his ideas did. This former student of Sigmund Freud had postulated that there exists at large in the universe a primal creative energy, embodied in humans as sexuality. His orgone accumulators, which resembled telephone booths, were designed to harness this omnipresent energy and direct it into the human body. Whatever Reich’s offense may have been against the powers that be, the stifling of free thought is a practice best left far behind in the days of the Inquisition.

7 Electromagnetic Therapy

The human body depends on electrical and magnetic fields to regulate many of the vital processes that keep us alive and healthy. Yet, until recently, the scientific community has been reticent in recognizing the health benefits of low-frequency electromagnetic energy therapy. Innovators like Raymond Rife were ridiculed in the early 20th century for suggesting that targeted electromagnetic fields of certain frequencies were capable of combating cancer. Rife’s Frequency Generator earned him the disdain of the American Medical Association in the 1930s, and his therapy never became widely accepted.

In recent years, however, various researchers have demonstrated that certain frequencies of electromagnetic fields do indeed have the capacity to destroy tumors.^[4] The FDA has also loosened their perspective on electromagnetic therapy, allowing its use for healing fractures, reducing pain, and, most famously, jump-starting the heart during cardiac arrest. With all the wonders of electromagnetic therapy now coming out into the open, it’s starting to seem like Mr. Rife is owed an apology.

6 The Hoxsey Treatment

In the early 1920s, radio personality Norman Baker made Harry Hoxsey famous. Hoxsey had learned folk remedies for curing cancer from his grandfather, an equestrian who had watched horses cure themselves of cancer by eating select herbs. With Baker’s help, by 1950, Hoxsey’s army of clinics had become the world’s biggest private cancer center, with over 12,000 patients.

However, in 1956, the FDA warned that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had found Hoxsey’s treatment to be “worthless.” By 1960, the last of the Hoxsey clinics in the United States had been forcibly shut down, leading Hoxsey’s head nurse to leave for Tijuana to open a new clinic. With the rise of NAFTA, however, even these Tijuana clinics became threatened as the United States and Mexico worked together to crack down on cross-border alternative medicine.

The Hoxsey Treatment consists of a medley of natural herbs that are applied topically or ingested orally and has reportedly helped thousands of people cure their cancer. Recent studies have confirmed that simple dietary changes like ingesting certain vitamins and minerals commonly found in herbs can not only prevent cancer but even fight existing tumors.^[5] In their 1956 warning, the FDA asserted that cancer sufferers would surely die if they didn’t use state-sanctioned cancer treatments like chemotherapy, but a compelling mass of evidence suggests that the Hoxsey Treatment may have been suppressed rather than legitimately debunked.

5 The Gerson Regimen

Max Gerson became well-known in the 1930s for his assertions that increased levels of environmental toxins and the rise of processed foods had triggered changes in cell metabolism that caused cancer.^[6] Gerson suggested that those suffering from cancer or wishing to prevent its onset should eliminate salt from their diets and eat only organic foods while simultaneously raising their potassium intake.

Oddly enough, Gerson also promoted the use of coffee enemas to remove toxins from the liver through the colon wall. Perhaps Gerson’s therapy was declaimed by various authorities as being ineffective simply due to the gross-out factor inherent to anything enema-related.

Whatever the reason for its suppression, the Gerson Regimen has never been approved by the FDA as a cancer treatment despite claims of recovery rates as high as 70 to 90 percent. However, various studies have shown that aspects of Gerson’s treatment, such as the ingestion of large amounts of fresh fruit juices, do indeed have an anticarcinogenic effect. The jury’s still out on the enemas, though.

4 The Rand Vaccine

The strange story of the Rand vaccine still raises the eyebrows of skeptics and health nuts alike. Many alternative cancer cures have appeared and disappeared over the last century, but only one has been produced by a major United States corporation.

In the mid-1960s, H.J. Rand, president of the Rand Corporation, became convinced that cancer was caused by a virus.^[7] The Rand Corporation had been established as an offshoot of the widely respected aviation manufacturer Douglas Aircraft Company in the 1940s and as a US Army think tank. By the 1960s, it was obvious that the Rand Corporation’s lines of thought had led the prestigious company into uncharted waters.

Rand claimed to have isolated the virus that causes cancer and further claimed to have developed a cancer vaccine. This vaccine was tested on approximately 8,000 individuals in Ohio, with supposedly promising results. However, having become irked by unsubstantiated newspaper reports of Rand selling the drug without a license, the FDA descended in their full fury in 1967 to put a stop to this unsanctimonious rule-breaking. By 1968, a federal criminal case had been brought against Rand, with another to follow in 1970.

At the height of their experimentation, the Rand Corporation had apparently spent over $20 million researching their cancer vaccine, all to no avail. Today, the Rand vaccine is all but forgotten, even though it’s been conclusively demonstrated that certain viruses, like HPV, do indeed cause cancer.

3 Kratom

Kratom has been used for centuries in various Southeast Asian countries to reduce pain, fight fatigue, and alleviate anxiety. This dried and powdered leaf of the kratom tree has been reported to deliver pain relief that’s just as powerful as that derived from opioids but without any risk of overdose. Kratom has steadily gained popularity in the United States in the last few years, much to the chagrin of the FDA and DEA.^[8] These agencies have done everything in their power to stop the American people from using kratom, from seizing imports of this herb at points of entry to demonizing its use to flat-out trying to classify it as a Schedule I drug.

In a stunning display of the effectiveness of grassroots activism bolstered by the proper use of social media, attempts to illegalize Kratom were brutally shut down in October 2016, when 142,000 people signed a petition to keep kratom available to the public. Due to this overpowering outcry of dissent, the FDA was forced to put its plans for kratom on hold and beg for further public comment on the matter.

However, on February 6, 2018, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb released a fanciful statement claiming that kratom is an opioid. So far, no action has been taken to curtail the sale of kratom based on this assessment, but the sudden appearance of such a far-fetched claim certainly bodes ill for those using kratom as an alternative to undeniably toxic pharmaceutical opioids.

2 Kava

One of the principles attributed to the Greek philosopher Paracelsus is that all substances are poisons when ingested in certain quantities. It seems that the German government decided that any amount of the root extract kava was poisonous when they outright banned the product in the early 2000s. The ruling has since been reversed as academics have started to question whether kava itself is truly to blame for the spate of hepatotoxicity deaths reported in conjunction with use of the herb or whether contaminants in certain batches of kava might be the real culprits.^[9]

Advocates of the plant are quick to point out that kava has been used on South Pacific islands for centuries with no reports of adverse effects. Native islanders ingest the plant to this day to improve mood and relieve stress, and kava has been used in the West for at least 100 years as a treatment for social anxiety. Yet the FDA released a report in 2002 warning the public of the potential dangers that kava poses to liver health.

Kava is still legal to sell in the US as a dietary supplement, but if contaminated batches have truly caused deaths due to liver damage, the FDA could do much more to protect American citizens by bringing kava into the fold under strict regulation instead of admonishing the use of the substance while doing nothing to make it safer.

1 CBD

In recent years, a substance has come to the fore that many are starting to consider a wonder drug. Cannabidiol (CBD), an extract of cannabis sativa, has been demonstrated in dozens of studies to be an incredibly effective anti-inflammatory. Modern medical research has effectively concluded that inflammation is the root cause of almost every if not every single disease that plagues the human body, meaning that CBD may truly be a miracle cure for almost any ailment.

There’s just one catch: Cannabis sativa is still listed as a Schedule I drug by the DEA. CBD manufacturers make use of various legal loopholes to sell their products, but many patients are left wondering if they’re breaking the law by using CBD to treat their diabetes, arthritis, or cancer.

Legal confusion has led certain local-level law enforcement agencies to seize CBD products from the shelves of natural food stores, claiming that these “hemp extracts” contain illegal amounts of THC. In December 2016, the DEA released a “final rule” purporting to simplify their perspective on CBD extracts that only further muddied the waters.^[10]

For now, CBD manufacturers still ship their products across the country, and raids and seizures are relatively uncommon. But many sufferers of diseases like Parkinson’s, dystonia, and neuralgia who could be helped by this non-psychoactive cannabinoid are afraid to try CBD because they think that it is illegal. In the case of CBD, the DEA has proven that it doesn’t have to outright ban a substance to disincentivize the people from taking their health into their own hands.

In wellness and self-care, the landscape of alternative health practices is diverse and controversial. Amid the genuinely beneficial approaches, there exists a darker underbelly of ineffective and potentially harmful practices. Here, we delve into the top 10 worst alternative health practices influencers often promote, shedding light on the facts and fiction behind each one.

Related: Top 10 Health Disorders Made Up To Sell Products

10 Crystal Healing

Crystals have fascinated humans for centuries, but their alleged healing powers have been greatly exaggerated. Influencers champion the idea that different crystals can align your chakras, boost your energy, and even alleviate ailments. However, the scientific community widely challenges these claims due to a lack of empirical evidence.

While crystals possess unique mineral compositions, there’s no concrete proof that they emit energies capable of affecting our bodies or minds. Despite the allure of their vibrant colors and intricate formations, relying solely on crystals for health benefits is akin to placing one’s faith in magic.

• Amethyst for Stress Relief: Advocates of crystal healing might suggest using amethyst to alleviate stress and promote relaxation. It’s believed that this purple crystal can help calm the mind and provide a sense of tranquility.

• Rose Quartz for Love and Relationships: Rose quartz is often associated with love and emotional healing. Crystal healing proponents might recommend using rose quartz to attract love, enhance relationships, and foster self-love.

• Citrine for Abundance: Citrine is thought to be a crystal of abundance and prosperity. Those who practice crystal healing might use citrine to manifest wealth, success, and positive energy.

9 Ear Candling

Sticking a cone-shaped candle into your ear to draw out wax and toxins might seem bizarrely intriguing, but it’s far from effective. Ear candling has gained popularity due to influencers touting its cleansing properties. However, medical experts caution against this practice, as it’s known to cause burns, ear canal obstructions, and even serious injuries such as punctured eardrums.

Research reveals that the debris found within the “candled” residue isn’t actually earwax but remnants of the candle wax itself. The purported benefits are nothing more than a placebo effect, leaving this practice more hazardous than helpful.

• Ear Wax Removal: One of the supposed benefits of ear candling is the removal of excess ear wax. Proponents believe that the heat generated by the candle creates a vacuum that draws out earwax and other debris from the ear canal.

• Sinus Congestion Relief: Some ear candling enthusiasts claim that the practice can help alleviate sinus congestion and pressure. It’s believed that the warmth and suction can promote better drainage and relieve discomfort.

• Spiritual Cleansing: Besides physical benefits, some believe ear candling can have spiritual or energy-cleansing effects. The process is thought to remove negative energy and promote balance.

8 Detox Teas

Detox teas are marketed as a way to rid the body of toxins and shed pounds effortlessly. Influencers often share their “miraculous” weight loss journeys, attributing their success to these teas. However, these products often contain laxatives that lead to temporary weight loss through fluid loss, and their long-term effects are anything but healthy.

Our bodies are equipped with sophisticated detoxification systems, primarily the liver and kidneys, which work diligently to eliminate waste. Relying on detox teas can lead to dehydration, electrolyte imbalances, and a disruption in natural digestion processes.

• Weight Loss Teas: Many detox teas are marketed as weight loss aids, claiming they can help boost metabolism and shed unwanted pounds. Herbal ingredients like green tea and dandelion root are often included for their potential diuretic effects.

• Digestive Cleansing: Some detox teas are promoted as digestive aids, with ingredients like ginger and fennel purportedly helping to soothe digestive discomfort and improve gut health.

• Liver Detoxification: Detox teas with ingredients like milk thistle and dandelion root are said to support the liver’s natural detoxification processes, although scientific evidence for these effects is limited.

7 Homeopathy

Homeopathy operates on the principle of extreme dilution, where substances are diluted to the point where hardly any molecules of the original substance remain. While followers swear by its effectiveness, scientific consensus points to the placebo effect as the primary source of perceived benefits.

Homeopathic remedies are so diluted that the final product often contains little to no trace of the original substance. In essence, consumers are paying for water or sugar pills. Despite its popularity, homeopathy remains a practice with minimal scientific backing.

• Arnica Montana for Bruises: Arnica montana is a common homeopathic remedy used to treat bruises, muscle soreness, and swelling. Despite its popularity, scientific evidence supporting its efficacy remains inconclusive.

• Ignatia for Grief: Ignatia is often recommended for emotional distress, including grief and sadness. Homeopaths believe it can help alleviate feelings of sorrow and emotional turmoil.

• Rhus Toxicodendron for Joint Pain: Rhus toxicodendron, derived from poison ivy, is used in homeopathy to treat joint pain and stiffness that worsen with initial movement but improve with continued motion.

6 Oil Pulling

Oil pulling involves swishing oil around in your mouth to purportedly improve oral hygiene and overall health. Influencers highlight its ability to whiten teeth and remove toxins. However, dental experts assert that oil pulling should not replace traditional dental care practices like brushing and flossing.

While oil pulling might freshen your breath temporarily, its claimed benefits lack scientific support. Rather than relying on this practice alone, maintaining regular oral hygiene habits and seeking advice from dental professionals are more prudent paths to oral health.

• Coconut Oil for Oral Health: Coconut oil is a popular choice for oil pulling due to its potential antimicrobial properties. Advocates claim that swishing coconut oil in the mouth can help remove harmful bacteria and improve oral hygiene.

• Whitening Effect: Some proponents of oil pulling suggest that the practice can lead to whiter teeth and a brighter smile. This effect is often attributed to the oil’s ability to lift stains from the teeth.

• Bad Breath Reduction: Oil pulling is also thought to combat bad breath by removing bacteria responsible for foul odors. By swishing oil in the mouth, advocates claim that a cleaner mouth can produce fresher breath.

5 Reiki

Reiki, a form of energy healing through touch, has gained traction among alternative health enthusiasts. Influencers often portray it as a way to balance energy fields and promote holistic wellness. Despite its popularity, scientific research has struggled to find consistent evidence supporting Reiki’s efficacy.

The concept of manipulating energy flows within the body lacks empirical grounding. Studies attempting to validate Reiki’s claims have faced challenges in methodology and replication, leading the scientific community to approach this practice with skepticism.

• Energy Balancing: Reiki practitioners often claim the practice can balance and align the body’s energy fields, promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It’s believed that the practitioner channels healing energy into the recipient’s body through touch or proximity.

• Stress Reduction: Reiki is often touted as a stress-reduction technique. Advocates believe the gentle energy work can induce deep relaxation, which may help alleviate stress and anxiety.

• Pain Relief: Some individuals turn to Reiki to manage pain, such as chronic pain conditions. Reiki enthusiasts believe the practice can help alleviate discomfort by addressing energetic imbalances within the body.

4 Cupping Therapy

Cupping therapy has garnered attention thanks to celebrities flaunting circular marks as a sign of the practice’s efficacy. Influencers and practitioners assert that cupping can alleviate pain, enhance blood flow, and promote healing. However, scientific consensus contradicts these claims.

Those characteristic marks left by cupping result from blood vessels breaking under the skin’s surface rather than a magical healing process. While some users report temporary relief, its effectiveness is likely tied to the placebo effect rather than any concrete physiological changes.

• Muscle Pain Relief: Cupping therapy is frequently used to address muscle pain and tension. Practitioners place cups on specific body areas and create suction, which is believed to promote blood flow, reduce inflammation, and alleviate discomfort.

• Detoxification: Some proponents claim that cupping therapy can aid detoxification by drawing toxins and impurities to the skin’s surface. The circular marks left by cupping are often interpreted as evidence of toxins being released.

• Improved Circulation: Cupping is thought to enhance blood circulation, contributing to overall health and healing. The suction the cups create encourages blood flow and promotes the body’s natural healing processes.

3 Raw Water

Influencers have embraced the concept of raw water—unfiltered and untreated spring water—as a health elixir. However, health experts caution against consuming raw water due to potential contaminants, including harmful bacteria and parasites that can lead to serious illnesses.

While spring water might evoke feelings of purity, untreated water sources carry significant risks. Drinking raw water bypasses necessary treatment processes that eliminate potential hazards, making it a risky alternative to properly treated and purified tap water.

• Natural Mineral Content: Advocates of raw water argue that it contains natural minerals and nutrients that can benefit health. They suggest untreated spring water can provide essential minerals that may be lacking in treated tap water.

• Alleged Purity: Raw water enthusiasts often claim that untreated water from natural sources is pure and free from the additives and contaminants found in tap water. They believe consuming raw water is a way to connect with nature and maintain health.

• Microbiome Support: Some proponents suggest that raw water contains beneficial microorganisms that can support the gut microbiome and overall immune system. They argue that the sterilization processes used in treating tap water eliminate these beneficial microbes.

2 Psychic Surgery

Promoted as a non-invasive alternative to traditional surgical procedures, psychic surgery claims to heal illnesses by removing them through a healer’s hands. Influencers and practitioners assert its effectiveness, but no credible scientific evidence supports this practice.

Psychic surgery operates on mystical premises rather than medical principles. Skeptics argue that any positive outcomes are likely due to the placebo effect or the power of suggestion rather than any actual medical intervention.

• Non-Invasive Healing: Psychic surgery is promoted as a non-invasive alternative to traditional surgical procedures. Practitioners claim to use their hands to “remove” illnesses or negative energies from the body without making any incisions.

• Energetic Clearing: Psychic surgery is often associated with energetic clearing or cleansing. Practitioners assert they can detect and eliminate energetic blockages or imbalances contributing to physical or emotional issues.

• Holistic Healing: Proponents of psychic surgery believe it addresses physical ailments and emotional and spiritual concerns. The practice is said to promote holistic well-being by addressing the root causes of various health problems.

1 Breatharianism

The ultimate extreme in alternative health, breatharianism advocates living solely on air and sunlight without needing food or water. Influencers who promote this practice suggest that the body can thrive on prana (life force) alone. However, this notion is not only scientifically unfounded but also exceedingly dangerous.

Human bodies require nutrients and hydration for survival. Breatharianism poses severe health risks, leading to malnutrition, organ failure, and even death. The body’s physiological needs cannot be bypassed through wishful thinking or pseudoscientific claims.

• Spiritual Enlightenment: Some proponents of breatharianism suggest that the practice can lead to spiritual enlightenment and higher consciousness. They argue that freeing oneself from the need for physical sustenance allows for deeper spiritual experiences.

• Health and Longevity: Breatharians often assert that the practice can improve health and longevity. They believe reducing or eliminating food consumption can prevent diseases and promote a healthier body and mind.

We’ve all heard of the Pyramids of Giza—thousands of years old, and just about the most famous buildings of all time. But ancient Egypt doesn’t have a monopoly on pyramid construction; mankind ever since has been pretty keen on the idea, coming up with all kinds of different twists on the same general theme. Here are some of the greatest alternative pyramids we’ve managed over the years (including a few we didn’t quite pull off):

Famously, the Egyptian pyramids were built to host the body of the king. They became temples to the dead, and a new source of worship. That’s all very nice—but perhaps a little elitist. That was the thought of Thomas Willson in 1829, when he proposed a new solution to London’s ongoing problem with graveyard overpopulation: a pyramid mausoleum which could contain the corpses of five million people, and which, if completed, would have been ninety-four floors high (by comparison, the Chrysler Building has just seventy-seven floors). And it would have been located in the middle of London.

Willson thought the idea compact, hygienic, and ornamental, and he hoped that people would come from afar to have picnics and admire it. He also calculated that it would bring in a tidy profit of around ten million pounds. Not all envisaged the idea in the same way, however: one historian has described it as a “nightmarish combination of megalomaniacal Neo-Classicism and dehumanized Utilitarian efficiency”, which is an old-fashioned way of saying “this stinks.” In the end, public opinion turned against it—Londoners most likely deciding that they would rather picnic a park than beneath a colossal pyramid of death.

We associate the Romans with amphitheaters, temples, and statues—but one thing we don’t tend to think of is pyramids. Well, think again. Smack-bang in the middle of Rome is a two-thousand-year-old, 121-foot (37m)-high pyramid.

The Romans had only recently made Egypt a province, and were obviously impressed with their huge tombs to ancient kings. “I like the sound of that,” a Roman magistrate called Gaius Cestius probably said—and had one built for himself, Roman-style, upon his death. Alas, as with the Egyptian pyramids, advertising your tomb in such grand style isn’t always a good idea; both his body and the pyramid’s other contents were plundered in antiquity.

What do you do when you want to build a sixty-five-floor pyramid in the middle of crowded Mexico City? Why, you turn it upside-down and build it underground, of course. That’s the proposal of a Mexican architectural firm. They want to give the city’s main square a glass floor, and build a pyramid of offices, homes, and shops underneath it.

Mexico has a rich history of pyramid building from the Maya civilization, and according to one of the architects, the proposed pyramid would “dig down through the layers of cities to uncover our roots.” Because there’s nothing like building a vast, hi-tech underground shopping centre to discover your roots. At a projected $800 million, the city hasn’t yet expressed much enthusiasm for the idea.

What’s the biggest pyramid in the world? The Great Pyramid of Giza? No—there’s actually one that’s twice as big.

Though not as tall as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Cholula—which also has the less catchy name of Tlachihualtepetl—is much wider. It can be found in central-east Mexico, and was built over a period of a thousand years, from the third century B.C. to the ninth century A.D.  

Some say that it was built by a giant called Xelhua, but archaeologists, predictably, disagree. They claim that the pyramid was constructed by a series of ancient Mexican civilizations, who added layer upon layer over the years. These days it’s quite overgrown, and doing its best impression of a hill—so much so that the Spanish built a church on it in the sixteenth century.

Everybody thinks of Egypt as the pyramid capital of the world, but there’s another country that has twice as many pyramids: Sudan. Located directly to the south of modern Egypt, they were mostly built around the third century B.C.—around eight hundred years after the last Egyptian pyramids were built.

There are more than two hundred and fifty of them, ranging from twenty feet (6m) to one hundred and twenty feet (36m) high. Many of these have only been discovered in the last few years, suggesting that either the Sudanese were fantastic at hiding their pyramids, or that archaeologists prefer more glamorous locations in which carry out their digging.

It may not be much to look at these days, but the mausoleum pyramid of the first Emperor of China is deadly. It was built from 246 B.C. to 208 B.C., supposedly by as many as 700,000 men—and it was filled with more traps than would fit into an Indiana Jones movie.

It was supposed to be a representation of the Emperor’s palace and universe, and in this vein he had all his childless concubines killed and buried with him. Lovely. Workers, too, were buried alive, in order to preserve the pyramid’s secrets, and trees and grass were planted to make it seem like a hill. The Chinese are yet to excavate, claiming that archaeology isn’t sophisticated enough to do the job properly. But it could well be that they’re simply scared of the traps; for instance, it’s known that the pyramid was filled with a moat of mercury. More than two millennia later, mercury readings from the site are still dangerously high.

Being an architect is tough work. You spend months getting your drawings and measurements perfect—only to have the builders read your plans the wrong way round. That looks like what happened in 1983, for the construction of the 262-foot (80m)-high Slovak Radio Building, in Bratislava, Slovakia. Inside is a concert hall—and it proudly boasts one of the largest organs in Slovakia. If you’re visiting in a group, make sure everyone is spread around evenly; it looks like it could topple at any moment.

Sure, it didn’t last long—but for a while, New York had its own pyramid. At the end of World War One, thousands of helmets from captured German soldiers were taken back to America, and in a somewhat macabre victory display, they were piled up into a pyramid at Grand Central Terminal.

Somehow, we don’t think this would be received very well today. Still, it’s a touch more civilized than the similar actions of fourteenth-century Central Asian emperor Tamerlane. During one siege, he built a pyramid of 90,000 human skulls in front of a besieged city to intimidate them. We imagine that it worked.

Pyramids of death don’t die that easily. In 2007, a group of German entrepreneurs unveiled their designs for a 1900-foot (580m)-tall pyramid to house the bodies of up to forty million dead people. It would also be multi-colored, as if to compensate for the fact that it would be filled with dead bodies. For around $1000, anybody could sign up to have their ashes encased in a block after they die—and the color would be of their choosing. At around ten times the size of the original Great Pyramid, it would have almost literally cast a shadow over the neighboring villages.

Remarkably, the group were given $115,000 of funding from the German government to pursue the idea; since then, however, the plan seems to have faded due to lack of interest and local objection to having a gigantic multi-colored pyramid full of dead people on their doorstep. But don’t worry: if you’re interested, you can still sign up here.

Why restrict pyramid building to our own planet? The Curiosity rover sent by NASA to examine Mars found something rather curious. This pyramid looks like it’s been copied from the ancient Egyptian ones—or perhaps it’s the other way round.

NASA scientists say that the pyramid is most likely the product of wind erosion; but in the minds of ancient aliens theorists, it’s “hard evidence” that our world today has been shaped by mystical space aliens from Mars. One thing is for sure, however: if the aliens who built this rock were the ones who visited Earth, they must have been pretty tiny. The Pyramid of Mars is about the same size as a football.

N. Christie is currently traveling the world to determine once and for all what the Seven Wonders of the World really are.

The Mona Lisa is not only the most famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci but also the most famous painting of all time. It is a cultural icon. It has hung in the bathroom of a king, been stolen, and recently had a cake thrown at it by a protestor. Luckily for the painting, it is now housed behind bullet- and bomb-proof glass because it is such a valuable item.

But no amount of glass can protect it from reinterpretation by other artists. Here are ten alternative versions of Leonardo’s masterwork—and some of them are very alternative indeed.

Related: 10 Rare Discoveries About Famous Artists And Their Art

10 L.H.O.O.Q.

Marcel Duchamp scandalized and revolutionized the art world in the early 20th century when he began producing his “readymades.” He would take an everyday, mundane object and turn it into a work of art by placing it in an art gallery. Most famously, he took a urinal, turned it on its side, signed the name R. Mutt on it, and created a piece he called “Fountain.”

For his interpretation of the Mona Lisa, he used a postcard version of the painting and drew on a pointed mustache and small goatee beard. Under this, he labeled it L.H.O.O.Q. When these letters are read out in French, they sound like Ella a chaud au cul—meaning “She has a hot ass.”

Duchamp’s point was that no matter how great a work of art is perceived to be, it remains an object that can be played with.^[1]

9 Mona a’la Mace

Everyone likes to doodle drawings now and then. But only one person is considered the “da Vinci of Doodlers.” Lennie Mace is regarded as a master with the ballpoint pen. Using nothing more than ordinary pens, he crafts illustrations and what he calls PENtings. His most famous work is Mona a’la Mace—a Mona Lisa in ballpoint.

Because of his facility with pens, Mace was commissioned by the Pilot pen company to create a version of the Mona Lisa. The work foregoes Leonardo’s muted palette for ones of vivid purple. Somehow using nothing but ballpoints, Mace was able to replicate the soft and smooth contours that are a trademark of Leonardo’s style.

Although Mona a’la Mace once hung in Pilot’s offices, its current whereabouts are unknown. Since the artist was paid many thousands of dollars to make it, it probably did not end up in the garbage like most doodles.^[2]

8 Mona Lisa Bazooka

Banksy is the most famous street artist in the world. His graffiti often pops up in unexpected places, but it is rare for them to stay there for too long. His works can sell for millions. Entire walls have been taken out of buildings to allow the owners to sell their unexpected windfall.

In 2007, in Soho, London, Banksy created his take on the Mona Lisa. This time, instead of just holding the viewer with an enigmatic stare, the famous lady is shown holding a bazooka. By giving her a fearsome weapon, Mona Lisa’s subtle smile becomes maniacal. Is she smiling at the devastation she is about to unleash?

Not everyone is impressed by the juxtaposition of violence and sublime painting. One lady who spotted the work was heard to say, “Only boys with small d**ks paint pictures of big guns.”^[3]

7 Isleworth Mona Lisa

Leonardo da Vinci was a perfectionist. He was famous in his day for starting works and continuing to work on them for years, sometimes never completing them, as he strived to achieve his vision. The Mona Lisa may have been worked on from 1503 to 1517. Given the version in the Louvre took him so long, is it likely that Leonardo also created a second version? Some art historians think he did.

A copy of the Mona Lisa was bought in Italy in the 1780s and brought to Britain. It remained little known until 1913, when it was bought and displayed to the public. An article then appeared claiming that this version was also painted by Leonardo and was perhaps produced first. The next owner of the painting published a book that stated this was the only real Leonardo version—the one in the Louvre was just a copy by someone else. Coincidentally this would have made the painting he owned incredibly valuable.

Unfortunately for the current owners of the painting, there are a number of problems with attributing it to Leonardo. Leonardo painted on wooden boards, but the Isleworth Mona Lisa is painted on canvas.^[4]

6 Prado Mona Lisa

There are, unsurprisingly, many copies of the Mona Lisa. The one hanging in the Prado Museum in Madrid was thought to be just another of these for many years. However, when it was restored in 2012, experts were given the chance to reassess this painting, and they discovered something exciting.

The Prado Mona Lisa dates from around 1507 to 1516—exactly the time when Leonardo was producing his own work. When years of varnish and black overpainting were stripped back, the Prado Mona Lisa revealed its quality. In many ways, it is better preserved than the more famous Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and the details of the background are much clearer.

The Prado version is painted from a very slightly different angle than the Louvre version. It seems that this painting was made by an apprentice working beside Leonardo in the same studio. Who painted this Mona Lisa, however, remains a mystery as Leonardo had many assistants.^[5]

5 Monna Vanna

One of Leonardo’s closest assistants, and possibly his lover, was called Salai. Salai was taught the art of painting by Leonardo though he never equaled his master in talent. Some have suggested he helped Leonardo in other ways—one theory is that Salai was the real model for the Mona Lisa.

Salai is linked to the Mona Lisa in other ways. It may be that he painted the version in the Prado. It may also be that after Leonardo’s death, it was Salai who inherited the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. We do know that Salai produced at least one version of the Mona Lisa called the Monna Vanna. In that painting, the model sits in the same position as the Mona Lisa but has exposed breasts.

The Monna Vanna, or Vain Woman, might not be the scandalous Leonardo knock-off it at first seems. A sketch of the Monna Vanna was apparently drawn by Leonardo himself. It also appears to be a drawing of Salai with breasts—did Leonardo create it as an homage to his handsome young assistant or as a sly joke?^[6]

4 Mona Lisa Smoking a Pipe

The Dada movement and the Surrealists changed art forever when they made their bizarre contributions, but in many ways, they were building on the work of other strange artists. In 1882, an exhibition was put on in Paris called Arts Incohérents. It featured only work by artists who didn’t know how to draw. It was a huge success and was repeated several times in the following years. One of the contributors was an artist known as Sapeck, real name Eugène Bataille.

Sapeck was known for his eccentricities that pre-empted performance art. He had a habit of walking around the city with his head painted blue. So it should perhaps not be surprising that his Mona Lisa was a little odd.

Sapeck’s Mona Lisa is shown smoking a pipe and puffing out rings of smoke.^[7]

3 Mona Lisa

All artists cultivate a particular style to communicate their ideas. Fernando Botero certainly has style. As a painter and sculptor, Botero shows people that look as if they have been overinflated and are filling the space they’re in.

Botero’s Mona Lisa is not the delicate lady of Leonardo’s original but is instead a shapely, almost bulbous presence. Both have the same unknowable expression, though. How you interpret that look is probably very different depending on whether you are looking at a Botero or a Leonardo.

Botero has actually painted several versions of the Mona Lisa. One is called Mona Lisa, Age Twelve and shows the sitter as a sickly green young lady. Without the title, you might not even know who she was meant to be.^[8]

2 Monna Lisa (Be Back in 5 Minutes)

If anyone has seen the Mona Lisa, it is probably through a forest of tourists’ hands holding up their phones to snap a picture. It is hard to get up close to the painting, and when people do, they are often disappointed to find out the Mona Lisa is surprisingly small. Hardly anyone gets a chance to study the details. When you’re looking at her mouth, you don’t get much chance to look at the background. Behind Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is an imaginary landscape featuring mountains, paths, and a bridge.

Sophie Matisse is the great-granddaughter of the famous painter Henri Matisse, and she has created a series of works called “Be Back in 5 Minutes.” She takes famous works of art and removes the humans that would normally be in them. One of them shows off the gorgeous scenery that would be visible if only Mona Lisa would step out of the way.^[9]

1 Self Portrait Mona Lisa by Dali

Salvador Dali was one of the great surrealists. His work is instantly recognizable for the dreamscapes he conjures up featuring melting clocks or spindle-legged elephants. However, Dali not only painted bizarre works of art but also turned his whole life into one weird performance. Not the least of his eccentricities was the pointed and upturned mustache he cultivated.

Dali’s mustache is somewhat similar to the facial hair Duchamp painted on his version of the Mona Lisa. This makes what Dali did somewhat meta. He not only put his mustache on his own upper lip, but he also put his whole face on the Mona Lisa. Dali appears looking swivel-eyed and clutching a pile of coins, perhaps to suggest the madness of the huge amounts paid for classic works of art.

How much is the real Mona Lisa worth? It’s impossible to say as it will never be sold. However, in 1962, it was assessed at $100 million, nearly $1 billion today. But since then, the art market has gone wild, and almost any estimate would be sure to be beaten if the Mona Lisa appeared at auction.^[10]