There's a wonderful new neighbor that's just
moved in down the block, a middle aged man who seems to always have a polite word to
say to everyone as you come across his path. His front lawn is always perfectly manicured,
and his small home seems to always be kept in impeccable order. He's charming, and can hold a conversation
on a variety of topics, and it's clear he's extremely intelligent. Then one night he invites you over to dinner-
yes, just you, in fact he's insistent on this. Strangely though he doesn't bother to ask
you what your appetite is like, or what you like or dislike to eat. Actually, he doesn't even mention the menu
at all. As you enter his home he quickly locks the
door behind you and ushers you into his very chic dining room, even offers to pour you
a nice glass of Chianti. Right about then is when it slowly starts
to dawn on you why your kindly new neighbor- Mr. Lecter was it?- never bothered to mention
the menu... because it's you that's on the menu. So you've been taken hostage by a superintelligent
mass murdering cannibalistic serial killer that's hellbent on making you his main course-
how in the world are you going to get out of this one? As usual in order to defeat your enemy, you
must understand your enemy. Hannibal Lecter was born on January 20th,
1933 in an ancient castle in Lithuania- the name of the town being one that we didn't
feel like torturing our narrator with trying to pronounce. Born into a wealthy order of Lithuanian aristocrats,
Lecter comes from a long line of distinguished European royalty, and very clearly carries
the nobility of his birth in the way he speaks and moves. It is rumored that Lecter was also related
to a ruthless 12th century man known as Giuliano Bevisangue, who was himself a descendant of
the infamous Machiavelli line and whose name literally means blood-drinker. Though Lecter furiously pursued research into
any possible links to Mr. Blood-Drinker, he was unable to confirm the heritage and we
can't blame him because if we could claim a familial relationship to someone named blood-drinker,
we would legally change our name immediately. An extremely gifted child, Lecter was beloved
by his father who invested greatly into his education, teaching him English and German
along with his native Lithuanian. When he was six years old his mother gave
birth to his sister, Mischa, and the two very quickly cemented a strong bond. Unfortunately Lecter's childhood bliss would
be shattered when on July 23rd, 1941, the Nazis overran his family castle as part of
Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi plan to have the Soviets destroy them completely. Lecter was forced to flee to a lodge in the
forest where his family was forced to live off the land, feeding on wild game caught
by his father whom then taught Lecter to hunt. In hindsight, that might've been a bad idea,
but identifying cannibalistic serial killing tendencies in young children is notoriously
difficult to do. One day though a Soviet tank stopped by the
lodge and the crew demanded water. Suddenly a German Stuka fighter-bomber struck
the tank, blowing it up and killing Lecter's entire family except for himself and his little
sister. Then a few days later, a group of Lithuanians
who had joined the Nazis stumbled upon the lodge and held Lecter and his sister captive. When food ran out and the winter seemed like
it would refuse to let up, the group killed and ate Mischa, which scarred young Hannibal
Lecter for life. Later, he would say that this destroyed his
faith in God, and that he no longer believed there was any real justice in the world. When the captors left the lodge, Lecter was
left to wander the forest alone with a shackle around his neck. That shackle would end up scarring him for
life, the skin around his neck rubbing raw and never truly healing. Eventually a group of Soviet tankers found
Lecter and brought him back to his family's castle which had been turned into an orphanage,
and there Lecter stayed until he was adopted by his aunt. Falling in love with his aunt, Lecter would
commit his first murder when a local butcher insulted her, and Lecter stabbed him to death,
then sliced off his cheeks and ate them, his first act of cannibalism- though the Lithuanian
men who had eaten his sister claimed that he had also partaken in the feast, so the
point is a bit murky. What is extremely clear though is that from
this first murder Lecter would grow up to become a prodigal murderer and cannibal, until
his capture in 1975. Though the court would find him insane, it
ultimately spared him the death penalty and he was instead sent to the Baltimore State
Hospital for the Criminally Insane to serve out nine consecutive life terms. He would eventually escape even his custom-made
high security cell, which he earned after ripping out a nurse's eye, dislocating her
jaw, and biting off and eating her tongue. For his escape, Lecter would top his previous
brutality though by severely wounding a police officer and then skinning his face off and
wearing it as a mask as he fled to safety. Physically speaking, Hannibal Lecter is on
the wrong side of middle age, but is by no means a weak old man. His sheer brutality is enough to see him rip
people's tongues off with his teeth, and that kind of raw violence and the willingness to
commit it is a strength all its own. The fact that such animal savagery is backed
up by one of society's keenest intellects is all the more terrifying. So just how in the world are you going to
defeat him? First, forget about trying to outsmart Lecter-
we don't care how clever you think you are in the comment section or how sick your burns
are, Lecter is on a totally different level and will outthink you three ways from Friday. In fact, trying to outwit Lecter has often
been his victim's greatest mistakes- that and falling for another of Lecter's unique
talents, hiding his violent predisposition under the guise of civility. We've all seen the movie where the victim
realizes that the neighbor next door is the serial killer, which means you, the audience,
knows he's the killer, the victim knows he's the killer, and the killer knows he's the
killer and that the victim knows he's the killer. And yet in every single movie, the killer
will politely invite the victim into a situation that places them in danger, and the victim
agrees. Why? Because of the social contract we all buy
into that forces us to maintain the illusion of polite civility, even when we're about
to have our face eaten by a cannibal. Lecter is a pro at using this unwitting social
contract to lure his victims to their own demise, and you can bet that even as you're
realizing that this wonderful new neighbor is going to eat your most delicate bits and
pieces, he's still going to try to use this social pressure to lower your defenses and
seal your doom. Instead, we're going to take a page out of
Lecter's own book and tap into the more wild side of mankind. It's said that civilization is nothing more
than a thin veneer over the true, savage nature of man, and that it takes very little to pull
that veneer back and unleash the animal within. Many sociologists fear what would happen to
modern civilization should our daily conveniences fail en masse one day, and stay down for a
prolonged period of time. How long would civilization stay... well,
civil, if the power went out for a week. For a month. For a year?! How about fresh water, pumped directly into
your tap? How long would the average person stay polite
and conscientious of the law as resources run out? Our personal guess is that it would be a matter
of days, and events like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005 bear witness
to how quickly even our mightiest cities can fall into chaos and lawlessness. So to win this fight, you're gonna have to
get to Katrina-levels of uncivilized behavior, you're gonna have to make yourself an animal. Pretend PUBG's servers were down, for an entire
day, or that YouTube was failing to post your brilliant comeback on every single comments
section fight you got into. Get in touch with what it would feel like
to have the conveniences and indulgences of modern life stripped away, let the rage build
and push you over the edge. To beat Lecter, you're going to have to get
brutal- like, gouge-out-eyes-and-rip-out-tongues-and-eat-them level of brutal. Sheer animal ferocity is going to win you
this fight, because you can't out think Lecter, and you can't out maneuver him. Sure, you think you can get up off the table
and run away, maybe find a weapon to arm yourself with- but you're inside his house that he
invited you into, don't you think he's planned every possible scenario out already? You're sitting in a big, fat trap, and now
its jaws are closing around you and in minutes Lecter is going to be grilling you up and
storing the leftovers in tupperware. But you can take advantage of Lecter's hubris,
because the last thing he would expect is that you would be willing to forego our polite
social contract and jump straight into an animalistic frenzy. See, Lecter doesn't just believe he's smarter
than you, he believes he's more savage than you, so you need to prove him wrong. Leap up on that table and howl at the moon,
grab the nearest sharp object and commit yourself to a fight to the death. Then when you survive your death match you'll
have plenty of time to get back in touch with your humanity from inside prison, because
you did initiate the attack after all and good luck convincing a jury that the kindly,
charismatic Doctor Lecter was actually going to eat you. How would you defeat Hannibal Lecter? Let us know in the comments, and as always
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