It’s true. Life can suck. We’re lulled into unexciting daily routines, we don’t travel enough, money is tight, we have too many commitments, too much technology, etc. That’s why festivals are so great. They lend an escape, a jolt of “newness.” But is a simple escape enough? Looking to take that “jolt of newness” into “I just got hit in the face with a hundred fireworks, good thing I grabbed that helmet” territory? Have we got a list for you!

If you thought humans were biologically wired to avoid things that could harm, maim or kill them... you’d be right. That’s what makes these dangerous festivals so exciting. We love badass festivals here at Everfest. But badass as they are, these festivals aren’t just dangerous for the sake of danger. Most often, the foundations stem from religious tradition, hero worship and conflict resolution.

Not turned off at the prospect of losing your limbs or life? Read on, badass festie.

Festival of the Exploding Hammers, San Juan de la Vega, Mexico

Fat Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras , aka acceptable pre-Lent hedonism) is a staple celebration of Catholic-leaning countries around the world. Rarely solemn and often debaucherous, we haven't seen a Fat Tuesday celebration quite like this before. In San Juan de la Vegas, Mexico, history holds that Juan Aquino de la Vega was a local who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. At one point, the tables turned and those rich miners and landowners fought back. Four hundred years later, The Festival of Exploding Sledgehammers commemorates de la Vega with a reenactment of his victory battle over those local powers. Processions and prayers to the town's patron saint, St. John the Baptist, are capped off with men swinging sledgehammers, loaded with explosives, onto rocks.

Celebrants attach homemade explosives to sledgehammer heads, gear up with slapdash facial protection (often just bandanas or long sleeve shirts) and away they go. Shrapnel hurtles through the air as the hammer-holders slam the hammer heads over conductive surfaces like rocks, steel i-beams and metal plates for maximum spark impact. The blasts continue for several hours, and visibility drops to nil as white smoke fills the lot. Cover yo’ bits and take cover. 

Tazaungdaing Festival of Light, Taunggyi, Myanmar

Homemade fireworks packed and stuffed into the base of a hot air balloon made of paper. What could go wrong?

Every November on the week of a full moon, Myanmar celebrates the end of their six-month rainy season with the Tazaungdaing Festival of Light (also known as the Taunggyi Balloon Festival). Taunggyi locals spend months hand-stitching the balloon's paper parachutes and packing hundreds of fireworks and/or explosive varietals into the basket. Wild music, a manpower-propelled Ferris wheel, local eats and drum shows are all on offer at Tazaungdaing, but the real draw is the balloon launches. 

The Albuquerque Balloon Festival , this is not. Onlookers gather in a field as a handful of men proceed with the balloons towards the crowd's center. The balloon's basket is lit, and the explosives unleash their display at a semi-reasonable distance above the crowd. That's the way it's supposed to go. In 2014, one of the balloons barely rose into the sky before it crashed back down... full of freshly sparked explosives, straight down into the crowd of spectators. As you can see in the video above, a panicked crowd flees in terror. Four people died, and twelve more were seriously injured. Fireworks flinging in every direction, stampedes to safety? No. No, thank you. We're good.

Onbashira, Nagano, Japan

Onbashira is a masterclass in badassery. Every six years, thousands of men and women in Nagano, Japan, replace the four pillars at each of the corners of Shinto shrine Suwa Taisha (for a total of sixteen pillars). In the festival's "Yamadashi" period, the trees are cut, felled and left to sit for a month. Then, the festival's "Satobiki" half begins. Those sixteen ten-plus-ton logs are strapped to the locals, who slog them over the rivers and through the woods to Suwa Taisha.

It’s a rough journey. The video above captures the thrilling “Kiotoshi” segment of the festival, where the log luggers straddle the trunks and let gravity get 'er done. Naturally, it doesn’t take long for the logs to careen out of control and hit the skids. Viewers along the course watch as participants fall off and tumble wildly down the hill, all while trying to avoid being crushed in the tangle. The fanfare continues once the logs make it to the shrine intact. Those same laborers scale the upright logs and cling to the bark to put on a show, a lá Cirque du Soleil. Death by log sounds like fun! We're in.

Tinku Festival, Andes, Bolivia

Hand-to-hand combat in the Bolivian Andes. This is one we can get behind!

Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, Yanshui, Taiwan

It’s one thing to enjoy a fireworks display. It’s an entirely different thing to stand directly next to thousands of them, as one would for the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival. What is it with people and death-defying proximity to explosives??

A debilitating cholera epidemic was wiping out the Tainan province in the late 1800s, and locals pleaded to Guan Di, the Taoist god of war, to put an end to the contagion. Guan Di appointed General Zhou Cang to lead a procession through the town of Yanshui during the North's annual Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival . Di's palanquin brought up the rear while people ran behind his carriage, throwing fireworks on the ground. Apparently, the epidemic halted. 

Today, statues of Guan Di are pushed through the streets in a reenactment of that palanquin procession. Beehive-esque "gun decks," filled with thousands of rockets, are planted throughout the city at ground level. When the fuses are lit, those "beehive barricades" go BOOM. Thousands of rockets explode at ground level, zipping through the air like bees. Taiwanese locals and tourists come prepared with motorcycle helmets, hefty layers of impenetrable clothing and thick gloves, basically making them brave "beekeepers." We'd do this one with a decent buzz on.

Takanakuy, Santo Tomas, Peru

Got beef with your brother? Legal disputes got you down? Business partner steal your wife? Looking for a chance to unleash the kraken 'cause that's just what you do best? There's a festival for that. 

In Santo Tomas, Peru, locals clear pent-up grievances each year during Takanakuy, a socially acceptable time to beat up your acquaintances on Christmas Day. The festival is an equal-opportunity boxing ring for locals with scores to settle; it doesn’t matter if you’re nine or 95 years old.

From the outside, yes, this fest has the trappings of a machismo sausage fest. However, it's really a dedicated chance for villagers to kiss with a fist and make up. Tucked 12,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains, Santo Tomas's lack of access to technology, tiny police force, limited financial means and no viable courthouse makes solving disputes properly rather difficult. Takanakuy is the annual chance to settle the score, and locals take it seriously. The goal is to get it out and usher in a healthy new year, free from negative juju.

Running of the Bulls (Fiesta de San Fermín), Pamplona, Spain

YouTube, camera phones and brazen dimwits deserve a big round of applause for making Spain's Running of the Bulls (Fiesta de San Fermín) one of the most mainstream badass festivals in the world. Every July, three consecutive festivals – the feast day of San Fermín, an ancient trade fair, and a bullfighting festival – unfold over nine days in Pamplona. A series of urgent horns signal when to catch the daily bull runs. That means nine chances to run through the narrow, cobblestone alleyways of San Fermín with bulls at your heels! Nine chances to get yourself gored! Add in those bone-crushing crowds running for their lives right behind you? Yeah, no. Bravo to those spirited sprinters, but that's a big ole fat NOPE. Nope, so hard. Nope. We're happy just watching the action from our computer or phone screens.

Let's hear it: Which one of these would you go to?