If you need to keep a secret, you could…
• …get a heroin addiction. I believe it was season three in which our hero, Jack Bauer, became an addict to get in good with some Mexican drug lords, thereby allowing himself to thwart their eventual goal of purchasing some kind of killer virus (Oh, "24," your complex twists endear us to you so!). He kept as few people in on it as possible, mainly the delicious Tony, his ever-present Cubs mug, and Gael, some generic, I-can’t-believe-I-remember-his-name-all-these-seasons-later Counter Terrorism Unit employee. Jack’s dedication to the project allowed it to develop under the noses of all at CTU. And cultivating a raging heroin addiction? That’s 100% commitment to your goal and keeping your ulterior motives under wraps. I applaud that.
Doing the smack, the junk, the china white, the big H - all in a day's work for our main man, JB.
• …put the info on a computer chip and stitch it up inside your own body. If I’m remembering correctly, some guy Jack was hunting down did this, and Jack only saw it when he looked at an x-ray of the guy’s chest. Because he is Jack Bauer, he dug in there bare-handed and heroic to retrieve the chip, but I still feel like this is a really smart way to conceal information, simply because there are no Jack Bauers in the real world and your chip would most likely go to the grave with you because of that. Those are just the facts, friends.
• …”go dark.” I can’t count how many times Jack has “gone dark” over the years, but he usually does it when he’s doing something, shall we say, a little outside of the accepted parameters of normal behavior. To achieve full “darkness” you have to cut off all communication with your base (or anyone for that matter) and take off of any satellite-tracking device you might have on you. This way, no one knows what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, or whom you’re doing it to.
• …fake your own death. I can’t imagine that I would ever be in a situation that would require me to fake my own death, but I know I can after seeing Jack do it so successfully on “24.” Apparently there’s not a lot to it: Take some sort of medication that stops your heart, have friends on standby ready to push epi to bring you back, then disappear to some ghetto town where you take on a new identity, complete with a new look (Jack got a sweet chop and some cowboy-looking duds; I would probably end up either looking butch or, conversely, like a beauty pageant queen), a new occupation (Jack: Oil Driller, Nicole: Perpetual trainee at a string of fast food joints), and a new, unimpressive name (Jack went with Frank; I’m going with Alice, because I’m cute like that).
Keeping your own secrets is one thing, but if you need information from a perp who won’t talk, you could…
• …shoot the guy in the thigh. Apparently you can survive a thigh shot and walk again, all while remaining coherent enough to answer questions. Hit the knee or below and you’ve permanently paralyzed your informant, which I wouldn’t think would inspire him to give you anything useful. When watching “24,” “Shoot him in the thigh!” is my most common mantra, mainly because Jack has used this technique many times to monumental success and I always wonder why he doesn’t just jump to that move, his ringer, right off the bat instead of trying some other things first. It’s probably because he gets his torture on so often that he needs to mix it up a little, lest it becomes boring and tedious.
A few inches lower = paralyzed. A few inches higher = also not good.
• …give him the “swallow the towel” treatment. In season one, Jack tells some dude how in Russian prisons (gulags?), when they need to get the 411 out of their inmates, they make them swallow one end of a towel, which slowly makes it’s way down to the stomach, while they hold on to the other end. The stomach then begins doing it’s stomachly duties and digests the towel, at which point the towel is slowly pulled out of the mouth, bringing with it the stomach lining. So gross, so fantastically effective. Love it.
• …use sensory deprivation. Remember in season four when Jack had to torture the dippy little brother of his then- paramour, Audrey? This was his chosen method, complete with screeching and screaming in what was probably one of those awesome Bose headsets. Also there were some creepy black out goggles involved, and he may or may not have been strapped to a chair, “$100,000 Pyramid” style. Anyway, that kid was such a wuss I feel sure that Jack thought this was his only way to go; if he’d shot him in the thigh (as I loudly recommended) he probably would have gone all hysterical and wet his pants, and then he would have been no use to Jack. And also, Jack strikes me as the type of man who wouldn’t appreciate a floor covered in urine. Especially someone else’s urine. So there’s that.
• …go for the electroshock, especially if it’s delivered through some live wires you just yanked out of a lamp. Jack laid the torture down on Audrey’s ex-husband this way once. I must say, it was pretty brutal to watch, which of course translates to “It was one of my favorite moments of that season.” Props to Chloe, a CTU tech genius, for using this method in the form of a good tasering when some drunken boob was flirting with her at a bar. I think she hit that guy like four or five times. I’ve never been prouder of a fictional character more so than I was of Chloe at that very moment.
Bravo, Chloe. You're a beacon of hope for annoyed women in bars everywhere.
• …go very, very gorilla and just plastic bag their head. I’ve learned from Jack that when you don’t have time to get creative, you can always hit them where it hurts: oxygen deprivation. Jack did this to his own brother recently. When I saw that, I told my brother, “You know, I don’t think I would have any qualms about torturing you,” to which he replied, after about 30 second of deep thought, “Yeah, me neither.” Huh.
Finally, if torturing is not enough and it becomes necessary to kill someone, or if you have to kill them anyway…
• …use a gift card that you’ve snapped in half. Jack can’t take credit for this little gem; his arch nemesis, the evil Nina, whipped out this technique way back in season three to get slice open the neck of another random, nameless CTU peon. It was unexpected, and while my hate for Nina and her bizarre wardrobe and hair choices runs quite deep, I can’t help but give her props. That’s ingenious.
• …deprive them of their essential medications. Another little biscuit Jack can’t claim; this one was doled out by Sherry Palmer, the (again) evil wife of our beloved President David Palmer. I forget how this all went down, except that she withheld meds from an old dude who had some dirt on her husband and he died. I like it because it’s simple, it’s to the point, and most importantly, it’s bloodless. Plus, who’s to say that she really did anything? Maybe the old coot just couldn’t get himself to his meds in time. There’s no case there, Your Honor.
• …use a pistol fitted with a silencer. I had no idea what a silencer was the first time I saw it, but I liked it immediately. I remember asking Andrea, “What is that thing on the gun?” and she said, “That’s a silencer,” and I said, “Wow.” There were just no other words. I still get excited when I see a silencer on screen, just because I know that there will be some serious business going down. Plus, I think a silencer is indicative of a classier, better thought out production, as a stock gat without a silencer seems more…pedestrian. Because I’m nothing if not a lady, I say bring on the silencer.
• …get your stab on. This is undoubtedly my favorite form of physical violence, mostly because it seems like you’d have to have quite a bit of rage to effectively carry out a stabbing, or else it’s just a poke. You’ve got to have a lot of feeling behind it, you know? It’s very purposeful. I mean, you can accidentally shoot someone, but I would think it’d be super hard to accidentally shiv a guy. Also, it has given Andrea and I an excellent new phrase that we use all the time: “I’m feeling a little stabby today,” as in, “I’m having a bad day, and most likely, if push came to shove, I probably wouldn’t have any difficulty getting my shiv on.”
• …channel your inner Jeffrey Daumer, go balls out and bite straight through a man. At one point this season, it became necessary for Jack to break free of his captors to relay some overheard intel to CTU, and he did so by biting through his guard’s jugular. It just doesn’t get more hardcore than that. He bit through a man! That is awesome.
Gives a new meaning to the phrase, "man meat."
As you can probably deduce, I have had to put exactly zero of these lessons into practice in my own life, but that doesn’t mean I never will. I still think they’re worth knowing, just in case I ever become brave or smart or useful (unlikely) and someone actually needs me to do something heroic on a large scale (i.e., saving the world from some form of imminent destruction – also improbable). Until then…more blogging.
