Life is too short to play it safe. These crazy bucket list ideas range from adventurous to absolutely insane — organized by intensity so you can ease your way in or jump straight to the wild stuff.
Mildly Crazy — Adventurous Starters
- Go skydiving from 15,000 feet
- Ride the tallest roller coaster in the country
- Do a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race
- Get a spontaneous tattoo
- Eat the spiciest pepper you can find (Carolina Reaper anyone?)
- Do an escape room with a 10% success rate
- Ride a mechanical bull and try to stay on
- Go night diving in the ocean
- Try indoor skydiving
- Go paintball with extreme rules
- Take a polar bear plunge in freezing water
- Race go-karts at a professional track
- Try axe throwing competitively
- Go on a haunted tour alone at night
- Book a flight to a random destination and just go
Seriously Wild
- Bungee jump from a bridge or crane
- Go paragliding off a mountain
- Cage dive with great white sharks
- Go heli-skiing on untouched powder
- Walk across a glass-bottom bridge over a canyon
- Go white-water rafting on Class V rapids
- Sleep on the edge of a cliff in a hanging tent (portaledge)
- Go zip-lining across a jungle canopy at top speed
- Take a fighter jet experience flight
- Swim with crocodiles in a “Cage of Death”
- Go caving through tight underground passages
- Cliff dive in Acapulco or Dubrovnik
- Do a fire walk across hot coals
- Go sandboarding down massive desert dunes
- Free climb a beginner route outdoors
Absolutely Insane
- Try base jumping (with professional training)
- Go storm chasing in Tornado Alley
- Do a wing walk on a biplane
- Run with the bulls in Pamplona (or watch from safety)
- Swim across a lake or open water channel
- Run an ultramarathon (50+ miles)
- Take a zero-gravity flight
- Go volcano boarding in Nicaragua
- Do an ice mile swim
- Climb a via ferrata route on a sheer cliff face
Crazy Travel Ideas
- Book a one-way ticket and figure out the rest later
- Travel to every continent in one year
- Take a helicopter to the top of a glacier
- Ride the most dangerous road in the world (Bolivia’s Death Road by bike)
- Visit the most remote place you can find
- Sleep in the desert under a blanket of stars
- Cross an international border on foot
- Take the longest train journey possible without stopping
Crazy Challenges
- Enter a hot dog eating contest
- Stay awake for 48 hours straight (safely, with supervision)
- Shave your head for charity
- Run a marathon with no training (not recommended, but people do it)
- Do 1,000 push-ups in a day
- Eat only food you’ve caught, grown, or foraged for a week
- Live without a phone for an entire week
“Legal But Feels Illegal”
- Walk out of a store without buying anything
- Eat an entire cake by yourself in one sitting
- Take a day off work and tell absolutely nobody
- Go to a movie theater completely alone on a weekday
- Wear sunglasses indoors all day
- Order the most expensive thing on the menu
- Walk into a luxury store in pajamas
- Eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast