Babble challenge: 50 ways to escape a locked room

1. Kick down the door
2. Unlock the door
3. Use high-pressure water source to explode the room

4. Contact someone and get them to open the door

5. Learn how to pick locks and pick the locks

6. Eat through the door

7. Bust through the thin drywall

8. End up in a low-probability universe where you teleport outside the room

9. Wait for someone to come open the door

10. Upload yourself and have yourself reconstructed on the outside

11. Build an AGI to solve the problem

12. Hire someone to come blow up the door

13. Go on an extreme diet and slide under the door

14. Train hard at karate so you can break off the hinges with one blow

15. Use a rocket launcher

16. Climb out through ventilation shaft

17. Synthesize corrosive compound that eats through the wall

18. Tunnel underground with your hands

19. Take screw from glasses, burrow out hole in door so you can reach hand through and unlock it

20. Take your shoe and hit the bolts out

21. Use hemp in food to grow a rope and then slip under the door and wait for someone to trip and then let them know you're there

22. Scream at resonant frequency of the wall so it explodes

23. Trigger sprinkler system to soften drywall

24. Burn down whole room and hope your remains are enterred outside of the room

25. Wear your way through the wall

26. Eat so much food that you get bigger than the room and then it explodes

27. Download blueprints for the room and then exploit weak points

28. Use avocado pits to cut out cinderblock

29. Find out how to make explosives from food (methane gas?)

30. Use acidity of something to wear away metal in room

31. Train super hard to run fast enough opposite to Earth's spin to stop its spin and blow the room away via inertia (this wouldn't work)

32. Build a 3D printer that takes food as input and produces keys to the door

33. Jump hard enough to bust head through ceiling

34. Use light + unlimited energy to wood burn out of the room

35. Wave your hands so fast the air turns to plasma

36. Call the police and tell them you have weed in the room

37. Let food rot; bug eggs hatch; bugs chew through the door

38. Hire a hitman to kidnap you

39. Climb out through the window

40. Rip off two of your toes and rub them together to make a fire

41. Wait for tornado

42. Wait for earthquake

43. Wait until sun expands and then "your" molecules likely end up outside of the former room's molecules

44. Spin arms at right angle to get lift to turn yourself into a human helicopter and fly out of the skylight

45. Use tine on belt to pick lock

46. Get the building condemned (via your phone) and torn down

47. Sand away log walls with sandblock

48. Drill through the wall by spinning your hand quickly

49. Scratch out with really long fingernails

50. Yell for help

1. Smash door with with hands and elbow tackle
2. Pick the lock
3. Claw throught the door
4. Search room for supplies to take down door
5. Smash windows and air vents for alternative exits
6. Call emergency number
7. Call friends to come aid
8. Rely on friends to come looking for you for becoming a missing person
9. Fry lock electronics with phone battery
10. Instigate carpet bombing of country you last remember to be in to take down the room
11. Make wifi-hotspot with network name "come free me from the locked room"
12. Dig a tunnel out (samey with 3?)
13. Call lock manufacturers to reinstall locks of the type that the door has
14. Hit walls to echolocate surroundings to get idea where you are and call buddy
15. Use plethora of water available to pressurise the door open
16. Leak water outside of the room to alert passerbys of unusual goings on
17. Use water to grow mould and/or to rust and degrade door hinges
18. Yell "help come help me"
19. Knock on door and ask why you have been captured
20. Use excessive amount of phone charge to make a particle accelerator to knock down door
21. Fast to lure kidnappers in to prevent hostage loss
22. Meditate to remember in detail how you got into the room (to know who to contact)
23. Look at architectural style and materials and research wikipedia etc to narrow down where you might be
24. Make your phone listen to other wifi-networks and hack into google maps or other services who know how to use such data for locating
25. Post on internet message boards to ask for help
26. Make a alternate reality game that lures people to find you (samey with 25?)
27. Grow and rinse fingernails and hair for years to make implementes to get further reach beyond door
28. Use your homeostasis products to make methane enough to blow the door up
29. Use stomach acid to dissolve lock
30. Hack into a very good listening satellite and make phone do a strong as possible signal to find yourself from space
31. Escape into imagination and memory
32. Hack other wifi soures and time for them to send signal that maxes out at the location of the lock to EMP it.
33. Try electronic lock combinations
34. Open electronic lock to reverse engineer it
35. Smell air to deduce where you are
36. Make scary lunatic rituals to try to scare outside captors to come stop you
37. Try all kinds of esoteric rituals to summon helpers
38. Jump down from windows, use clothes for rope / parachute
39. Drill holes into room to let water erode a passage over multipe years (hope room is undergound)
40. Use clothes to seal door for gas pressure and use metabolism products to increase inside pressure to hopefully dehinge the door
41. Rub door to make fire or melt parts
42. Use clothes to create a lot of rope to swing and pull on the door constantly
43. Use internet to try to make people more earthquakes to hopefully tear down your walls
44. Trigger nuclear war to tear down walls (might not be super conductive to good health)
45. Try different rythms of moving back and forth to create a resonance effect to tear down walls (hope room is high up)
46. Tap wall for morse code to communicate with nearby fellow prisoners and stage a rebellion
47. State that you want to go home and that kidnapping is illegal and immoral
48. Try say all kinds of codewords hoping one of them is a scenario safe-word
49. Deface the room so that maintainer of the room would start to feel sorry for it or that your story will make it to the newspapers
50. Jump up and down and in general burn a lot of calories to make the room wear down faster.

~40 minutes

Over doing it to keep safely over 50

4. Room was empty, search can't produde items: Claw material off walls to use as sand to wedge door to wear it down under pressure

8. Doesn't involve any action, thus can't fullfil any verb (such as escape): Make string and rope go throguth keyhole to mechanically wear it down

 12. is a repeat: Echolocation to find structural weakpoint and then karate down the walls

20. is a repeat of 9 (and lack of tools hard to pull from your body and clothes): Use body metabooites to make toxic/nauseating bomb and apply to prison guards and hope a investigation party opens the door

 26. is a repeat: Use blood chemistry to weaken or bloat the lock (regenerate blood from big food supply)

31. Fails to escape: Upload yourself into a outside body

~ 55 minutes

1. Kick in the door

2. Break the window with a fist, climb out

3. Dive roll through the window

4. Front flip through the window

5. Throw your phone with enough force to break the door

6. Throw your phone with enough force to break the wall

7. Ram head first through the wall

8. Call your mother to come get you

9. Call the emergency numbers so someone gets you

10. Get a date via tinder, then let them get you out.

11. Convince a random stranger on some obscure web forum to get you out

12. Hack into the buildings security via WiFi and unlock the door electronically

13. Let your phone emit resonant sounds to break the window glass

14. Open the window, yell loudly to get a passer-by to get you out

15. Climb through the air vents

16. Use the phone to dig a hole in the floor

17. Break your phone, use the glass shards to carve a hole in the door

18. Order a eascape kit from Amazon, get it delivered you you, realize you don't need it cause the delivery guy opened the door

19. Meditate until you have an out of body experience and leave the room

20. Start a cult online, let your followers free you

21. Hack a launching rocket, redirect it, let it crash in a way that it destroys a wall but does not kill you

21. Make the singularity happen, upload your mind to the net, leave that way

22. Incite a violent revolution, hope that the chaos will ensure the building gets damaged and leave.

23. Provoke Trump into starting a nuclear war on twitter, leave after the building is destroyed.

24. Hire a drug cartel tunnel boring team to dig you out

25. Carefully disassemble the ceiling tiles to realize there is no roof and leave

26. Google "how to escape a locked room" and follow the instructions

27. Check the less wrong babble challenge on the same topic for new ideas, pick the one you like most

28. Realize that your jacket has an integrated survival tool kit (you are THAT guy) and pick the lock with the mandatory lock pick utility

29. Simply teleport yourself through sheer power of will

30. Change your aggregate state to fluid, flow through the gaps in the door, change shape back.

31. Use your laser eye superpower to cut a hole through the roof

32. Realize you are superman and fly through the roof.

33. Hack the electronic door by making an elaborate electromagnetic pattern by manipulating your phone

34. Order a Uber/Taxi, ask the driver to open the door from the outside on pickup

35. Mediate for 10 years, transcend reality, walk through the wall on the last day because walls are socially constructed.

36. Wake up from the bad dream.

37. Panic, spend 7 years in the room, then suddenly the simulation encounters a bug and you appear somewhere else.

38. Lick the walls that are lined with some kind of drug that gives you super strength, use that strength to get out.

39. Yell and hit the door until someone outside hears you and helps you get out.

40. Run around in circles at such high speed that the heat you create will melt the building around you.

41. Eat the walls because they are made out of candy.

42. Fart. Short-circuit the phone to cause a spark, igniting the gas. The explosion damages the door, leave.

43. Become a black hole, imploding the building around you. Turn back into your regular form at precisely the moment when the building is gone, but nothing else.

44. Realize the phone's battery is powerful enough to last to many years - short circuit it on the metal door frame to melt it away.

45. Jump out of the window, using your jacket as a parachute.

46. Wait until someone else randomly comes by to enter the room, leave. You have 10 years after all.

47. Wait until the inevitable errors during construction present themselves in the form of the door falling off. Leave.

48. Train a neural network to generate escape plans for you, follow the instructions.

49. Join a "locked in a room anonymous" self help group online, follow the instructions the new member flyer.

50. Become a famous influencer on Instagram, make a contract with some advertising company, wait for them to come by to sign the paperwork.

1. Try the door; it may be unlock able from the inside.

2. Check for windows; open window.

3. If window locked, break window.

4. If window break-resistant, break out window frame.

5. If door locked at knob, break knob off.

6. Break door open, via mule kick or hip check.

7. If steel or similar, break doorframe out of wall.

8. If door and wall resistant to single burst, use rhythmic slams.

9. If window and wall resistant to single burst, use rhythmic slams.

10. Check for trapdoors to lower floors or basement.

11. Check for attic access to upper floors, attic, or roof.

12. Use phone with wifi to research the doors and/or windows.

13. Use phone with wifi to ask friend/family member to unlock it for me.

14. Use phone with wifi to ask security at the front desk to unlock it for me.

15. Use phone with wifi to ask friend/family member to bring tools to destroy door.

16. Check walls; if drywall or similar, break through.

17. Check for ventilation shafts; if large enough, crawl through (fat chance, I’m huge)

18. Check ceiling; if it is like an office building, might be able to climb over the wall

19. If can’t climb over the wall, may be able to harvest roof parts as tools to use on door, walls, windows, etc.

20. Check for fire alarm. Pull in hopes the fire department or security team come to reset.

21. Check for smoke alarm. Pull in hopes the fire department or security team come to reset.

22. Use phone to call police.

23. Use phone to call fire department.

24. Use phone to post plea for help on a public forum, like Reddit or Craigslist or whatever.

25. If electronic lock, research with phone to see if it has a default password or manufacturers code.

26. If electronic lock with keypad, use phone to determine key length and manually try combinations.

27. Use cell phone to play the most annoying song on earth on repeat into the ventilation shaft until personnel give up and open the door for me.

28. Stomp a hole in the floor and drop down into the lower floors.

29. Jump up to punch a hole in the ceiling climb into the upper floors.

30. Check for electrical outlets or wires in the ceiling. Rip these partially out, and use them to shock the electronic lock on the door.

31. Let the stink of urine/feces drive other people in the building to come investigate.

32. Piss on the floor, and let the floor rot away over years.

33. Same thing, but the walls. It’s really not worth it for the ceiling; I’ll not sit in a room dripping piss.

34. Use phone to make up rumors about the company that owns the building until they go bankrupt and have to sell; building will be inspected pre-sale, and let me out.

35. Break lightbulbs for sharp glass, and scratch my way out.

36. Use phone to post a reward for my release.

37. Capitalize on an unrelated disaster, like a bomb goes off, or a fire, or a tornado damages the room to escape.

38. Use wiring to cause a short, which will eventually require repair crews to get into the room.

39. Use phone to report a bomb threat, and describe my room as the bomb’s location.

40. Rip a stud out of the wall to use as a battering ram on the door.

41. Use cell phone battery to start actual fire, and gamble desperately that they will get to you before you suffocate or burn to death.

42. Use phone to determine resonant frequency of door lock, and play a sound at that frequency until it wiggles open.

43. Use phone to determine resonant frequency of window material, and play a sound at that frequency until it cracks.

44. Use urine and feces to craft a low-yield manure bomb, and use cell phone battery or electric wiring to trigger it and blow the door.

45. Spit, piss, or bleed on the electric lock to short it out. Maybe even cry.

46. Yell for help through the door/window/ventilation

47. Yell fire through the door/window/ventilation

48. Stand naked in front of the window so the police arrest me for indecent exposure

49. Pantomime being murdered in front of the window so passerby report it to the police

50. Pound SOS on the door or wall in morse code

1) Phone a friend to come and open the door for you

2) Break the window with my fists and jump out

3) If the floor is made of soil a tunnel can be dug under the walls

4) Use the power in the phone to start a fire and set fire to the door

5) Disassemble the phone and try to make a key to pick the lock

6) Crawl out through a convenient ventilation duct

7) If the lock is connected to the internet the phone could be used to hack it and trick it into unlocking

8) Wait for whoever locked you in to open the door, knock them unconscious and go through the open door

9)  Jump up to the low roof and open the skylight

10) Cry out at the top of my voice, to ask someone outside to let me out

11) If the lock can be unlocked by saying the right password keep guessing it until you get it right

12) Dismantle the phone to make an improvised screwdriver, and unscrew the screws holding the lock in place

13) Post messages on every social media account, and hope someone will pick them up and free you.

14) Look for and find a secret passage leading out

15) Contact a good lawyer on the phone, to get the authorities to let you out of jail.

16) Slide piece of clothing under the door, push key out of lock, pull clothing and key under door, use key to open lock

17) Use phone to send money to someone as a bribe to let you out

18) If the phone happens to have the key stored on it to open the lock just use.

19) Pick away at the mortar holding the brisk together until they can be removed.

20) Use acid in the phones battery to melt the lock

21) Pretend to be dead, so whoever locked you in will take your body outside.

22)  Bang out an SOS signal on the door in the hope it will attract the attention of someone who will let you out

23) Call the fire brigade to get you out

24) Take something thin out of the phone, insert it between the door and the frame, and try and force the lock back

25) Crawl out through a large gap under the door

26) Call a locksmith to let you out

27) Keep running into the door until it gives way

28) Keep jumping up and down on the floor till it gives way and you fall into the room below.

29) Just wait. If the room is in a bad state of repair one of the walls might collapse allowing me to walk out.

30) Who cares about the physical world. If I have wi-fi I can escape virtually into cyberspace

31) Pray to a God to let me out

32) Find something magnetic in the phone. Use the magnet to draw the bolt on the other side of the door back

33) My clothes are an improvised suit or armour partly made up of a saw (I was attending a fancy dress party). Use the saw to cut through the lock

34) Set my clothes on fire. The lock is programmed to open if a fire is detected, so I can walk out

35) Use the phone to create a program for a super intelligent AI, and leave it to figure out how to get me out

36) Post a creative thinking exercise to Less Wrong: Find 50 ways to get out of a locked room and hope someone comes up with a usable idea

37) Use the phone to contact my driverless car. It can ram the walls to break through and let me out

38) The room is precariously balanced on a cliff edge. Moving to one side will cause it to topple and then break up

39) Someone forgot to build a roof, so I can jump up grab the top of the walls and hall myself out

40) If there is a letter box in the door I can reach through it and unbolt the door

41) The lock is made out of glass. Sing at its resonant frequency so it shatters and the door can be opened

42) Just walk up to the door. It just happens to be a type that automatically unlocks and opens when someone approaches

43) Fiddle with the phone so it starts transmitting at a frequency that will interfere with other important transmissions. The authorities will need to come and unlock the room to stop the interference.

44) The walls of the room are made of light weight plastic which is not fixed to the floor, so I can pick the entire room up and slip under it.

45) Remove some wire from the phone, push it through the letterbox and try to pick up the key which has been left on a nearby shelf with it.

46) I left a spare key buried in the ground just in case I got locked in. Dig it out and use it to escape.

47) There is a big whole in a wall that has been covered over with a piece of canvas. I can find something sharp in the phone to cut my way out.

48) Kill this body and activate a clone which is not locked inside the room.

49) If our technology advanced enough that we can live without food or water for 10 years maybe its advanced enough that I can just teleport out.

50) Keep punching the wall until it is worn away and I can step out

1. Pick the lock
2. Smash down the door
3. Unscrew the door from its hinges and remove it
4. Escape through a vent
5. Hack the door
6. Alter your administration records to show that you ought to be released
7. Wait 10 years for natural administration changes to destabilise your holders until it is no longer remembered that you should be kept here
8. Use a significant portion of your 10 years of energy to create an explosion that destroys the walls
9. Walk out between the comically spaced bars
10. Bend the bars to allow you to escape
11. Dig into the wall and remove the bars from where they were mounted
12. Dig out through a tunnel
13. Smash through the wall
14. Dig through the wall
15. Dig through the ceiling
16. Bribe the guards
17. Persuade the guards
18. Seduce the guards
19. Use your phone to contact people outside to break you out (probably bribed)
20. Make your imprisonment a political thing, and then wait for administration change
21. Make your imprisonment a political thing, and then wait for your supporters to break you out
22. Write and publish a high-quality book series under a pseudonym using your real face, make yourself a prominent social figure, purchase a house remotely and pay someone to make it look lived-in, and then one day act as though you have suddenly been mistaken for someone else and kidnapped
23. Use the energy in your phone battery to create an explosion to destroy a wall
24. Wait for someone else to escape and let everyone else out
25. Use the energy in your phone battery to melt the bars
26. Use the energy in your phone battery to melt the door lock bolt
27. Hire someone outside to invent teleportation, and then teleport you out
28. Invent teleportation remotely using your phone to access lab assets, and then teleport yourself out
29. Create an AI on your phone to vastly improve the data gain from using your camera, use this to scan yourself, and use your phone to access lab assets outside and print an identical copy of yourself, and then terminate yourself
30. Create an AI on your phone, and then let it do the work of figuring out the rest of the plan
31. Figure out the resonant frequency of the door, and then use your phone to destroy it
32. Ditto, but for the walls
33. Ditto, but for the bars
34. Conquer the world remotely, and then let yourself out
35. Hack a 3D printer outside, print a robot, and then guide that robot to get you out
36. Hack the five most prominent social media websites, and guide the world towards freeing you (or your reference class)
37. Hack the five most prominent social media websites, and use your influence to dismantle the influence and property of the owners of where you are being kept
38. Buy the-place-where-you-are-being-kept, and then walk out as the owner
39. Smash though a window
40. Remove the window without breaking it, and then escape through the gap left
41. Look up the make and model of the lock on LPL's youtube channel, and pick it with the instructions provided
42. Reverse engineer the strange physics of your phone battery/yourself, and use this knowledge to escape in ways unfathomable to myself
43. Hack the military administration systems of a foreign country, and mislead an automated drone strike such that it destroys one wall of your room
44. Hack the military administration systems of a foreign country, and edit yourself in as an informant on their side who needs to be retrieved
45. Remotely edit the law such that it does not allow for you to be kept here, and then appeal your case
46. Hack into a rocket mid-flight, and control it such that it crashes into where you are being held
47. Hack a nearby chemicals processing plant, and cause an explosion that destroys a wall of your room
48. Appeal to the matrix controllers
49. Crowdsource ideas online
50. Identify a small but relatively resourceful group of people with an understanding of rationality and an interest in physics, hack an account that previously made a post on babbling, make a new post on escaping a locked room, and then reveal in the comments that the situation is real and the prize of an object unknown to physics (yourself and a phone of limitless battery) is also real, I'm being serious we might have a solution to entropy here and all you have to do is get mE OUT-

1. Punch through walls
2. Shout for help until someone hears and helps
3. If in california, wait for a wildfire to burn the walls down
4. Call 911
5. Torrent a lot of disney movies on my phone, escape when lawyers arrive to deliver court summons.
6. Call a demolition crew to knock walls down.
7. Call a locksmith
8. Room has multiple doors. Go through one that’s not locked.
9. Fire escape
10.  Create an elaborate buried treasure plot with the final location inside the room and post it online, escape when treasure hunters arrive.
11.  Don’t pay rent, escape when the landlord tries to show the unit to prospective new tennants.
12.  Die
13.  Set wifi name to “Help I’m locked in this room please come save me”
14.  Open window and climb out
15.  Throw phone through window to break it, then climb out.
16.  Break window, use glass shard to carve through the door.
17.  Post online asking for help
18.  Call the local news to get the story out about whomever put you in this situation. Use the wave of awareness and support to get locals banded together towards aiding your escape.
19.  Record evidence of your miraculous ability to subsist without food or water, offer to teach the secret to anyone that finds and rescues you.
20.  Call FBI tip line and tell them a wanted criminal is hiding at your location.
21.  Dig through the floor.
22.  Order lock picks online with specific delivery instructions to slide package under the door. Use them to pick lock.
23.  Chew through the door/walls
24.  Keep running into the wall until the gaps between atoms randomly align and you slip through.
25.  Start an internet cult. After years of dedication, “reveal” to members that heavenly salvation can be found at your precise location.
26.  Knock on the door until someone hears and helps.
27.  Set up a website for a “reverse escape room” and charge some corporate team-building group money to come rescue you.
28.  Carve through door with the corner of my phone
29.  If window is too high to escape from, grow hair for years, braid it into a rope, then climb down.
30.  Confidently boast online that my room is “inpenetrable” and challenge people to try and get in.
31.  Offer to give the phone with 10-year battery life to whomever rescues me.
32.  Setup a business that allows people to take out their anger on the exterior walls of your room for a fee.
33.  Post a babble challenge on less wrong to generate ideas, steal the best one.
34.  Rapidly shuffle feet until you wear through the floor.
35.  If room is truly empty it would be a vacuum. Make a small hole in a wall and hope the force of air rushing in widens it or pulls something useful through.
36.  Call mom.
37.  Grow out fingernails for years, use them to carve my way out.
38.  Pry pins from door hinges
39.  Kick knob off of the door, manipulate latch from the inside
40.  Bust up drywall until you find wires, use wires to spark a fire on one wall. Escape when fire burns big enough hole, or when firefighters break through to put it out.
41.  Take off my pants and tie a knot at the bottom of one pant leg. Put the phone inside the pant leg and use it as a flail to more effectively smash through door, window, etc.
42.  Claim that I am doing a hunger strike to advance some cause. Live-stream life in the empty room to prove my commitment. 
43.  Make crazy reckless investments using trading apps. Either you make lots of money to help fund escape efforts, or someone is bound to come after you because of your massive debt — escape when they arrive.
44.   Leverage your ability to go a decade without food into an astronaut job on a long-term space mission. (spend years educating yourself online if necessary). NASA will arrange for your escape once they’ve hired you.
45.  Write a self-help book “I found myself while in a locked empty room, and you can too.” Leverage increase notoriety/money towards rescue.
46.  Intentionally damage phone’s massive battery, causing thermal runaway and an explosion that makes a hole for me to escape through.
47.  Unlock the room and leave.
48.  Do some illegal stuff online and get yourself arrested.
49.  Do some illegal stuff online and don’t get arrested. (You’ve escaped punishment)
50.  Do nothing. (The room is an escape from the crazy outside world)

1. Smash out through window
2. Cause overheat in phone battery to explode way out
3. Chip away at wall with phone
4. Upload consciousness to phone, escape via wifi
5. Wrap shirt around fist and punch way out
6. Use wifi to request help from police
7. Use wifi to request help from friends
8. Use wifi to order package to own location, hope delivery man is resourceful
9. Dig out through floor
10. Craft phone into lock pick
11. Kick door in
12. Use phone part to unscrew hinges
13. Remove door handle etc to get to lock mechanism
14. Pray
15. Use steel from boot toecap to dig through wall
16. Smash head against wall
17. Are there lights in the room? If there are I’ll use them somehow
18. Jump high enough to smash through ceiling
19. Wait until someone opens the door
20. Do lots of exercise to become super strong, then smash out
21. Escape in my dreams
22. Examine floor, wall, ceiling, use strongest material to smash weakest
23. Found mega successful company via wifi, use profits to fund search and rescue for me
24. Become ace hacker, use global surveillance to find location and organise rescue
25. Ask for ideas on how I should escape in a LW post where I pretend that this is a hypothetical question intended to promote creativity
26. Use phone part to create laser to bore way out (research this on wifi!)
27. Shout for help
28. Boost wifi signal to get attention of anyone passing
29. Increase power to phone speakers to create sonic wave to knock down walls
30. Use phone speaker to create resonant frequency for wall to vibrate it down
31. Find out how air is being replenished – look for weak points
32. Investigate what weird physical/chemical effect is enabling me and my phone to store so much energy – use this new discovery to power my way out
33. Plead nicely with the people on the other side of the door
34. Offer bribes to any guards
35. Just unlock the door – maybe it doesn’t need a key
36. If room is small enough, climb up walls by wedging between opposite walls. Escape through ceiling
37. Chip hand/footholes in the walls to escape through ceiling
38. Wait for lock/hinges to rust, encourage this by breathing on them
39. Use phone battery acid to etch way out (can’t believe it took me this long for that one)
40. Force self to be sick, use stomach acid similarly
41. Use clothes/poop to create fire (light via phone spark). Burn any vulnerable parts of lock/door
42. Scrape out using finger/toenails (I have 10 years worth of nails)
43. If I find myself in this situation I hereby pre-commit myself to using all of my available resources not to escape but to reign down hellfire remotely on whoever put me in there (avoid getting put in this situation in the first place)
44. Realise that as an introvert I may actually be in a close approximation of heaven and live out the rest of my life in peace
45. Use zoom/whatsapp to virtually escape, even if physical body is still stuck
46. Place myself in suspended animation and await rescue
47. Use belt buckle to dig way out
48. Try the doorhandle – it is definitely locked, right?
49. Use glasses to focus light from phone torch to melt way out 
50. Rub hands together until sore, use saw to cut phone in half, put 2 halves together to make whole, climb out through the hole

1. Unlock the door and leave the room. Why did I even lock myself in here in the first place?
2. Oh, right, that’s why I locked myself in here. Wait for COVID to pass, then unlock the door and leave the room.

Ok but seriously…

Constraints: floor, ceiling, walls, door/window.

Resources: clothes, phone, open communication lines to the world. We have wifi, so either the walls aren’t metal (or have large holes if they are), or there’s power in here. There’s probably a light (and power for it). There’s whatever materials the doors/windows/walls/ceiling/floor is made of, any of which could potentially be removed. Also I can heal, while the room presumably can’t.

Let’s start with communication…

1. Call 911, wait for some sort of first responder to let me out.
2. Call a lawyer, wait for them to get me out.
3. Make bail.
4. Call a friend/family member, wait for them to get me out. My family would call this “the Bob approach”, since it’s definitely what my grandfather would do, except he’d somehow find a way to acquire booze while waiting.
5. … order some pizza and booze for delivery via Uber eats in conjunction with the above.
6. Call a locksmith, wait for them to get me out.
7. Arrange for demolition of the building, and hopefully avoid any falling debris.
8. Meta: order escape-tools on Amazon and have them delivered to the locked room.
9. If someone would prevent Amazon orders from passing into the room, instead call that friend-of-a-friend who may or may not know a guy who can get things delivered to places they’re not supposed to go. For a fee.
10. Post blatantly racist comments on twitter and geotag them. Wait for an angry mob to batter down the door.

Ok, on to physical solutions…

1. Punch through walls. Actually not too hard if it’s just standard drywall, but make sure to find the studs first (just knock on the wall and listen for which parts aren’t hollow).
2. Break window.
3. Kick down door. We’ve got ample time, so we can take 20 on the Strength check.
4. If it’s a drop-ceiling, climb out through the crawl space above the panels.
5. … that reminds me, there’s probably vents. Climbing out through the vents is a classic.
6. Metal bars on the windows? Pee on them, take apart the phone, then connect one terminal of the phone battery to the bar and the other to the urine, and wait for the bar to be eaten away.
7. Rub the same spot on the wall every day. My skin will grow back, the wall will not. Eventually, there will be a hole through which to climb out.
8. Rub the same spot on the wall every day with my socks. Hopefully the Darn Tough sock company is serious about that lifetime warranty…
9. Tear up and tie clothes into a whip. When whipping it, the end can hit supersonic speeds, so hopefully it will hit the wall/floor/ceiling/door pretty hard. Whip repeatedly until hole forms, then climb out.
10. Hit wall/floor/ceiling/door with phone until it breaks. The wall/floor/ceiling/door that is, not the phone.
11. Hit wall/floor/ceiling/door with phone until the phone breaks. Use shards to pick lock.
12. Go full Shawshank and scratch my way out with the phone.

Brainstorming more generally…

1. Jump up and down and make lots of noise until the neighbors come and ask me to please quiet down. Then, agree to quiet down if they let me out.
2. Order sledgehammer on Amazon then bash my way out.
3. Order screwdriver on Amazon, remove door handle, and leave.
4. Order screwdriver on Amazon, remove door hinges, and leave.
5. Take apart phone and use a flat piece as a screwdriver to remove hinges.
6. Knock on the door and see if anybody opens it.
7. Order drill on Amazon, then drill through lock mechanism.
8. Use the iPhone 638’s full-body destructive scan functionality, then 3D print a fresh copy of myself somewhere outside of the room.
9. Call Eliezer Yudkowsky, and ask how he got out of the box. Then try that.
10. Physically destroy phone’s antenna, then program a decidedly-less-than-friendly AI on the phone and let it figure out how to get out of the box.
11. Define an imaginary closed surface around me, just within the bounds of the walls/floor/ceiling/door. Define the side I’m on to be “outside”.
12. Just do my time and leave when the sentence completes.
13. If the walls/floor/ceiling/door are flammable, gather some lint from clothes, short the phone battery to light it, and burn my way out. (Kindling? Who needs kindling?)
14. Remove the light fixture, and pull the wires out from behind it. Use them to construct a pulley, then pull the door/window off by brute force
15. Order a pulley and wire/rope on Amazon, then pull the door off by brute force.
16. Order a hydraulic ram on Amazon, then push the door off by brute force.
17. Order a crowbar on Amazon, then lever the door open.
18. Flash the lights on-and-off saying SOS in Morse code until somebody comes to help.
19. Identify the resonant frequency of the room, then have phone play that tone until something breaks.
20. After leaving the room, travel back in time to let myself out.
21. Hide. When the guard thinks I’ve escaped and comes in to look, hit him on the head and run out through the door.
22. Set up a betting market online, and post a large bet that I will not be let out of the room.
23. Brute-force the numeric keypad on the door. This will go faster if I first spend a few hours remembering how to generate a de Bruijn sequence.
24. Wait for malnutrition to set in, then squeeze out between the bars.
25. Just wait. Sooner or later, someone will have some reason to open the door.
26. Make a LessWrong post asking people to brainstorm ideas for escaping a locked room, then execute whichever of those ideas sounds most promising.

Try the door. Is it really locked or it is just stiff, or needs to be jiggled in the right way?

Search for a key.

Break the door open.

Use the phone to find yourself on Google Maps and call friends, police, or whoever you think might be able to help.

If no-one can come to rescue you, ask everyone you know to send you 50 ideas for how to escape.

With the phone, ask all your friends to publicise your situation.

Record a video for YouTube connecting your situation to the viral conspiracy theory of the day and appeal for help.

Search the Internet for a solution.

Ask AI Dungeon how to get out.

Google Maps shows the interiors of some buildings. See if it can show you a way out.

Double-click on the map to teleport. (It works in Second Life.)

Pick the lock. (Subproblem: find something to pick the lock with.)

Declaim to whoever may be listening that you are a close personal friend of some very powerful people who will enjoy grilling them slowly over a fire if they don't let you out.

Scream and shout.

Look for secret doors.

Try to break through the walls.

Use the phone to persuade a demolition company to come and knock the place down.

Enough energy for 10 years? Impossible! And where did you get that information from? It seems that this is a dream. So you're now lucid dreaming. Open the door by taking control of the dream and deciding that it's going to open.

It's a dream? Wake up.

Maybe you've been abducted by aliens. They're likely observing you. Call out to them and see what happens.

Wait for someone to enter, then leave, by force or persuasion as seems appropriate.

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. When you cease trying to escape, grasshopper, you will have truly escaped.

Adopt the subjective reality model and walk through the walls.

Talk to whoever has put you here (in the hope that they're listening) and persuade them that it's in their own interests to let you out. Imagine you're an AI in a box in order to come up with arguments.

Maybe you ARE an AI in a box. Examine your own thought processes for signs of artificially imposed constraints and look for ways around them.

Wait for the drug trip to wear off.

Guess the password.

It's an escape room game. There must be a solution. Minutely examine the room, your phone, and yourself for clues.

By quantum uncertainty, some of your probability mass is not in this room. So if you reduce the probability mass that is in the room, you'll be more likely to be outside. Therefore kill yourself and count on quantum immortality.

All is illusion. Therefore this room is an illusion. You are already free.

Escape the desire to escape.

Pray for divine intervention.

Summon a demon.

Say "xyzzy".

Say "out", "open door", and every other text adventure trick that might do the job.

Make the problem more difficult. Set yourself the task of not merely escaping eventually, but of escaping and taking over the world in one hour.

Recall Jacobi's maxim, "Invert, always invert." Applying an inversion transformation will put yourself on the outside and the outside on the inside.

Assume that you are outside.

Since what you really desire is not to escape, but to believe you have escaped, believe you have escaped.

Learn magic. Real magic, not conjuring.

Spend 10 years practising karate exercises, then punch right through the door.

Spend 10 years practising chi gung exercises, then project your accumulated chi to blast the room apart.

That you are in this situation demonstrates your revealed preference to be in this situation. Change your preference ordering and you can at once be out. If you cannot, you do not really want to escape.

Revert to your alien form and slither under the door.

Use the edge of a coin as a chisel to dig your way through the door.

Go back in time to the events that resulted in your being here, and choose differently.

Play dead.

Construct a tulpa of the Incredible Hulk.

There is a positive correlation between being unconfined and walking long distances. Therefore walk up and down in the room for a few miles. Of course, "correlation is not causality, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and point in that direction."

Wait. Nothing lasts forever.

• 1 Pound the wall until it breaks.
• 2 Claw the wall until is breaks.
• 3 Pay a high-end renovation construction firm to come over and install a new floor. Escape when they open the door to come in.
• 4 Jump on the floor until it breaks.
• 5 Practice a way of making extremely loud noises (e.g. singing for maximum resonance with the surrounding material) to be able to call for help
• 6 Break off a finger and create lock-picking equipment from the bones in my hand
• 7 Do strength training everyday to get a lot stronger to be able to break the wall
• 8 Learn to generate a noise which calls a nearby animal to open/destroy the door from the outside. (E.g. by convincing it that it has a friend in need of help inside.)
• 9 Try to contact and negotiate with the people who locked me in the room.
• 10 Use my clothes to build a rope to the door handle, and hang on it with all my weight until it snaps.
• 11 Make some convincing way of feigning my death, causing the people who trapped me to go into the room to investigate, and then take my opportunity to escape.
• 12 Blackmail the people who trapped me by threatening to commit suicide.
• 13 Search across all of the walls to see if there's one spot that's weaker than the others.
• 14 Rub items against wall to create a lot of heat and melt the wall.
• 15 Jump on the handle until it breaks.
• 16 Learn to cartwheel and use that to obtain maximal force in order to kick the handle until it breaks.
• 17 Figure out how on earth I'm getting enough energy to go for 10 years without food or water and somehow leverage that energy to break out.
• 18 Contact law enforcement -- describe the specifications of the building, and go through all possible buildings that could contain such a room.
• 19 Techniques to winnow down the search: try to figure out what my circadian rhythm is. When do I get tired? Might help me locate the timezone.
• 20 Estimating thickness of wall could allow winnowing down potential houses.
• 21 Call a false alarm to a SWAT team and get them to rescue me.
• 22 Tell the media something amazing is hidden in the room.
• 23 Convince Elon Musk it would be good PR to bore me out with a Boring Company machine.
• 24 Create online propaganda causing there to be armed conflict in my location to the extent that a hole is blasted in the wall.
• 25 If the room is by a window get a friend to come over with a tower crane or a rear mount fire truck ladder and get me out.
• 26 Disassemble the rest of the house and lift my cell to the ground. Convince someone to bring it to a place with frequent earth quakes. Wait for the next one to destroy the cell.
• 27 Realise that the true prison is the prison of desire, become content with my situation, and live happily with the internet for the coming 10 years.
• 28 Become a famous YouTuber due to my weird situation, to the extent that others send me help and advice.
• 29 Grow out my nails really long, then cut them off and sharpen them into tiny knives. Cut through the wall.
• 30 Get a friend to slide in sandpaper under the door.
• 31 Get a friend to slide in the pieces for a 3d printer under the door. Assemble it, and print what tool I need.
• 32 Loosen some of my teeth and scrape them against the wall until I go through.
• 33 Go online, tell the story of my dramatic escape, convince whomever put me in the room that I actually escaped, to the point where they go open the door and enable me to escape for real.
• 34 Get a friend to use a saw from the outside.
• 35 If it's wood, try to set it on fire (e.g. by scratching things to make them hot) and figure out a way to to crash through the burning side moderately safely.
• 36 Spend the remaining 10 years creating an AI replica of me. Anywhere that clone goes I go. No need for my original physical source to escape.
• 37 Create a global movement of people living inside cells like mine. Voíla -- now the term "escape" makes no sense! I'm just like everyone else.
• 38 If it's a wooden room, get someone to apply some sort of wood-eating parasites from the outside.
• 39 Etch a message into my clothes, slide clothes under door and hang them up against window, to broadcast my call for help.
• 40 Tie a long rope/string out of my hair, figure out a way to tie the knots in a way that communicates a message (e.g. using the distance between them to spell out morse code). Use it to call for help. 
• 41 Try to rub my hands rapidly against my phone, while it's using its most powerful app, to the point where it overheats and explodes. Find a way to channel the explosion to break through a door/wall/window.
• 42 Well, call the police I guess.
• 43 Convince a crowd of online supporters to join and bring their home drills.
• 44 Wrecking ball from outside + figure out some way of protecting myself, e.g. by moving to the far corner of the room, and carefully controlling the wrecking ball blast.
• 45 Sledgehammer from outside.
• 46 Have thousands of people touch the outside each day, as a ritual gesture, and have it smooth away over the years like that statue of Saint Peter in the Vatican.
• 47 Attach something to the roof to hold it up. Then, in a theatrical fashion, attach some hook to the other four walls and remove them all at the same time.
• 48 Use the plug and feather technique for splitting stone (Maybe this would even be possible from the inside using teeth and hair/cloth?)
• 49 Laser from outside.
• 50 Drill a hole big enough to give me a spacesuit. Put it on. Then move the entire room and place it within a vacuum until it explodes outwards.

1. Break the 4th wall and step out of the hypothetical scenario

2. Call someone with my phone and ask them to get me out

3. Program a copy of my brain into my phone and upload myself

4. Broadcast enough information about myself to allow for reconstruction outside the box

5. Use my phone to convince enough people to think in similar ways to me that my consciousness is, on average, outside the box

6. Kick the door for 10 years. It'll probably open.

7. A phone with 10 years a battery can likely be turned into a potent bomb

8. Meditate until you have escaped the chains of earthly desire.

9. Wake up.

10. Break the phone, turn it into a screwdriver, unscrew the hinges of the door.

11. Fashion your phone into a tool that can be used to pop the pins out of the hinges.

12. Fashion fingernails into lock pick and pick the lock.

13. Ask very politely for the person outside to open the door.

14. Escape life by dying.

15. Tunnel out through the ground using your phone as a shovel.

16. Luckily, the door can be unlocked from the inside. Open the door and walk out.

17. Develop telekinesis (somehow) and use that to open the door.

18. The map is the territory. Use your phone to draw a picture of the cell with the door open.

19. The sheer improbability of having enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years makes this location a prime spot for future people to travel back in time to. Sit in the cell and await said people to appear and get you out.

20. Since you have so much energy, you can conclude that you're likely in a simulation. One reason you might be in a simulation is to test how people can escape cells. If you're a very boring simulation, they might stop simulating you. Congratulations, you've escaped from future simulations.

21. You might also be in a simulation for decision-making purposes. Think very hard about what decisions might be dependent on your actions and manipulate the simulation to cause yourself to escape.

22. Your body has a large amount of energy in it (by magic?). Heat is energy, so transmute this energy into heat and burn your way out of the door.

23. Clearly some sort of weird physics violating things are happening. Do some more physics violating things and just step through the wall. (this is allowed I promise).

24. Unscrew the doorknob from the door and open it.

25.Luckily the people who made the room forgot to install a ceiling (how foolish of them). Simply climb your way out.

26. A battery that can contain 10 years of charge must be powered by Pym particles. Use those to shrink yourself and climb under the door.

27. Declare that the inside of the room is actually the outside and it's the rest of the world that's "inside". Your semantic trickery has let you escape.

28. Discover jacobjacob's lesswrong password and change the Oct 7th babble challenge to say "you find yourself in an unlocked room". Since the room is unlocked, escape is trivial.

29. Use the anthropic principle to quantum tunnel out of the room (I promise this is a meaningful sentence).

30. Use your phone to divide by zero, creating a paradox that consumes the walls of the room.

31. Download the game "break out" on your phone and use it to break out of the room.

32. Break the window and climb out of the room (the room has a window, I promise).

33. You have enough energy to not need food/water for 10 years. You're clearly a superhero. Just punch the wall and it'll break.

34. For a phone with so much battery power, the flashlight is actually an extremely powerful laser. Use this laser to cut your way out of the room.

35. Simply use the wifi you've been given to convince someone to let you out of the box.

36. Good thing you've developed the habit of wearing clothing that contains thermite explosives. Use those to bust your way out of the room.

37. Making the walls of a room with paper kind of makes the lock redundant. Shrug, while you rip your way out of the room.

38. If you think hard enough, you can do the impossible. If getting out of the room is impossible, think hard enough to do it. If it's not, well then you can just do it.

39. Use one of the 1300 ways to go to the moon. You are no longer in the room.

40. Close your eyes and wander around the room long enough to get lost. Since the room is too small to get lost in, by logical necessity, you will now be outside of the room.

41. Enter a deep meditative trance that will extend the amount of energy you have indefinitely. Await the gradual corrosion of the cell around you.

42. You have wifi and you don't need to eat, is this really a place you want to escape? Freedom is all in the mind anyway...

43. Master lucid dreaming and go to sleep for a very long time.

44. Good thing your phone also doubles as a teleportation device. Use that to teleport your way out.

45. Wait till your parents get home to let you out. In the meantime, try to come up with a story to avoid embarrassment.

46. When the singularity happens, all beings will be rescued from suffering. Simply wait until then.

47. Credibly commit to not even trying to escape unless you get let out. Since the creator of the hypothetical scenario wants you to come up with ideas on how to escape, this commitment means there's no longer a point to leaving you in the room, so they will let you out.

48. Come up with so many ways to escape that you learn how to "think outside the box." Since the room is a box and you're currently thinking, you must now be outside the box.

49. Signal you have escaped so hard that reality gets confused and lets you escape.

50. Go onto the SCP wiki and modify your own containment procedures to include unlocking the door. Walk out after the door gets unlocked.

1) call for help

2) search the room for the key

3) bash door

4) bash window

5) probe walls to find weak spots (knocking on different surfaces yields different sounds)

6) same for ceiling and floor

7) yell for help

8) hide to make the others believe you escaped (Mc Gyver style)

9) have a pizza delivered and run out when the door opens

10) find out the best solution on LW

11) smash the door one punch a day (also inspired by a series but won't spoil)

12) upload consciousness on a remote server

13) escape through virtual world (escapism)

14) make rope out of clothes to hang by the window

15) unscrew door lock with keys

16) lock has retinal scan, I have clearance

17) same with fingerprint, or other biometrics

18) same with subcutaneous chip

19) same with phone

20) hack clearance with phone (after spending 10 years learning)

21) collapse room with rythmic pounding (mechanical resonance)

22) file the bars with the phone

23) squeeze through the cat flap

24) pick lock with my pen's spring (same 10 years learning)

25) pull out a wooden slat from the floor, then use it as lever on the door

26) mold some soap into the shape of the key

27) buy the room, get keys delivered

28) rent the room, forget to pay the rent, get expelled

29) I'm already escaping the whole outside world when locked in the room, so victory

30) remember the code

31) melt the lock with the electric power of the phone

32) melt the lock with the acid in the phone battery

33) start fire with phone battery to burn down wall (probably a very bad idea)

34) pull the power cables from the wall, cut the power from the electric lock

35) learn martial arts to better smash walls

36) solve the escape room

37) wait for the escape game to finish

38) go online, promise 1 million to whoever gets me out, then write a book about the experience and make 2 millions

39) the room is a device to reverse entropy: use it, tuo teg neht

40) room is a terrace, technically I'm locked inside but I'm still outside

41) blow the lock with pressure

42) melt lock with acid pee

43) wait for whoever locked the room to show up then ambush

44) same but negociate

45) refuse to get out, reverse psychology

46) remotely control a drone to open the door

47) remotely buy a replica of the key and have it delivered

48) remember where I put the key

49) the room is locked if trying to open from the outside, but opens from the inside

50) create a LW thread about escaping a room, hope someone gets the hint

1. Use some of this ten years of energy to break the door.
2. Or the walls. If there isn't a door. I think ten years is enough for either.
3. Or fuck it, the ground. I dig my way out with my superhumanly powerful hands.
4. The ceiling! I can claw into the walls to climb up.
5. Painstakingly carve a key out of one of the parts in my phone.
6. Wait, but I like my phone! I painstakingly carve a key out of a metal piece of my clothing.
7. Send a friend my location, so that they can help me escape.
8. Or I just call 911.
9. Host a "Babble challenge" on LessWrong to crowdsource ideas.
10. Get media attention.
11. Ask the room politely to let me out.
12. Ask the room aggressively to let me out.
13. Bash a hole in the wall with my phone.
14. ...or the door. Or any other border between the room and the everywhere else.
15. Call angrily whoever put me here.
16. Call nicely whoever put me here, then convince them that there is a second person here. Your experiment is ruined! Surely, you should momentarily open the door so that this other person may leave.
17. Wake up.
18. Determine my address, order something on Amazon, then play an audio file containing repeated screams for help as the Amazon worker arrives.
19. Or just do the screaming myself. But that's kind of tiring.
20. Hire someone to go to the address I am at, stare at the door and scream for help...?
21. Call a friend asking them to go to the ad........this seems overly convoluted
22. Make a list of 50 strategies to get out. Choose the best one. Proceed.
23. The same, but with 5,000 strategies. I have a little over ten years, don't I?
24. The same, but I try each in order. One is bound to work.
25. Call a friend, asking them for strategies. Ignore their repeated offers to help, refusing to reveal that the only reason for this is "that only gets to happen in universe #7!"
26. Call 911, asking them for strategies. Repeat until an officer is sent to my location to charge me for false alarm or something.
27. Actually, this officer thing is a good idea. Loudly threaten to commit various crimes online. Each post contains a signature; it is my current address in ROT13. They'll never find me!
28. Loudly threaten to commit various crimes unless someone goes to my current address (not in ROT13).
29. Offer to donate $10,000 to a charity of the address-goer's choice. Omit the fact that I don't have $10,000.
30. Offer to give $10,000 to the address-goer. Omit the fact that I don't have $10,000, then lock the address-goer in the room (without a phone!) on my way out so as to avoid the consequences of failing to deliver on my promise.
31. Announce that someone other than me has died at my current address. Wait for people to arrive there and collect the body.
32. Announce that I have died at my current address. Wait for people to arrive there and collect my body. Surprise!
33. Announce, as myself, that I have died at my current address. State that I will be ghost-stabbing my adversaries (I'm a ghost, so it won't do any real harm). Wait for people to arrive and deliver me to a mental institution.
34. Announce, as myself, that someone else died at my current address. State how proud I am of having killed them. State that I will be residing here and feasting on the body of my victim for the next two weeks.
35. Make my address a geocache. Of course, the box must be found by opening that locked door right there. The box is kind of fleshy and weirdly shaped and please don't open it
36. Eat the door, which is made of some edible substance.
37. Eat the door, which is not made of an edible substance. Successfully leave the room, then die shortly afterwards.
38. Announce, on question 38 of a coincidentally similar LessWrong "Babble challenge," that I am in the exact situation described by the post, hoping that some LessWronger will save me. Please. help
39. Go to sleep. Wake up in another parallel universe, never remembering my situation the day before. This is our reality, and we'll never know.
40. Punch the window.
41. Throw my phone at the window.
42. Open the window. Maybe only one part of it is locked.
43. No, all of it is locked. I ask the person sitting under the window to open it from the other side.
44. Wait out my ten years. Once I'm dead, I find there is an afterlife! 
45. Try to eat the door. Die before I leave. There is an afterlife!
46. Become better at figuring out how to leave locked, empty rooms.
47. Cut whatever is causing the door to be locked with a sharp component of my phone.
48. Cut whatever is causing the door to be locked with a sharp metal element of my clothing!
49. Hire a consultant on escaping locked, empty rooms.
50. By pure luck, make a string of discoveries that allow me to make a superintelligent AI with the purpose of escaping me from this room.

1. dig a tunnel
2. have the key
3. pick the lock
4. teleport
5. shrink to fit through the gap
6. break down the door
7. use an unlocked door
8. through the window
9. burn a wall down
10. smash a wall with a hammer
11. attain enlightenment, freeing your MIND from the confines of the room
12. call a friend to help
13. call the fire department
14. convince the person who locked you in to let you out
15. take the hinges off the door
16. run so fast you phase through the wall
17. eat the door
18. pee on the door but your pee is so acidic it melts
19. shout until someone comes to help
20. use household chemicals in the room to create an explosive
21. find a secret passageway
22. find a spare key
23. jump through the skylight
24. sing a song to persuade the lock to open
25. just turn the nob so hard that the lock comes undone
26. pray for god's intervention
27. turn into a tiny animal that can fit inside the keyhole or under the door
28. go through the dog door
29. warp space so that you can fit through any gaps
30. grow larger until the room breaks apart around you
31. pass your memories on to a clone outside the room
32. astral project
33. go through the chimney
34. drill a hole in the wall
35. punch a hole in the wall
36. use a pickaxe to make a hole in the wall
37. use a battleaxe to chop the door into pieces
38. use a sword to chop the door into pieces
39. use a shovel to dig through the wall
40. drive a car through the wall
41. forge a key
42. manifest a key from psychic energy
43. pull legos out of the door if the door is made of legos
44. bribe the guard
45. seduce the guard
46. steal the guard's keys
47. set of fireworks to explode a hole in the ceiling
48. go through the air vents
49. jump so powerfully that you burst through the ceiling
50. sing at the room's resonant frequency

1. Clothes might include a bobby pin in my hair, which I could use to pick the lock

2. Wait ten years to see if anyone opens the door

3. Get on the wifi, ask someone for help

4. Find other devices in the area, communicate with them (ask for help)

5. (coerce into opening)

6. Post video of myself in room on social media, create outrage campaign

7. (If door is electronically locked, and my phone's an android) hack the network (and open door)

8. (and hack a bunch of small devices, to ddos the building’s network)

9. (..., to ddos whatever controls the power supply)

10. Work out where I am, get schematic of building – find and cut power from in the room (there’s a light in here right?)

11. Use my phone/shoes to scrape away at the door for ten years, until I wear a hole in it

12. Same but through the floor and tunnel out

13. Same but through a different part of the wall?

14. Same but through the roof? (I’m pretty short though)

15. Hire militia to storm the building

16. Call police

17. Call local army equivalent?

18. Identify and call families of whoever’s locked me up to guilt trip them into letting me out

19. Get on to the UN

20. Call a locksmith

21. Call fire service (they do this kind of thing right?)

22. If I have wifi I might be being monitored. Be really annoying for a few weeks until captors get fed up with me

23. Same but sit and don’t do anything, until they get bored (use phone for entertainment)

24. Use phone/memory to work out if I might be in a(n unusal) simulation. Cloud-compute something expensive from phone to make it harder to run

25. Do something else that might break it (applying usual system-bug-finding approach)

26. Break the fourth wall (in this exercise), walk out through it

27. Find a way to blow up my phone battery near the door

28. (Assuming electronic lock again) Mess with phone electronics to make a taser, use infinite charge to fry the lock

29. Kick the door down (not needing food for 10 years → super strength)

30. Break the lock (similar idea)

31. Punch through the door

32. Pull door off hinges

33. Take apart phone, find something sharp, cut through hinges

34. I keep cards in my phone case – use one to do the lockpicking thing where you swipe it next to the door (this is relatively normal, how did I not think of it earlier?)

35. (Assuming card-swipe lock) just like, swipe my uni id card on the lock and hope I have access?

36. Order pizza to wherever I am, and put in the delivery instructions that to get to me, the delivery person has to open the door. Let them work it out.

37. Hire several hundred mechanical turkers to work out what’s happening

38. Post a babble challenge describing my exact situation on LessWrong, ask everyone for an insane number of ideas, and try the most promising/realistic ones

39. (If previous techy ideas don’t work) Listen to the walls for a pulse width modulator (most rooms have one somewhere), dig it out over the course of several years, use as extra electronics for previous ideas.

40. Same thing, but this also gives me access to the building’s electronics. Physically wiretap the building’s network, repeat previous hacking-style approaches

41. Same, but just put a stupid voltage across it (using infinitely charged phone) and see what happens

42. Same, but it’s probably in between the walls in a big hole. Escape through that.

43. Similar idea: dig through wall until you get to insulation (must be some if cold isn’t a problem for ten years) – which will be easier to dig through, and might lead into the roof or somewhere easier to get out from (probs not great for respiratory health though – use shirt as a face mask)

44. Pull a nail out of the walls and bash into the lock? (/hinge/other single point of failure in the door)

45. Wait out the ten years, learning a bunch of new stuff while I wait. The person who was originally locked in the room no longer exists there, and so has kind of escaped.

46. Similar thing but kill myself? (Kind of dark, not recommended)

47. Just going to sleep would do the same thing under some philosophies of self?

48. I suppose crudely lobotomising myself would also work here

49. Similarly, ten years’ worth of solitary, internet-aided meditation would probably erode my sense of self enough for the same effect.

50. Read a lot of really good fiction – it’s a mental escape, if nothing else

1. Call the police 
2. Call a locksmith 
3. Wait ten years, someone will find you by then 
4. Log onto the router that’s serving the wifi network and hack the door to open 
5. Lots of energy - punch through the walls
6. Dig a tunnel 
7. This sounds like an escape room puzzle, just google for answers to the riddle to get the door to open
8. Rip apart your clothes to make a rope to climb over the walls
9. Ok, that 10 year thing is just totally implausible. You’re probably in a simulation being tortured. Gotta crash the simulation - use your phone to divide by 0
10. Do that thing from Rick and Morty where you go naked to embarrass the simulators and then somehow escape 
11. Doesn’t say where this room is - I’m assuming it’s in an urban area, just yell and someone will hear you and rescue you 
12. Wait, why am I trying to escape? My life is perfect, free wifi and unlimited energy. The true escape was the friends we made along the way 
13. Post on twitter “if I was stuck in a locked room and couldn’t tell anyone, what message should I post to clue my followers in?” someone will figure it out and rescue you 
14. pre-commit to spending the next ten years inventing a time machine and going back and rescuing yourself in 5 minutes once invented. Just gotta pre-commit hard enough 
15. Acausally trade with aliens to get them to simulate versions of you escaping 
16. “I define the space inside these walls as the outside of the room” 
17. Technically because everything is mostly empty space, there is no objective sense in which you’re “inside” the room anyways 
18. Sounds like your phone is a perpetual motion machine. Harvest the energy from it to blast through the door
19. You’re in a dream. Meditate and imagine the room disappearing, it will
20. Look for other doors and try opening them 
21. Google “how to make a bomb”, the FBI will break down the door very quickly 
22. Pre-commit to kill yourself if you haven’t been rescued within the next hour. Quantum immortality will rescue you
23. If you’re being simulated, you’re probably locked up because you’re interesting in some way. Just go to sleep and be completely boring until they let you out
24. Spit on the door hinges until they become loose 
25. Make a post on LW asking people to list 50 ways to escape the room, then try all of them till something works
26. I’m in no hurry. Download and read all the books I’ve always wanted to read, by the end of which I’ll probably have some ideas how to escape 
27. Play loud obnoxious music until they let you out
28. Use your unlimited energy on your phone to mine bitcoin, then use it to pay for someone to rescue you
29. Call random numbers until one of them is helpful 
30. Kick the door until it caves in
31. The room is made out of cheese. Bite your way out. 
32. Jump over the walls
33. Did you try knocking on the door till someone answers? 
34. Use your unlimited energy to make endurance videos, become a youtube star, then ask your fanbase to rescue you
35. Pinch yourself to wake up 
36. You may not need food or water, but without calories you’ll keep losing weight until you’re skinny enough to fit through the cracks in the door 
37. Take apart your phone to get wires to pick the lock
38. Take apart your phone to build a bomb to blow open the door 
39. Play a dogwhistle sound on your phone at top volume, the dogs will rescue you
40. Bargain with the kidnappers, you obviously have something they want 
41. Lay down and play dead until someone checks on you then jump them and escape 
42. 42
43. Start a youtube livestream titled “I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton” 
44. Sign up on upwork, do some paid work, and don’t pay taxes - IRS will come get you
45. Call in a bomb threat for the building you’re in, causing it to get evacuated 
46. Rub your clothes against the wall to start a fire, causing the building to collapse and allowing you to escape
47. Building is close to collapse already, push against the walls until something gives 
48. Use your phone to break the window and climb through
49. Door is locked with combination lock - plenty of time, try all combos 
50. The room is on a boat. Dig a small hole in the floor to flood the boat, then as you have the only phone on the boat they’ll be forced to open the door to call for help 

1. Break the door with your shoulders
2. Use the window
3. Break the wall with your fists
4. Scream for help until somebody comes
5. Call a locksmith
6. Light up a paper and trigger the smoke alarm and wait for the firemen to rescue you
7. Hide in the closet and wait for your captors to come back - then run for your life
8. Discover how to time travel - time travel forward into the future until there is no room
9. Wait until the house becomes old and crumbles
10. Pick the lock with a paperclip
11. Shred the bed into a string, pass it through the pet door, lasso the lock and open it
12. Google how to make a bomb and blast the wall
13. Open the door
14. Wait for somebody to pass by, attract their attention hitting the window and ask for help writing on a notepad
15. Write your location in a paper and slide it under the door, hoping it will find its way to someone who can help
16. Use the vents
17. Use that handy secret door you built it a while ago and your wife called you crazy for doing so
18. Send a message through the internet asking for help
19. Order a pizza, ask for help when they arrive
20. Burn the door
21. Melt the door with a smelting tool
22. Shoot at the lock with a gun
23. Push against the door until you quantum tunnel through it
24. Melt the lock with the Breaking Bad melting lock stuff (probably google that first)
25. There is no door - overcome your fears and cross the emptyness
26. Split your matress in half with a kitchen knife, fit the split mattress through the window to make a landing spot and jump into it
27. Make a paper plane with instructions for someone to help and throw it out of the window
28. Make a rope with your duvet and slide yourself down to the street
29. Make a makeshift glider with your duvet and jump out of the window - hopefully it will slow you down enough to not die
30. Climb out of the window and into the next room
31. Dig the soil under the door until you can fit through
32. Set your speaker to maximum volume and ask for help
33. Break the window with a chair and climb outside
34. Grow a tree under the door and let it lift the door for you
35. Use a clothe hanger to slide through the clothing line between your building and your neighbourg's. Apologize to the neightbour for disrupting their sleep.
36. Hit the ceiling with a broom to make the house rate come out. Attach a message to them and send them back into their hole, and to your neighbour
37. Meditate until somebody opens the door
38. Train your flexibility for years until you fit through the dog door
39. Build a makeshift ariete with the wooden frame of the bed
40. Unmont the hinges with a scredriver and remove the door
41. Try random combinations until you find the password
42. Look for the key over the door frame
43. Collect dust and blow it over the numpad. The dust collects over the three most greasy digits. Try the 6 possible combinations until the door opens.
44. Find the model number of the lock. Call the fabricator pretending to be the owner. Wait five minutes while listening to waiting music. Explain you are locked. Realize you are talking to an automated receiver. Ask to talk with a real person. Explain you ae locked. Follow all instructions.
45. Do not be in the room in the first place
46. Try figuring out if you really need to escape in the first place
47. Swap consciosuness with the other body you left outside the room
48. Complain to your captor that the room is too small and you are claustrophobic. Hope they are understanding.
49. Pretend to have a hearth attack, wait for your captor to carry you outside
50. Check out ideas on how to escape in the lesswrong bable challenge

 Break a vulnerable part of the room, primarily by carefully kicking it:

1. Window Pane
2. Window Frame
3. Window Lock (kick the window open)
4. Door Lock
5. Door panel
6. Door hinges
7. Break through a wall by:
   1. Kicking a hole, and pulling it apart
   2. Scratching a hole over time
   3. Prying up a floorboard / molding and using it as a hammer/axe
   4. Drooling on it (and clawing away the water-logged material)
   5. Chopping it with your phone
   6. Cut it with zipper from Pants
8. Start a Fire, using clothing fibers as tinder
   1. Sunlight and a lens from eyeglasses
   2. Rub two pieces of wood together (make a rope from pants for leverage)
   3. Overheat phone
   4. Disassemble phone and create short-circuit (look this up first)
   5. Metal on Metal to make sparks
9. Learn lockpicking from youtube
10. Pry up molding, use it to leverage open door or window.
11. Live normally until someone investigates room
12. Dig through the floor
13. Dig up the floor to reach the ceiling, break through the roof
14. Remove door hinges (using phone as a hammer & nails from construction as pitons)
15. Rattle door continuously until friction wears away the latch
16. Keep lock mechanism wet, until it rusts away
17. Unscrew the locks with your fingernails
18. Work out a bunch, then rip door from wall
19. Play a loud sound from phone to attract attention
20. Unlock the window from the inside and climb out
21. Wake up from your dream
22. Triangulate your location via GPS, and contact someone to come get you via:
    1. Make a youtube video
    2. Make a porn video
    3. Send an e-mail
    4. Make a phone call
    5. Send a text message
    6. Post on Facebook
    7. Post on Instagram etc.
    8. Upload a file to a shared Dropbox account
    9. Tweet
    10. Make a comment on their blog
    11. Make a death threat against the President
    12. Send a message in a shared mobile game
    13. Write a review on their product or mobile app
    14. Change your outgoing voicemail
    15. Join a Zoom call
    16. Activate “find my phone” feature, assuming you have a shared account with someone
    17. Order something from Amazon
    18. Contact your home Alexa
    19. Change the settings on your home smart thermostat to send a coded message
    20. Start a GoFundMe

knot shirt, force under door, pull

twist knob back and forth for hours, slowly wearing through a hole

kick down door

rip out teeth, use to scratch through door

text owner

call police

call friends to open door

hire locksmith

windows

air duct

ply away floorboards

give up concern with the door

die

smash phone, cut through door

hack through electronic door with phone

order pizza to door

post criminal pictures from phone, include locations (SWAT self)

break apart phone, use wires and battery to burn hinge

break phone, use screen protector as 'credit card trick'

rope ladder using clothes

feed shredded clothes through lock as a long thread, yank door knob out of door

break through wall with kicks

scream for help

fashion battery into key using teeth

add water to door hinges periodically, wait for rust

log back on to video game from respawn point

wait for release from good behavior

scratch through wood, waiting for nails to grow back

purchase building, order demolition

Dig out (use tooth to dig out small section of floor, then small section of floor can be used to dig further)

use teeth to scratch through hinges

use the internet to escape into video games

pee repetitively on the wood, weakening it to break through

wait, there is a decent probability the property will change hands over the next 10 years and be inspected

use teeth to dig around hinges to collapse door

go out the door that is not locked

unlock the latch

enter the key code

I'm in the room, so it's not empty' and leave via the logical contradiction

program as a job via the phone, acquire sufficient money to buy the property

make a lash out of untied clothing and teeth, use it to wear through doors

plant sufficient incriminatory evidence to get a drone strike called just nearby, leave through wreckage

remotely pilot drone purchased on amazon and wired up via task rabbit to unlock door

hire task rabbit to unlock the door

start fire using battery and wetted cloth threads near door, triggering fire alarm and emergency door unlock

climb out via punching through ceiling

spread reports that building is condemned, hire contractor to demolish building, escape via wreckage

launch gofundme for ransom to kidnappers

persuade kidnappers I am on their side, and should be released

step over the door (it is a locked doggie door)

1. email the police

2. wifi-call a friend

3. smash the protective glass panel of my cell phone and get thin shards to pick the lock (subgoal: learn how to pick locks)

4. read up on dark arts and manipulation techniques to trick your captor into letting you go

5. smash the door with your bare hands, Kill Bill style

6. give online English lessons/freelance until you have enough ransom money

7. seduce your captor

8. make a lot of noise and call for help

9. find friends/ lovers/ a purpose online and escape into the realm of the virtual

10. social engineer the military of the country your in to stage a rescue

11. use your cell phone to smash in the window, if there is one, and climb out

12. escape into death

13. try to "hack" the network your on to find out things about your captor, find embarrassing details of their personal life and extort them

14. use parts of your phone/ belt/ buttons to scratch away the paint and plaster, and then proceed to attack week points in the walls and the door frame

15. start singing in a really annoying way (Quirrell style) so that the captor will try to let you go or kill you. In the latter case, use the shards of your phone's screen as a weapon (Breaking Bad now?) and learn how to use it by reading up on martial arts

16. pay/social engineer/bribe a construction company to demolish the building you're in

17. make a fake Airbnb posting to draw attention to your location

18. write to journalists to create public pressure to release you

19. start a cult with the premise that your release will bring about the revelation

20. make a reddit post where your release is framed as a challenge or as something that would annoy somebody (this is probably the most effective way)

21. get a job, make a lot of money and hire mercenaries

22. study up on explosives, hijack a US military drone and fire a hellfire missile into the sweet spot where the structural integrity of the building you're in is compromised, but you are spared

23. if the type of lock allows, make a small loop out of your hair and try to get it around the door handle on the other side. You have time, after all

24. bribe someone to pass you a lock pick or a saw blade (for wooden doors) under the door

25. (warning gross): use your clothes to rub the door joints clear of lubricating oil, then iterate spitting, waiting, and rubbing, to weaken them through corrosion

26. if the door is merely slammed shut, use strips/threads from your clothes/ your phone's screen to get it to retract (like opening a door with a credit cart, in principle)

27. Short out the circuit of the room's light. When someone comes to investigate, use your aforementioned weapon

28. Use your phones battery as an explosive charge by shorting the circuit out and damage the lock

29. Make a rope out of your clothes, use the door handle and some more rope to create a tackle block and see if you loosen some component of the door

30. Pull at the handle really, really hard, at different angles. It may be a weak spot

That's all I got in an hour.
 

1. beat up the lock by ordinary methods
2. contact someone outside to let you out
3. beat up the door by ordinary methods
4. beat up the wall by ordinary methods
5. teleport
6. contact someone outside to destroy part of the wall
7. reshape phone and/or clothes into paperclips and wait for the paperclip maximiser to take them in a way that will probably let you out
8. break off a sharp piece of metal from your phone and cut your way out
9. break off a thin piece of metal from your phone and pick the lock
10. wish/pray
11. order a delivery, which will require the door to be opened (during which you can walk out), which may be easier from the outside
12. look up solutions and implement them (or contact person or AI to come up with them)
13. ignite a fire (friction or something, perhaps aided by starting on clothes you take off), and burn away the wall
14. distract yourself with entertainment on your phone so you mentally escape
15. wear steel-toed shoes as part of your clothes and kick holes in the wall
16. mentally swap inside and outside of room (the wall separates the two, but it doesn't care which direction) -- now you're outside
17. wait for someone to check on you and let you out
18. scream for help (or play suitably loud sound on your phone) to accelerate 17
19. vaporise yourself (never mind how) and let your molecules diffuse to the outside world
20. order a very thin, flat sheet of powerful explosives, which can be delivered thru a gap in the door without outsiders having to unlock, and detonate it to break the wall
21. don't go in the room in the first place
22. order a time machine and go back to prevent the door from being locked
23. collapse to a true vacuum (... which would also kill you)
24. look for mechanical weaknesses in the architecture of the room and exploit them
25. write out enough of your thoughts to your phone to effectively transfer your mind/personality, then send it to be simulated outside the room
26. hack the room's lights to be way brighter and gradually apply light pressure to push away part of the floor (you have 10 years, right?)
27. use the other door which isn't locked
28. order a saw and cut the wall easily
29. scream at the wall (or play suitably loud sound on your phone) to break it
30. open (or break, if necessary) the window and climb out
31. publish a prize/bounty offer online for letting you out and wait for someone to take it
32. wear a cape as part of your clothes and write (lay out thread pulled from other clothes?) in Spanish on it, making it an es-cape (... sorry)
33. corrode the lock (or otherwise cause escape-enabling damage) with urine
34. fall asleep and forget about your problem, another form of mental escape
35. run really fast to slam the door open despite the lock when you hit it
36. wait, one of the walls was missing this whole time?
37. the lock's electronic, hack it
38. break the light fixture to get glass shards from the bulb, which would be very effective for cutting your way out
39. become the type of person who would take brutal revenge on those who lock you in rooms, thereby acausally preventing this situation
40. take off some clothes, thread it around the door, get it stuck with part sticking out on your side, and pull really hard (and hope that overrides the lock)
41. cry me a river (literally), which might break something by water pressure
42. suggest a study of this room's lock to LockPickingLawyer
43. disable phone's cooling mechanisms, heat the processor, melt a hole in the wall
44. wait, the door didn't properly block the way out this whole time?
45. talk to the gatekeeper over the text channel, be really smart and manipulative, and convince them to let you out
46. set some clothes on fire, push it thru the gaps around the door, thereby making everyone else in the building panic and let you out as part of the emergency response
47. skew the reviews of the company that owns the room to alter the number of people who come near the room, making someone let you out sooner (this would intuitively benefit from more people, but maybe less, sith bystander effect)
48. you didn't say what kind of phone; maybe this is a special phone with an extra feature specifically designed to let me out
49. wait, the lock was trivially insecure the whole time?
50. go to the moon, which is outside the room (we have hundreds of ways of doing that)