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Comment by Jay Anthony (jay-anthony) on Babble challenge: 50 ways to escape a locked room · 2020-10-09T17:29:14.635Z · LW · GW
  1. Few walls can withstand being kicked in one place for 10 years. Start kicking and rest when it starts to hurt.
  2. Look up how to pick locks if you don’t already know. Dismantle phone and use plastic or metal to make lock pick and tension bar.
  3. Spit /piss on door over and over, encouraging water damage / mold growth.
  4. Rub wall or door, making hole over time.
  5. Materials were not specified. It’s a glass door. Kick it!
  6. Average door is not a high security door. Examine pins in hinges, use piece of phone or metal zipper tab to pry or push pin out.
  7. Use phone to contact friends to break you out.
  8. No friends? Use social networks for whispering campaign.
  9. Just phone the police.
  10. Take flat casing from back of phone, slip case between latch and door jamb, use in manner of 'credit card trick' to press latch open.
  11. Offer to trade phone for freedom.
  12. Shove phone under door and take movie when captors open door, learn combination to lock or get picture of key.
  13. Use phone battery to spark and start a fire on shredded clothes, setting off fire alarm and general evacuation.
  14. Spit / piss inside lock mechanism and eventually rust it out.
  15. There must be an air vent inside the room. Find and block the vent; use your own blood to build up an obstructive clot over time. Asphyxiate and achieve blessed relief from all of life’s irking problems and thought experiments.
  16. Or use any jagged part of the phone for quicker 'liberation' action.
  17. Start telling an interesting story to your captor. When you have them fully engaged, offer to complete the story upon being released.
  18. Inform authorities of the actual existence of the “charm of untiring nourishment” spell that has been cast upon you and your phone. Offer to help them reverse engineer it if they come to rescue you.
  19. Form bodily excreta into sculptures which you can trade for release / Internet attention to your plight.
  20. Start a grassroots whispering campaign about secret societies that lock people in rooms for ten years, with reward for their discovery and release.
  21. Join geocaching group and post your coordinates from GPS.
  22. Mention to a descendant of Rabbi Aaron of Karlin that you have a fragment of truth in the room with you. It is told in Tales of the Hasidim that members of that family may tear up the floorboards with their hands if there is a crumb of truth below.
  23. Not needing food or water, you should be able to spit almost indefinitely. Make a bet that you can spit longer than anyone else, with being released the stakes.
  24. Practice your skills at the AI in a box game with you in the role of the AI, then use these skills to negotiate your release with your captors.
  25. Bend part of your phone's casing into a keylike spike, then put your phone in vibration mode and play a loud noise. You now have a 'bump lock' tool.
  26. Got the wall moldy and getting impatient? Take a picture and send it to the regional housing inspection agency. They will condemn the building and have it torn down, freeing you.
  27. Most buildings have ceilings held in place mostly by gravity. Build up layers of your dehydrated blood to form a mound that presses against the ceiling. Suddenly rehydrate it with your urine. Let the swelling blood push against the ceiling and make a gap.
  28. Trade on the stock market until you build up a large amount of capital, if needed. Research real estate in the area and determine building owner. Form an anonymous shell corporation to purchase the building. Once you own it, have the keys delivered to you.
  29. Call a locksmith and pretend you have lost the key to the building / room.
  30. Take off and use shirt sleeve or pants leg, work into crack between door and jamb and pull up towards lock, then twist the fabric, spreading the gap.
  31. Quietly record audio of one half of a conversation; use a voice mod app to alter it. Play it back loudly and speak the other half of the conversation so it sounds as if there are two people in the room. When your captors open the door to investigate, escape.
  32. Pee under the door until they send a cleaning crew; overpower and escape.
  33. Meditate for years straight, honing your concentration until you finally achieve transcendence. You can then either leave the room with power of mind, or have gone insane enough to not care about walls anymore.
  34. Pull off bits of your flesh and use them to attract rodents. Capture rodents and use them to gnaw at wall to make a hole.
  35. Build harness with clothes that makes it look as if you hanged yourself, but actually supports you under the arms. When they come to remove your body, escape.
  36. Repeatedly break your bones and allow yourself to heal, working towards a bodily configuration where you are flat enough to squeeze under the door.
  37. Find a light or electric socket and short it with a piece of your phone, knocking out power to that part of the building. When they call in an electrician to stop you from doing this, call out for help.
  38. Grow out your fingernails until you have enough material to make a set of keys and lockpicks.
  39. Soak your clothes in blood, wrap into a tight cylinder with a flat end and allow to dry. You now have a crude crowbar to pry the door.
  40. Stop making payments on your phone bill. Wait for them to either come to repossess the phone, or subpoena you to court.
  41. Make a terroristic threat online and wait for the feds to come and remove you from this room and take you to another one.
  42. Play the world's most unwanted music through the phone until your captors have had enough.
  43. Break your arm with a compound fracture and use sharp end of bone to tunnel out.
  44. Use dried bloodcloth to make a shovel and dig your way out.
  45. Make posts on rationalist forums, posing your situation and asking for fifty solutions from each respondent. Pick the best.
  46. Fake heart attack and call 911.
  47. Create a painting on the wall with your blood and sell it on eBay, local pickup only.
  48. Design mobile escape room game based on your cell. Watch what would be solvers do and replicate.
  49. Invite the Lockpicking Lawyer from Youtube to come by and practice on your cell door as a challenge.
  50. Use phone's flashlight to blink Morse plea for help out the barred window.

(Total time: ~70 minutes. I got to around 44 within an hour.):::