After reading the (repeated) debates on the merits of the Toughness stat in TROS, I was intrigued to read the following:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/02/wglad02.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/02/ixworld.html

It seems that Gladiators stuffed themselves silly to bulk up, in order to develop fat layers to protect themselves from cutting wounds and supplement what armour they had. Seems to me that this is the very definition of Toughness !

…although I still think it's a good idea to have fairly hard and fast racial limited to TO

Besides that there is a factor that is not scientifically proven but I suppose all of you have encountered; the invincible guy. This is someone who can fall down several meters, get hit by cars and get beat up without getting hurt seriously.

Pretty interesting findings, but some of it, like the gladiators were fat and they did it on purpose to supplement armour, is a big stretching assumption for a phorensic anthropologist. Sounds like they would've burned all that up to me.

A few years ago I worked as a secuirity guard in a hospital in upstate NY. This hospital was located near the state maximum secuirty prison and frequently got patients from this institution.

On one of my shifts I personally witnessed a prisoner being brought in for trauma treatment. He was walking under his own power, speaking coherantly, and seemed fine but slightly winded....the reality was shockingly different.

This prisoner had been shanked with what appeared to be part of a metal lunch tray. They got him up on the table for an X-Ray and found he had EIGHTEEN INCHES of foriegn body penetration in his chest (that's a wound channel 18 inches deep, with the penetrating object still present in the wound. The actual "weapon" was probably around 24" long). On most individuals this would be a fatal or near fatal wound (I'm a rather large guy and that would easily go clean through my chest and out my spine). However this guy was so big (typical prison bodybuilder) that he basically shrugged it off (my father, who is a physician and looked at the films several days later said it appeared as though the muscular structures in his chest were so big they'd basically absorbed the metal, allowing only a few inches to penetrate into his ribs and saving his heart and lungs from real damage). In fact the guards had to physically subdue him before pringing him in for treatment, he was still shackled when the brought him to us.

I was shocked, but neither of the guards, nor any of the trauma team were that surprised. They'd all seen simillar wounds before where the patient had exhibited little or no outward sign of injury.

So, fantastic as it sounds, it is possible that a human of unfathomably high toughness can both exist in the real world, and (under the right conditions) shrug off disgustingly powerful wounds.

There is of course the assassination of everyone's favourite mad monk, Grygorin Rasputin in February 1917.

The assassins, members of the Russian aristocracy jealous of his influence over the Tsarina initially invited Rasputin over to their leader's house for a meal of cyanine laced cakes in the cellar. Six hours later Rasputin has polished off the original cakes, been fed another load (which had to be poisoned from scratch) and is no different other than now being rather drunk thanks to the amount of vodka he had with the poisoned cakes. Getting impatient the lead assassin shots Rasputin at point blank range and the group go outside to get the car to bundle the body into the back.

However they return to find Rasputin clawing his way up the stairs, screaming bloody murder at them. The leader panicking now shots Rasputin in the head and he lies still. The assassins carry what they think is Rasputin's body out into the snow, but as soon as they get outside, the wounded Rasputin attempts to strangle one of the assassins. The other assassins manage to drag him off, then shot Rasputin and beat him on the ground while the mad monk howls out putting the fear of god into them.

Eventually they bundle the bloody body of Rasputin into the back of the car and drive a hundred miles down the Volga before chucking him into the icy waters with heavy chains on his legs and arms. The body is found a few weeks later and an autospy is done; there is water in his lungs, the mad monk was still breathing when the assassin threw him in the Volga...