Too tough to die

Ben Thompson describes his nine-year-old website, badassoftheweek.com, as a safe place for the so-inclined to indulge “your insatiable desire to read about grown people punching in the mouth or beating each other about the head and neck in a most furious matter.”

Aside from profiling a new badass each week (his most recent is Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez of the 1st Special Forces), Thompson has also written three books devoted to the toughest, nerviest, most fearless men and women ever to pick up a sword, fire a gun, or just flat-out decide not to take any more crap.

In honor of the newest book in the series — “Badass Ultimate Deathmatch” — The Post asked Thompson to name his top 10 badasses of all time. Ever the enthusiast, he gave us about 15 and refused to rank them. (It’s like picking who’d win — Superman vs. Spider-Man.) We winnowed them down, and, in no particular order, here are Thompson’s baddest of the bad:

CARL AKELEY

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because his life’s work is preserved in the Akeley Hall at the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. A turn-of-the-20th-century hunter and taxidermist — and nature conservationist, too, for those who ethically oppose stuffed rhinos – Akeley agreed to work for the museum free as long as it financed his trips to Africa.

Akeley, by turns, was stomped by an elephant, charged straight-on by three rhinos at the same time, and once passed through a crocodile-infested river using a dead animal as a raft.

And lest you think it’s less than totally badass to fell wild animals with a .577-caliber double-barrel elephant gun, Akeley also killed a leopard in Somalia with his bare hands.

The leopard, Thompson writes, “latched on to Akeley’s left hand, chomping down with all its might, and kicking at him with its back legs like a rabid 80-pound feral housecat.” So Akeley punched his fist farther into the leopard’s mouth, attacking its esophagus from the inside. The leopard gagged, Akeley freed his hand and jumped on the cat with both knees, crushing it to death.

RANI LAKSHMIBAI

The Indian warrior queen Rani Lakshmibai, who fought valiantly against British occupation, is sometimes thought of as India’s version of Joan of Arc.

Born in 1835 in northern India, Lakshmibai’s mother died when she was just a child, leaving the rearing to her father, the king of Jhansi. As a member of the warrior caste, he taught her the ways of the badass — how to ride elephants, jump over fire pits on horseback, swordfight, shoot a crossbow, fire a musket.

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Lakshmibai consolidated her small kingdom, trained the men and women in her service in the arts of combat, and repelled two large-scale invasions. As the legend goes, she charged into battle on horseback on many occasions with a sword raised and a child strapped onto her back.

BISHNU SHRESTHA

Gurkha soldier Shrestha wasn’t looking for a fight on the night of Sept. 2, 2010, as his train sped through West Bengal, India. The 35-year-old war vet was on his way back home, having just retired as colonel after seeing combat action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Around midnight, the train slammed to a halt as roughly 40 thieves began terrorizing the train, jumping up from their seats and brandishing guns, knives and clubs.

As they went down the aisle stealing wallets, tearing jewelry from the necks of women, taking laptops and cellphones, Shrestha sat quietly — even handing over his own wallet. A few hundred bucks wasn’t worth dying over. But when the bandits began raping a teenage girl, Shrestha got up.

Brandishing the curved kukri knife for which Gurkha soldiers are famous, Shrestha grabbed the would-be rapist from behind and used him as a human shield, lunging and slashing his two nearest accomplices before dropping the rapist with a slice to the throat. Twenty minutes later, Shrestha left three thugs dead, eight injured — and the rest running.

‘STAGECOACH’ MARY FIELDS

This 6-foot, 200-pound Montana frontierswoman spent the first 30 years of her life as a slave in Tennessee. Then she rolled into the rough-and-tumble frontier town of Cascade, Mont., in 1884 “with a six-shooter and a flask of whiskey in her work apron, a well-worn 10-gauge shotgun on her lap, and a home-rolled cigar clenched between her teeth, just daring anyone to f–k with her.”

As a mail carrier, she ran a stagecoach hundreds of miles across the lawless Old West, a land filled with Sioux Indians, gunslinging outlaws, and wild beasts.

One night, while on a run to deliver food and medicine to a convent, a pack of wolves attacked her horses. Mary used the overturned cart as cover and, with only a small lamp to guide her, she fought off the pack for hours, first by blasting them with a shotgun, then switching to a revolver when she ran out of buckshot.

CAPT. JAMES MACRAE

In August 1720, James Macrae, captain of the East India Company ship Cassandra, battled two pirate ships simultaneously near Johanna Island off the coast of Madagascar.

For more than two hours, Macrae traded cannon volleys with the ships — named Fancy and Victory — until all three were half-hobbled. At one point, his ship and Fancy were both grounded on a sandbar, less than 100 yards apart and each firing point-blank cannon blasts at the other. Casualties were mounting and ammo low, so Macrae ordered his crew to make a break for it, in boats or by swimming to shore, where they could hide in the dense jungles of the island’s interior.

For 10 days, Macrae and his crew lived off the land and evaded squads of pirates searching the island. Finally, hungry and tired, Macrae had enough. He put on his full dress uniform, strode down to the beach and demanded safe passage for himself and his crew. The pirates, astonished by the nerve of their valiant foe, returned half of his supplies and sailed off, leaving him with the most damaged of the three vessels, Fancy. Macrae and his men made it to the safe harbor of Bombay 48 days later.

PADDY MAYNE

The story of WWII British commando Maj. Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound Ulsterman “with a thirst for violence rivaled only by his thirst for Guinness,” begins like the movie “The Dirty Dozen.” He was in an Egyptian prison cell awaiting court-martial for decking a colonel and chasing him out of the officers mess while swinging a bayonet.

Then he got an offer of amnesty if he joined a new, elite squad of eight to 10 soldiers in the Sahara Desert. Their mission: Infiltrate deep behind German lines and blow up anything worthwhile — without any air cover or hope for reinforcement. The unit, then called “L” Detachment, evolved into the British SAS.

Mayne’s fast-moving team of demolitions experts braved 130-degree days, freezing nights, sandstorms, flash floods and dehydration before infiltrating Erwin Rommel’s airfields and blowing up more than 100 bombers and fighter planes. If he ran out of thermite grenades, Mayne was known to rip out airplane control panels with his bare hands.

RASPUTIN

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born in a dank bog in rural Siberia, yet was able to mesmerize Russian nobility soon after arriving in St. Petersburg in 1903. He seduced Empress Alexandra, had undue sway over her heir, and proved damn near impossible to kill.

In 1914, he survived being stabbed in the stomach by a crazy woman, and two years later Russian nobles tried to finish the job. The prince of Russia invited Rasputin over for dinner and fed him cake and wine laced with cyanide, then shot him in the back at point-blank range. Rasputin rose, slammed the prince against a wall and ran outside. He was shot three more times, beaten with clubs and thrown into a river. When his body was discovered the next day, Rasputin had remarkably broken free of his bonds and had been struggling to swim to safety. No human could kill him: His official cause of death was hypothermia.

‘MAD’ JACK CHURCHILL

A year after representing England in the Archery World Championships in 1939, Churchill proved himself a distinguished officer of the British Army during WWII.

British troops, pushed back toward the French coast, were doing whatever they could to stall the Germans’ relentless advance. Churchill not only refused to give ground, but he launched guerrilla raids on German positions and supply depots. Riding a motorcycle and armed only with a bow and arrow and a Scottish broadsword, he caught them completely off guard. When asked by a fellow officer why he insisted on carrying the broadsword into battle with him, Churchill responded, “In my opinion, sir, any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.”

‘CHESTY’ PULLER, USMC

Lewis Puller, nicknamed “Chesty” because his torso resembled a “beer keg full of lead bricks,” is the most decorated US Marine in history.

As the commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines in WWII, Puller led an amphibious assault on Guadalcanal and almost immediately ran into a force of Japanese infantry much larger than expected. The commander of the operation told Puller it was hopeless. Chesty slammed his fist down on the table and immediately stormed out of camp toward the beach, where he flagged down an offshore destroyer. Despite having absolutely no authority to do so, Puller boarded the vessel and immediately began organizing a second amphibious assault aimed at breaking through the Japanese lines. The shelling from the destroyer, coupled with a second landing, punched through. One week after initial defeat, Puller and his men obliterated all Japanese opposition in the sector.

To this day, Marines in basic training at Parris Island, SC, end their day by saying, “Good night, Chesty Puller, wherever you are!”

VIKING AT STAMFORD BRIDGE

In September 1066, a swarming horde of Viking warriors sailed into England. The call went out to the entire Saxon army, which caught the Vikings at Stamford Bridge.

The horizon “suddenly became alive with the gleaming steel of 5,000 enemy soldiers,” and the camp was quickly trampled. Standing astride the bridge was one giant Norseman clutching a double-bladed great-ax. This “living demon,” tasked with defending a narrow bridge — only wide enough for four attackers at a time — intended to buy time for his brethren. His face was concealed by a horned helmet, his name unknown to history.

For almost an hour, swords “shattered on impact with his chain mail” and “terrible blows rained upon his chest and arms failed to elicit even the slightest wince of pain . . . This ferocious barbarian cut a swath of destruction in his wake.” Forty men fell trying to cross the bridge — until one wise Saxon floated on the bloodstained river and, from under the bridge, jammed his spear up through the planks. He’d struck the Viking in his only vulnerable spot: right up the ol’ Valhalla.