Several people have suggested holing up in your own house and shooting anybody who tried to enter.
But if you’re willing to kill somebody to get a hundred million dollars, why assume the other people aren’t?
You’re a catcher in the game. You drive out to their house and see the target is inside and has posted signs saying they will shoot intruders.
Set the house on fire. Riddle it with machine gun fire. Throw in a bomb. Dump some poison gas. Any of these methods will kill and “capture” a person who’s holed up inside a known location. And you’ve won a hundred million dollars. People have committed murder for smaller sums.
The police will show up to investigate. But so what? You’re a random person who lived in the vicinity of the crime scene. There’s no reason you’ll be the subject of their investigation.
Counterpoint, the OP specified “capture”. Dead isn’t capture, not that @Cmyers1980 has returned to address any of the other concerns about violence / legal issues / sponsor. Plus, I respect that most of the board could manage to make poison gas without killing themselves out of household chemicals (we are smarter than the average bear!) but suspect that a number of the randomly chosen 25 would not - still leaves firearms and fire of course, but in many, possibly verging on MOST non-rural areas, SOMEONE would be recording you, and after your fire/shooting/poison attack (especially if you didn’t own firearms before) I think the odds are very good someone will have enough imagery to identify you. And the cops will be motivated I think.
So yeah, assuming the scenario allows KILL = CAPTURE, you might win the money, but odds are quite high (by no means certain) that you’re back to losing all the money and ending up in jail for a looooong time.
I’m sympathetic, but the implication in the “check the house” answer is that you’re breaking in because otherwise just looking in the windows proves squat. I’d fully accept a requirement that neither side be able to break the law, but that means locking yourself in the home is perfect defense. Unless, and again, the OP just hasn’t bothered, the rules of the game prevent you from doing so. Which, fine, you go to the nearest good friend/family member’s house and do the same (they really can’t outbribe you, as you’ll both have equal access to money when the contest is over).
Really, without more rules, we’re inventing our own.
I have multiple windowless rooms in my house 1½ baths & the basement. Two of them I could throw an air mattress on the floor & spend 24 hrs somewhat comfortably. I don’t think that’s in the spirit of what the OP was going for, though; let’s just say in your haste to get supplied into a room for the next 24 hrs you forgot to close/lock the door so it’s trivially easy for someone to just walk in, no breaking & entering required.
The high school kids in our town play a similar game.
A few runners (without cars) have a 5 minute start to try to get from the high school parking lot to the bridge leading out of town, about 2 miles. The chasers have cars. The game takes place at night and there are few rules except the runners must surrender when touched.
It all depends on the tech savviness of the pursuers* or their access to techy people.
I’d be tempted to do the clever move i’ve seen in thrillers: drop my phone in a bus, or stash it in a random car.
(Ooh, at a gas station! That way you know it’ll be on the move immediately. Watch which direction the car goes, you go a different one.)
*The more I think about this, you’ll need a lot of rules to keep this from being too easy.
Shooting home intruders is legal, breaking into a house to murder someone isn’t.
I’m already armed, most people aren’t going to have explosives and machine guns within 24 hours.
You’re also assuming that it’s readily apparent that the person is home. Are the attackers also cool with blowing up houses and whatnot if they don’t know who’s inside?
Nobody said I couldn’t shoot a dog following me, the dog would be far enough ahead to his handlers that it wouldn’t matter. When I said I would be dressed appropriatly that includes a gun.
Why bother leaving the phone? Nothing is saying the chasers are law enforcement or have access to any resources that law enforcement can use. Even with law enforcement, phone companies won’t release data without a warrant and won’t release real time location updates without an affidavit stating there is an eminent and exigent threat. Keep your phone.
They have to capture you alive and keep you alive to get the money. You can harm them but you aren’t necessarily immune from any legal consequences after the day is up.
