Tor has a network of unpublished bridges it provides via offline methods in high risk countries. You can also request unpublished bridges via email [1]. Pluggable transports [2] allow your tor traffic to look like Skype or SSL. These tools combined allow most of the "noble use cases" of tor to operate without being hunted down.

1. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en

2. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en#PluggableTra...