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Bloody Mad Woman (BMW)
21st August 2006, 20:47
It's that time again... They are finally out. You all know about the
Darwin Awards - The annual honor given to the persons who did the gene
pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most
extraordinarily stupid way.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which
toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.


Well, this year's nominees and winner make last year's winner look like
a rocket scientist. Rocket scientist, read on, wait till you see what
this year's master of ratiocination came up with.

And the nominees were:

Semifinalist #1
A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Semifinalist #2
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when
another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the
occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and
crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants
around their ankles.

Semifinalist #3
A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried to use
octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax
County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of
these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the
other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the
pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators
think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. "The length of
the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the
trestle and the ground,"
Carmichael said.

Police say the apparent cause of death was "Major trauma."

Semifinalist #4
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a
friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball.
The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was
hospitalized.

Semifinalist #5
Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of
a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing
all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.

After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas
company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had
difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the
lights worked.

Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching
into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette
lighter.
Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse
exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found
of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the
explosion.

The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of
as 'bright' by his peers.

=========
Now ladies and gentleman, the winner of this year's Darwin Award:
==========

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded
in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The
wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The
type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An Amateur
Rocket Scientist... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted
Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy
military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short
airfields.

He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long,
straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped
in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the
1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0
miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and
melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust
within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of
350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds.
The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces
usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners,
causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event.
However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5
miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted
the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road
surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and
impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened
crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small
fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and
fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed
to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed
of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not on the
ground.
:first:

Swoop
21st August 2006, 21:39
I think these must be from a few years back. Still a good chuckle from them!!!:rockon:

SlashWylde
21st August 2006, 22:17
...Yeah. Plus, the one with the JATO unit has been debunked (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html)as a myth, but it's still an entertaining read.

Latest entries are here: http://www.darwinawards.com/

Storm
21st August 2006, 22:30
Yeah, I've seen these before somewhere

dnos
22nd August 2006, 08:59
very funny, always good for a laugh, but i have a feeling these are at least 5 years old

Drunken Monkey
22nd August 2006, 09:48
very funny, always good for a laugh, but i have a feeling these are at least 5 years old

Try at least 15. From snopes:

"Contrary to common belief, there is no panel of distinguished judges weighing each potential Darwin Award entry then sagely reaching agreement as to which deserves an official accolade. Darwin Awards e-mails have been circulating on the Internet at least since May 1991, with the earliest e-mails and newsgroups posts of this nature setting before posterity inventive works of fiction that had been labeled by their authors as true accounts of actual deaths."

placidfemme
22nd August 2006, 10:00
Thank god for natural selection eh

Drunken Monkey
22nd August 2006, 10:07
... the one with the JATO unit has been debunked (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html)as a myth, ...

Despite it being a myth, you can see it being recreated on the Discovery Channel pilot episode of Mythbusters. Excellent stuff.

Colapop
22nd August 2006, 10:15
Yeah I saw that. Did they actually get the car airborne? I can't remember. They usually go until they've exhausted every possible avenue that can be thought of to prove or disprove a myth.

Drunken Monkey
22nd August 2006, 10:22
This guy has a good summary:

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2003/01/mythbusters_jet_car_jato_and_p.html

but in short, no, the car would not take off, even with rockets 50% more powerful than JATO rockets.

Lou Girardin
22nd August 2006, 16:06
True or not. Playing rattlesnake catch has to be worth seeing.

ManDownUnder
22nd August 2006, 16:13
I checked out the Darwin Awards site (posted earlier in the thread) and there's one about a guy growing hooch in an undergrond/water tank.

CO2 generator consisted of a wee gas burner which trickled away day and night... till one day it goes out.

So - not knowing how long it's been out, he climbs into this tank, containing pure gas... and lights the burners....

The neighbours found out when they heard a God almightly thump and found a hole in his yard with a body at the base of it LMAO!

:doh:

Bloody Mad Woman (BMW)
22nd August 2006, 16:14
A friend in the uk sent it to me - I'm not up on the play on how old they are lol

KLOWN
22nd August 2006, 16:30
good laugh, i want one of those jato rockets.

Kickaha
22nd August 2006, 18:41
...Yeah. Plus, the one with the JATO unit has been debunked (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html)as a myth, but it's still an entertaining read.

The real story is just as good :yes: it's quite a few pages long but worth the read

http://www.rocketcarstory.com/