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Buxom Wench
01-10-2009, 07:42 PM
It's that time again. The Darwin Awards are out. 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.


This year's winner was a real rocket scientist... HONEST!

Read on...And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY.

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, the winner of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):

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 actually on the ground.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

... AND PEOPLE JUST LIKE THIS ARE ALL AROUND US, BREEDING & VOTING!!!.........SCARY THOUGHT, ISN'T IT?!!!

Guinevere
01-10-2009, 07:51 PM
Looks like pieced together bits of other e-mails.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/dream/jato.asp

Buxom Wench
01-10-2009, 07:56 PM
Looks like pieced together bits of other e-mails.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/dream/jato.asp

DAMN IT!!

I even checked snopes before I posted this and nothing came up for this. :irked:

Kathryn Blakeley
01-10-2009, 08:00 PM
DAMN IT!!

I even checked snopes before I posted this and nothing came up for this. :irked:

I also seem to remember Mythbusters talking about that too...I could be mistaken, the episode I think I'm remembering was awhile ago...

Isabelle Warwicke
01-10-2009, 09:19 PM
I still vote for the guy who tossed his cookies into the fireplace. *rotfl* Idiot.

Isabelle Fawkes
01-10-2009, 11:13 PM
Just for fun check out the website for some interesting "enterprising demises"

http://www.darwinawards.com/

daBaroness
01-11-2009, 01:27 AM
Old, new, true, false - these always make for a fun read! Thanks for sharing!!!

Holly Jo Alford
01-11-2009, 03:21 AM
An interesting read. I'd heard the rocket car one years ago tho....

KissMeKate
01-12-2009, 09:24 AM
The JATO one is years old and I even watched the Mythbusters one. They were at least smart enough to make the car remote control.

I love the Darwin Awards and you should be able to read directly from the website. There are even a few books out, which are sectioned by type. My favorite ones are usually stupid people who are killed by animals. Like the guy who didn't feed his giant python often enough, so it decided to take his arm as well as whatever he had been HOLDING as its dinner. Only an honorable mention, the paramedics were able to get the snake off of him.

Thistle
01-12-2009, 07:03 PM
whether or not its true, my favorite Dawin non=award (non because the guy survived) has always been a variation of this one http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1999-07.html Maybe because I used to work at a zoo?








I do have to mention that rhino pooh is not so bad when compared to tiger pooh. Just thought you should know

mijomuffins
01-13-2009, 10:28 AM
The intelligence sometimes of people makes me wonder if the movie "idiocracy" really will come true...

Lady Saffron McDaniel
01-14-2009, 09:40 AM
Funnily enough, I'm watching a movie called 'The Darwin Awards' starring Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder, and it features the rocket car story. Plus Adam and Jamie from 'Mythbusters' make an appearance as Army surplus salesmen. It's on Showtime and it's the only thing on. It's actually kind of amusing.