This went around work yesterday and makes you wonder what they were thinking!!!!
It's that time again... The Darwin Awards are finally 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 railroad 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, unfortunately, 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 crash.
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 STILL ALL AROUND US AND THEY BREED & VOTE...
SCARY, ISN'T IT?
Cruising Granny said
10:55 PM Jan 14, 2009
My initial reaction to all of this was, "You're making this up!" But then I read the bottom line. It's really the stuff of overactive imaginiations isn't it? Apart from the fact these people didn't survive their experiments and investigations, some of them were quite "clever". Thanks for the read.
VK3FEMT said
12:47 AM Jan 15, 2009
Obviously originated by some tool with to much time. I severely doubt its authenticity, such as of stupidity would make news headlines around the world.
And the petrol/milk theory is flawed. I challenge anyone to mix half a glass of petrol, and half a glass of milk for example together and when they vomit onto a fire see if it exploads. Unless they have been drinking only this stuff (with no food intake) for days, its simply not possible for this to occur due to other contents in the stomach, the more plausible result would be the fire would go out!
Lets send this onto the Mythbusters for busting :))
VK3FEMT said
10:56 AM Jan 15, 2009
bamphoto wrote:Obviously originated by some tool with to much time.
Lets send this onto the Mythbusters for busting :))
Damn I musta been tired when I posted this hehe...
dave06 said
11:08 AM Jan 15, 2009
actually its already been on mythbusters sometime ago and shown up as a fraud, they werent allowed a jato, not allowed out of the military so they brought in propuslsion experts who made up rockets of a similar size and power, using an old chevy (I think) as per the original myth they could attain nothing like the speeds sprouted by the original sprouter
they had it all remote controlled and followed it by helicopter, I cant remember the speeds attained but they werent that high
these things are all over the internet passed on by all and sundry.
tired postings, hah!! thats my natural element
Bridgee said
06:52 PM Jan 15, 2009
Sorry to also sound like a sceptic Peter.
Even though it made amusing reading in some warped kind of way, I reckon if you read articles like this on the net and believe them, then you will also believe those stupid annoying emails that ask you to send it to 7 other people and you'll be blessed with amazingly good fortune within 24 hours!!
dave06 said
07:25 PM Jan 15, 2009
do you mean to say that they are a scam, BUGGA!!! I was looking forward to some good fortune (whatever that is)
PeterH said
08:10 PM Jan 15, 2009
I do agree that these stories sound very fanciful and also find them hard to believe, but think they are a great read and can give credit (really??????) to the creative minds that have the time on their hands to think these bizzare things up and also make it so decreptive. That's the problem ...too much time on their hands.... I just did a quick search over the I/net and came up with what appears to be a dedicated site for 'The Darwin Awards'. Just a very brief look at this site shows it appears to have been going prior to 1995 ??? Here is the site http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/ Lets forget about those idiots..... I believe if we all thought about it and all contributed we could start a site/forum string that would rival even this large site. I reckon I could come up with at least 20 idiots I have worked/seen/lived/associated with etc.. etc.. who would defy even the description of an idiot..... I'd say everyone has know at least someone who resembles a 'blight on the gene pool'.
dave06 said
08:19 PM Jan 15, 2009
well I worked with a fellow once who was a carpenter/builder he had two fingers missing off his right hand, I asked him how he managed to sever the digits, he said " well the first one happened whilst I was just swinging my hand around to show a job that I had been working on, I had the sawbench going at the time and the hand struck the blade severing my index finger" "and the second I enquired" " well" he said " that was quite funny actually, I showed a fellow how it happened, swung my arm past the saw bench again and the damn thing took my ring finger in exactly the same way" funny but true.
PeterH said
08:43 PM Jan 15, 2009
Once while demonstration farm machinery years ago, I had a guy step over a fast rotating PTO shaft (about 5'.5" long) - the PTO shaft, not the guy - between the tractor and machine with shorts on. He was too lazy to walk about another 8 foot to go around!!! The PTO shaft flicked the crutch of his shorts, he thought it was a great joke , so did it again, with some suggestive motions of the hips...... It defies imagination what would have happened if the shorts had been caught by the PTO shaft - very possible as I have seen burrs on these things that will cut fingers....and also catch clothing, I suppose one thing is - he would have saved the expense of a sex change operation......................and would not have been able to contribute to that gene pool we talk about..................
dave06 said
08:54 PM Jan 15, 2009
unguarded pto's would have to be the most dangerous things on farms, we had one young fellow over in gulnare had his trousers ripped off him tore a bit of skin off his backside and left with burns and scarring he was a very lucky chappy, that was just stepping over it as well
another youngster just up from georgetown was transferring wheat using an 8" auger no guard over the hopper, had a bit of a wheat jam placed his hand in to unjam it, the auger took his hand off up to the wrist
funniest thing I seen was when I was a youngster and we were cutting wood with an old lister single connected via an 8" belt to a 24" saw bench, we used honey to keep the belt from slipping, the belt flew off and wrapped itself around the old feller that was helping, completly tore all his outer garments off, left him standing with just his holy old jocks and boots on
PeterH said
09:07 PM Jan 15, 2009
dave06 wrote:
funniest thing I seen was when I was a youngster and we were cutting wood with an old lister single connected via an 8" belt to a 24" saw bench, we used honey to keep the belt from slipping, the belt flew off and wrapped itself around the old feller that was helping, completly tore all his outer garments off, left him standing with just his holy old jocks and boots on
Memories........My father used to cut firewood with an old saw bench with a lister when I was just a big lump of a kid. From memory it had a large, slim water tank that cooled the motor. Trouble was it was about 300 yards from the house and nearest water. Trips with buckets.. standing on rickety steps/blocks cut from wood to empty in...memories. We used to use treacle for the belt, I think??????? There was also a large stick in the ground set to try and stop the belt coming off. Obvious now that the alignment wasn't quite right.... Took a lot to get it started with the crank handle which would break an arm or thumb if not held right!!
dave06 said
09:18 PM Jan 15, 2009
yep ours had a big cast iron tank as well as a 12 gallon drum up on a stand to keep her cool, if you didn't complete a turn with the crank handle she would kick back and look out
now you come to mention the treacle it might have been that and not honey that kept the belt from slipping, I was only a little feller
the first dozer I ever operated was owned by an ex priest who took up contracting, he apparently tried to replace the pins on the tracks of the dozer himself, he was in the middle of replacing the left hand track, had the last of it sitting in his lap dozer in reverse rope going up to the hand clutch him sitting on ground behind the sprocket, pulled rope engaged gearbox dozer run right over him sprocket dug into ground it just kept rotating over him very slowly grinding him in to the dirt, the ****y found him at about midnight after hearing the dozer idling for so long, wasn't much left of him, my job was to put her on the low loader to take it for scrap
It's that time again... The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honorgiven to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killingthemselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner wasthe fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him ashe 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 #1A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because hehad no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Notsurprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace inhis house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing bothhim and his sister.Semifinalist #2Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude whenanother plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants ofthe other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They wereall found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.Semifinalist #3A 22-year-old Reston , VA, man was found dead after he tried to use octopusstraps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle.Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch ofthese straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end tothe trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. WarrenCarmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alonebecause his car was found nearby. "The length of the cord that he hadassembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and theground," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was'Major trauma.'Semifinalist #4A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friendwere playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as aball. The friend -- no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate -- washospitalized.Semifinalist #5Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gasleak. Sensibly, management evacuated the buildingextinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After thebuilding had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company weredispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficultynavigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into hispocket andretrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of thelighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it upto three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter wasvirtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing theblast had never been thought of as ''bright'' by his peers.Now, the WINNER of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, unfortunately, asalways, posthumously):The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in theside of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckageresembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car wasunidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together themystery crash.An amateur rocket scientist ... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (JetAssisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavymilitary transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from shortairfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long,straight stretch of road. Heattached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired offthe JATO!The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from thecrash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at thatlocation.The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excessof 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 usuallyreserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him tobecome irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobileremained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before thedriver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires andleaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for anadditional 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'sremains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hairwere extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed froma piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed ofapproximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was notactually on the ground.You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?AND PEOPLE JUST LIKE THIS ARE STILL ALL AROUND US AND THEY BREED & VOTE...SCARY, ISN'T IT?But then I read the bottom line.
It's really the stuff of overactive imaginiations isn't it?
Apart from the fact these people didn't survive their experiments and investigations, some of them were quite "clever".
Thanks for the read.
I severely doubt its authenticity, such as of stupidity would make news headlines around the world.
And the petrol/milk theory is flawed.
I challenge anyone to mix half a glass of petrol, and half a glass of milk for example together and when they vomit onto a fire see if it exploads. Unless they have been drinking only this stuff (with no food intake) for days, its simply not possible for this to occur due to other contents in the stomach, the more plausible result would be the fire would go out!
Lets send this onto the Mythbusters for busting :))
Even though it made amusing reading in some warped kind of way, I reckon if you read articles like this on the net and believe them, then you will also believe those stupid annoying emails that ask you to send it to 7 other people and you'll be blessed with amazingly good fortune within 24 hours!!
I just did a quick search over the I/net and came up with what appears to be a dedicated site for 'The Darwin Awards'. Just a very brief look at this site shows it appears to have been going prior to 1995 ???
Here is the site http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/
Lets forget about those idiots.....
I believe if we all thought about it and all contributed we could start a site/forum string that would rival even this large site. I reckon I could come up with at least 20 idiots I have worked/seen/lived/associated with etc.. etc.. who would defy even the description of an idiot..... I'd say everyone has know at least someone who resembles a 'blight on the gene pool'.
The PTO shaft flicked the crutch of his shorts, he thought it was a great joke , so did it again, with some suggestive motions of the hips......
It defies imagination what would have happened if the shorts had been caught by the PTO shaft - very possible as I have seen burrs on these things that will cut fingers....and also catch clothing,
I suppose one thing is - he would have saved the expense of a sex change operation......................and would not have been able to contribute to that gene pool we talk about..................
Took a lot to get it started with the crank handle which would break an arm or thumb if not held right!!