The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design

by Wendy Northcutt

  To prevent further incidents, rules were established prohibiting under-flights, over-jumps, and other aberrant behavior. Bungee jumping is specifically banned. Despite strict rules, however, the historic bridge attracts many would-be Darwin candidates, such as Slim, twenty-two, who violated the rules and lived to tell the tale.

  Slim walked onto the bridge, attached a lengthy bungee cord, and leapt off. His plan was to set himself on fire, cut the cord, and drop into the river below, quenching the flames. Unfortunately his knife was not up to the task. The blazing man dangled over the river for twenty-six interminable seconds, before he found a spare knife and severed the rope. At long last he plunged into the river, extinguishing the flames, and then swam off.

  Slim was taken to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and later transferred to the burn unit in the city. A spokesperson for the Dangerous Sports Club told the BBC, “His heart is in the right place, but stunt men usually put on flame-retardant suits.” Slim himself told the BBC that it was a thrill-seeking stunt that went horribly wrong. After that brief comment, he demanded £1,000 for a full interview.

  Reference: BBC News On-Line

  HONORABLE MENTION: COOKING WITH GAS

  Unconfirmed by Darwin

  19 AUGUST 1991, CONNECTICUT

  The good news as Hurricane Bob bore down on the Atlantic coast was that everybody in J.R.’s office was sent home early to prepare for the storm. And J.R. was well prepared. No matter how bad the devastation, he would have light, heat, water, and hot food. So he had nothing to worry about when the power failed under the massive onslaught of the storm.

  The bad news was that, despite his thorough preparations, J.R. had forgotten one important detail.

  As night fell, he fired up the oil lamps and placed his Coleman camping stove on top of the electric range in his kitchen to cook his dinner. After finishing the meal, J.R. commended himself on his foresight. He went to bed secure in the knowledge that Mother Nature could not beat him.

  Diligent linemen worked through the worst of the weather to restore power. Before dawn, all the appliances in J.R.’s house were again working, including the electric range. But J.R. had forgotten to check that one important detail….

  The burner under the Coleman was on, heating the little stove’s gas canister through the night. It finally exploded, blowing the kitchen wall two feet off the foundation, snapping several floor joists, and smashing every window in the house. The explosion caused $65,000 in damage, and J.R. had narrowly escaped an encounter with destiny—saved only by his closed bedroom door.

  Reference: New London Day

  PERSONAL ACCOUNT: CLEANING SOLUTION

  NEW YORK

  Saul was a thirty-nine-year-old manager at a company that provides plasma to burn victims. He was also an avid snowmobiler. Early one morning on the way to work, he purchased some gasoline to use as a cleaning solution for the sled’s engine. (There are so many ways that plan can go wrong—which will Saul choose?) He placed the container on the front seat of his car and went into work.

  That afternoon, Saul needed to retrieve some paperwork from the car. Since smoking was not allowed in the building, it seemed an opportune moment to slide into the car and light up. But his cigarette wasn’t the only thing that lit up when he flicked his Bic.

  Fumes had been leaking from the gas container all day. As he took his first (and last) drag, they ignited. In the inferno, Saul’s car was severely damaged, but he managed to escape with only a few burns, becoming one of the few to be eligible for his company’s employee discount program for plasma!

  Reference: Personal Account

  PERSONAL ACCOUNT: TIGHT WAD

  SUMMER 2003, ENGLAND

  I am a key intensive-care staff member in Buckinghamshire. One summer day a patient was brought in, sirens screaming. The thirty-eight-year-old was obviously the victim of an explosion, with shrapnel wounds and gunpowder burns on his face and abdomen. His thigh and groin had also sustained serious injury, although his testicles were intact.

  We removed a three-inch section of twisted pipe from his abdomen, repaired his large intestine, and sealed ruptured vessels to control bleeding. After five hours of surgery, the patient was admitted to the ICU on a ventilator and blood and plasma expanders.

  The police thought he might be a terrorist whose bomb had detonated prematurely, and they placed a media restriction on him. Due to the restriction, the full details never appeared in the press, but the story started to emerge when we spoke to the man’s brother-in-law.

  The victim was not a terrorist at all, but an unemployed van driver. During a family get-together, he took his thirteen-year-old nephew down to his brother-in-law’s garden shed for a fishing lesson. To catch fish at the local quarry, he planned to teach the boy a technique he had pioneered in his youth: tossing homemade explosives into the lake and collecting the stunned fish that floated to the surface.

  This clever fisherman cut a section of five centimeters scaffolding pipe and hammered one end closed. Then he packed it with a pad of cotton, rammed home with a smaller section of steel pipe. On top of this he poured a substantial amount of gunpowder taken from bootleg Chinese aerial fireworks, which are illegal in the U.K. His plan was to place another cotton pad on top of the gunpowder and seal the whole bundle with a plug of wood.

  Considerable hammering and noise were required to get a “tight wad.” As it was Sunday, the brother-in-law was worried that the neighbors would complain about the noise. Twice he asked his relative to cease and desist, and finally took his son and proceeded back toward the house.

  Meanwhile, this Darwin candidate continued to ram home the pipe’s contents while holding the device between his legs for stability. As the gentleman explained to me some weeks later, “My big mistake was when I used the steel pipe to pack the tube, instead of the end of the wooden hammer-handle.”

  Indeed. The brother-in-law and his son were thirty feet from the shed when a spark ignited the gunpowder.

  The pipe bomb shot the wooden plug into his eye orbit, whilst the body of the pipe unwrapped like a cardboard tube and launched itself into the gentleman’s abdomen. The blunt lateral force stopped the pipe from ejecting from his body, but the impact lacerated his bowels and the shock force and shrapnel caused massive hemorrhaging.

  The candidate lost a major part of his thigh, but the upward force of the explosion protected his testicles from injury, so his genes were not lost to humanity. He survived the incident, and has therefore not quite fulfilled the full Darwin Award criteria, although the facial disfigurement may yet ensure that his genes are not propagated.

  One comment made the trauma team’s day. The surgeon displayed a three-inch metal fragment from the man’s abdomen and announced to all and sundry, “Who’s going to contact the Darwin Awards, then?” All four doctors, three nurses, and two technicians cracked up laughing. Medical humor!

  Reference: Ches Whistler, Personal Account

  PERSONAL ACCOUNT: MEDIEVAL FLAMBÉ

  SPRING 1992, BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY

  The Society for Creative Anachronism was re-creating medieval life at Beech Bend Park, which is nestled in a woody curve of the Barren River. Two female friends had pitched their tents with other sword-wielding, baggy-pants celebrants. They invited me and “Adam” to join them for one evening’s campout. Since both were lovely blondes, as well as charming companions, we readily agreed. They provided us with faux-medieval garb that would enable us to blend into the crowd. A tabard and baggy pants were enough for me, but Adam wanted something more.

  Every SCAdian practices a skill, be it cooking, dancing, craft, or energetically whacking others with a duct-taped sword. Adam wanted to go all the way. He can juggle, which was a start, but not quite impressive enough. He decided to breathe fire. Adam had seen this stunt performed with pure grain alcohol. But he’d never done it, he was too young to buy alcohol, and the liquor stores closed at eleven P.M. Still determined to blaze with glory, he went looking for a substitute.
/>   Let’s see…what flammable liquids can a young man buy in a Kentucky Wal-Mart at eleven-thirty P.M.? There were several choices, none good. Adam settled on Coleman stove fuel. It was clear, and it didn’t smell too bad. He could pour it into an empty wine bottle for period realism. Adam decided it was close enough. Back at camp, Adam told one blonde friend, “C’mere, I’ve got something to show you” and led her behind a large cloth tent. Nearby stood a group of men in chain-mail armor, warming themselves around a fire. They could see Adam, but I couldn’t.

  Seconds later, a deep “WHOOOM!” burst from behind the tent, accompanied by a gout of orange flame. “Whoa!” cried all the guys around the campfire, turning to applaud. But their applause soon died. Through a double layer of tent fabric I could see this…afterglow. “Holy shit! He’s on fire!” the mail-clad men yelled, and ran over to pound out the flames blazing around Adam’s head.

  What Adam hadn’t realized was that unlike grain alcohol, stove fuel gives off copious fumes. As he swigged the fuel, some trickled down his chin. Fortunately, he’d shaved off his goatee the day before. As it was, fumes wreathed his head and fuel trickled down his throat. In the ensuing conflagration, he managed to scorch his eyebrows and the hair off the back of his head, while hardly touching that on top. Rivulets of flame ran down his neck, and he suffered chemical burns in his throat.

  Adam was still standing, and at first thought he was not seriously hurt. But the burns started to sting, and I led him to the chirurgeon’s tent. They quickly ascertained that neither medieval technology nor modern first aid would suffice, and I drove Adam to the hospital in a horseless carriage. The burns on his neck healed without serious scarring, his hair regrew, and the octave he lost off his voice came back in about six months.

  Five years later, I went to another SCA gathering in a different city, accompanying the same female friends. A long and entertaining day concluded with a belly-dancing demonstration around a bonfire, accompanied by throbbing drums. I turned to the stranger standing next to me and commented on how exciting the event was.

  “Aw, this is nothin’, man,” he replied. “If you think this is exciting, you shoulda been here five years ago. Some crazy dude set his head on fire!”

  Reference: Jim Gaines, Personal Account

  PERSONAL ACCOUNT: POCKET M80

  2002, CANADA

  In my small community, news travels fast, but it doesn’t usually travel far. This is an event that I witnessed but still can’t believe. My friend “Pyro” is a moron and a firebug, like every other boy in high school. His father was an avid hunter who loaded his own shells, so Pyro always had an ample supply of materials to satisfy his obsession.

  One day after school, I noticed a group of kids huddled around Pyro. He had filled a small, heavy-duty cardboard tube with FFFF powder, which is used for black powder rifles. The tube was sealed with a generous amount of duct tape and had a crude wick protruding from the side.

  Pyro pulled out his butane lighter, instructed everyone to step back, and lit the wick. But instead of doing the natural thing—throwing the crude M80 as fast and far as possible—he placed it between his legs right below his crotch, while he stowed the lighter back in his pocket.

  The wick burned much too fast, and before he could grab it and hurl it, the explosive blew up between his legs. Pyro fell to the ground screaming, and when the dust cleared, we all expected to see a gigantic hole in his midsection. But we were astonished to find the tube in almost perfect condition, with the exception of two missing ends. There wasn’t even a rip in his jeans.

  Luckily for Pyro, he hadn’t properly taped the explosive, and most of its force was released forward and aft. But unluckily for him, the explosion directed a certain amount of pressure against his testicles. Pyro managed to make it home and change his pants, and he told his mother he fell while walking along the top of a fence, thereby avoiding trouble over playing with explosives.

  That happened ten years ago. During a trip home for Thanksgiving, I ran into Pyro, and it seems that he is unable to have children.

  Reference: Paul Quattro, Personal Account

  CHAPTER 7

  Weapons

  Whether wielded on the right side of the law, the wrong side, or no side of the law at all, weapons tend to bite the hand that feeds them. Guns, grenades, knives, bullets, and axes all hold a grudge against those who abuse them. But first, an essay about the forensic analysis of crime scenes….

  DISCUSSION:

  FORENSIC ANALYSIS: ACHIEVING JUSTICE

  Maia Smith, Science Writer

  Imagine that you are deciding whether to admit a certain type of evidence into court on a criminal case. You know that this type of evidence:

  Convicts innocent and guilty people with roughly the same frequency.*

  Is extremely susceptible to contamination from outside sources, e.g., through the method of retrieval.

  Was a key factor in convicting 60 percent of five hundred wrongly sentenced people who were later exonerated by DNA evidence, although it was used in only about 5 percent of cases.†

  Is highly trusted by jurors, who often believe it even if they know the sample is worthless.

  What kind of evidence is this? It’s eyewitness testimony, and it is a keystone of our justice system. Certainly eyewitness testimony is deeply flawed and has led to many wrongful convictions. For every innocent man in jail, a guilty one runs free. If this were a new high-tech method, like analyzing fiber or DNA, it would have been abandoned as soon as the statistics became known. Yet no human rights activist would dream of advocating for a ban on eyewitness identification in court, despite its low rate of accuracy.

  Study after study shows that memory is extremely unreliable and subject to tampering.* Witnesses can be misled by weapon focus, preexisting biases, being shown a lineup of suspects rather than one picture at a time (they tend to pick the person in the lineup most similar to the perpetrator), being questioned by a biased interrogator such as an attorney, and so forth. And bear in mind that studies of witness inaccuracy are done in a controlled setting that tends to decrease the error: None of the study witnesses were offered leniency in exchange for testimony, or had a loaded gun pointed at them while making observations.

  The problems with eyewitness testimony are exacerbated in the case of repressed memories. Therapists claim that people subconsciously close off memories that are too painful to live with. This theory is undermined by the vivid accounts of Holocaust survivors and other torture victims. Therapists can sometimes “retrieve” repressed memories, although some techniques generate false memories just as easily.† The sketchy reliability of such memories has not stopped the use of this testimony in court, and many innocent people have been jailed after someone claimed horrific abuse (usually sexual) that occurred so long ago that an alibi or defense is unlikely.* Jurors, being human, shy away from flatly contradicting a sobbing witness, even if the evidence proves she is deluded.

  How does DNA evidence compare to eyewitness testimony?

  DNA analysis garnered good press in the 1990s, when it exonerated people who were wrongly sentenced to life in prison. Suddenly, a drinking glass or comb had the potential to identify its user beyond a reasonable doubt. Paternity cases became open-and-shut, as did cases of forcible rape.†

  DNA analysis is extremely accurate.† Errors are so rare (1 in 10,000) that DNA, if available, is nearly always the most accurate method of identification. Problems with DNA analysis are nearly always low-tech, caused by a careless worker. Even a good lab has an error rate of 1 in 200, not because of inaccuracy in the DNA testing itself, but because, for example, samples are mislabeled or contaminated.

  This is not a problem if DNA tests are performed after there is reason to suspect a person. However, with the growth of DNA databases, the possibility now exists for someone to be accused based solely on DNA. This creates a measurable risk of a false identification. For example, processing a rape kit often takes years. A scan through a database of DNA pr
ofiles could lead to a chance hit on an innocent person who cannot remember what he was doing on the night of September 17,2002. A false positive rate of 1 in 200 may be acceptable if there are three suspects, two of whom are likely to be eliminated by DNA analysis; it is not acceptable when randomly combing through the linked databases of the FBI and various states, which currently contain close to two million DNA profiles.

  DNA’s extremely high accuracy rate can also lead to misinterpretation. We may prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant has the murder victim’s blood on his shirt, without proving anything at all about whether he participated in the murder. He might have simply bandaged her skinned knee earlier that day. There have already been five cases of identical twins implicated in a crime that only one committed* (although in only one case has there been any difficulty eliminating the innocent twin from suspicion). A 99.5% chance that the test has correctly identified a bloodstain does not translate into a 99.5% chance that the defendant is guilty, but the jury might give the evidence unwarranted weight. Likewise, an attorney might mention the low error rate of a test, without mentioning that the immense database almost guarantees a few chance hits. The problem isn’t with DNA evidence per se, but with how it’s presented in the courtroom and interpreted by the jury.