The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction

by Wendy Northcutt

  Darwin Award Winner: Sparkleberry Lane

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring criminals and spray paint!

  This could be a breakthrough in crime prevention . . .

  31 JULY 2009, SOUTH CAROLINA | Two disguised men entered a Sprint store on Sparkleberry Lane, pulled out guns, and stole wallets, purses, and credit cards from employees before ordering them into a bathroom. Both men fled, but they could not flee from their own stupidity. Twenty-three-year-old James T. had disguised himself by painting his face gold.

  Yes, in order to conceal his identity during the robbery, James had covered his skin with metallic spray paint. If this isn’t a Darwin Award, what is? Paints are clearly labeled: DO NOT GET ON SKIN, DO NOT GET IN EYES, DO NOT INHALE. Paint fumes are well-known to be toxic, and the metallic colors are particularly noxious. James began having trouble breathing (surprise!) and died wheezing shortly after the robbery took place.

  To add insult to injury, the disguise was ineffective. Witnesses were certain as to the identity of their assailant. Had he lived, James, like his surviving accomplice, would have been charged with armed robbery.

  Reference: wistv.com, The (South Carolina) State

  Darwin Award Winner: Sky Surfer

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring kites, weather, and machismo!

  OCTOBER 2007, IBIZA, SPAIN | Storm winds swept across southern Spain, causing widespread flooding and damage to buildings along the Costa Blanca. Tasty waves, thought one intrepid kite surfer as he packed his gear and hit the beach.

  Move over, Charlie Brown. Today’s large kites are not triangles held by a string, helpless fodder for kite-eating trees. Modern kites are controlled by multiple lines with surface areas that create so much lift that it can be difficult to keep your feet planted on the ground—even during normal wind conditions. These were not normal conditions. Heavy rainstorms, flooding, and landslides had caused the government to declare a state of emergency and close the beaches.

  Good times, thought the forty-year-old Spanish surfer as he unfurled his kite, climbed onto his board, and embarked on the ride of a lifetime. The high winds picked him up and ultimately carried him almost a kilometer inland, tagging him against buildings along the way.

  One more nominee joins the queue to meet Charles Darwin . . . in person.

  Reference: Spain RTVE, neurope.eu, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

  At-Risk Survivor: Sky Rider

  Confirmed by Darwin

  18 AUGUST 2008, FLORIDA | A news crew was filming a storm when they captured footage of a twenty-six-year-old man kite boarding on the winds of Tropical Storm Fay. Harnessed to his sail, he was picked up by the wind and playfully slammed into the beach. His harness was equipped with emergency releases, but the wind whirled him around so fast that he had no time to jettison the kite. The wind continued its pranks, dragging him along the sand, picking him up again, and bashing him into a building.

  A witness said, “It was a miracle that he just flew over the street and didn’t get hit by a car” during his aerial adventure. The man’s family described him an experienced kite boarder; one might even consider him over-experienced! The happy-go-lucky surfer survived to play another day.

  This story calls to mind the Doors’ song “Riders on the Storm.”

  Reference: cbs4.com

  Darwin Award Winner: A Shoe-In

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring trains and machismo

  15 DECEMBER 2009, GERMANY | A U2 subway driver found a body laying besides the underground tracks in Berlin. Because there was no video surveillance camera at that location, it took police two days to reconstruct what had happened. Apparently Yasin A., twenty-two, was alone in the subway car when he decided it would be a brilliant idea to destroy one of the windows. By swinging feet forward from a handrail into the window, he not only managed to burst the glass but also succeeded in being sucked out of the moving train, and was left dead on the tracks.

  He was alone in the compartment at the time; if an observer had been present, perhaps the young underground rider would not have engaged in the destructive nonsense that led to his senseless death.

  Reference: BZ Berlin

  Darwin Award Winner: Race to the Bottooommm

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring machismo versus gravity!

  5 SEPTEMBER 2009, OREGON | Jake reached the summit of Saddle Mountain, and there and then he informed his friends that he planned to make a controlled slide down the cliff face. He would meet up with them in the parking lot or on the trail below.

  Some folks are satisfied with the risks and rewards of dune sliding, and the chance of a 150-foot broken-limb tumble. Not Jake. The eighteen-year-old decided to “git-r-dun” down a thousand-foot cliff, instead. He slid pell-mell down the escarpment—and what was intended to be a controlled rockslide ended abruptly a thousand feet below the summit, when his body came to rest in a steep ravine.

  Friends were shocked. “We are shocked,” they said, “because he is always doing stuff like this and coming out smiling.”

  Reference: OregonLIVE.com

  Reader Comments

  “What a downer.”

  “Why daredevils don’t live long.”

  “Rocky Mountain Low.”

  Darwin Award Winner: Glacier Erasure

  Confirmed by Reliable Eyewitness

  Featuring weather, hunting, and gravity!

  In the late fall and early winter months, snow-covered mountains become infested with hunters. One ambitious pair climbed high up a mountain in search of their quarry. The trail crossed a small glacier that had crusted over, and the lead hunter had to stomp a foothold in the snow one step at a time, in order to cross the glacier.

  Somewhere near the middle of the glacier, his next stomp hit not snow but a rock. The lead hunter lost his footing and fell. Down the crusty ice he zipped, off the edge and out of sight. Unable to help, his shocked companion shouted out, “Are you OK?”

  “Yes!” came the answer.

  Reasoning that it was a quick way off the glacier, the second hunter plopped down and accelerated down the ice, following his friend. There, just over the edge, was his friend . . . holding on to the top of a tree that barely protruded from the snow.

  There were no other treetops nearby, nothing to grab, nothing but a hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below. As the second hunter shot past the first, he uttered his final epitaph: a single pithy word.

  Reference: The archives of an MD with thirty years of experience in the ER

  Reader Comments

  “Truly a slippery slope.”

  “O’er the glacier and through the snow . . . Whoa! Look out below.”

  “I think the world would be . . . biological.”

  “Now this would be a winter Olympics sport I would watch!”

  At-Risk Survivor: Locker Room Humor

  Confirmed

  Featuring alcohol and claustrophobia

  17 JULY 2009, GERMANY | Unexpected odds ’n’ ends are always turning up in train station lockers, but this may be the oddest yet. After a night spent carousing with friends, squeezing into the Ludwigshafen train station locker had seemed like an amusing idea to the man. He shut himself in a suitcase locker for fun, but the laughter faded as the oxygen supply dwindled. His companions were unable to open the locked door and free the twenty-year-old! With time running out, police broke open the door and dragged the groggy prankster to safety.

  Our alert readers ask, “Just why did they let him out . . . ?”

  Reference: Reuters

  At-Risk Survivor: Ninja Wannabe

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring machismo

  Michelangelo would never meet this fate.

  16 NOVEMBER 2009, WASHINGTON | Seattle police were searching for a reported assault victim when they heard screams of pain and followed their ears to a grisly scene: a man impaled on a fence post! They supported him to prevent further injuries until fire department per
sonnel arrived to stabilize him and transport him to a hospital.

  Suspecting that he was the victim in the reported assault, officers interviewed Vlad the Impaled (his name was not released) in his hospital bed. The man insisted that he was not being chased, but rather thought he was a ninja and could successfully vault a five-foot spiked fence. The man’s mad ninja skills, it seems, were bested by the fence—and he ended up stuck like a pig.

  “Clearly he was overconfident in his abilities.”

  He is no Darwin Award winner, merely an At-Risk Survivor. His skewered carcass was in serious but stable condition in intensive care when last we checked. A police spokesman summarized the situation: “Clearly he was overconfident in his abilities.”

  Reference: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, AP, msnbc.com

  At-Risk Survivor: Birch Slapped

  Unconfirmed Personal Account

  Featuring trees and gravity

  11 JULY 2009, NEW YORK | On a ten-day camping trip deep in the Adirondacks, a guide noticed a dead birch leaning toward one of the tents. This was dangerous! The guide enlisted three members of the church group to help deal with the tree situation.

  Somehow our hero missed the memo.

  First they tried pushing the fifty-foot tree over—it was leaning at quite an angle—but that had no effect whatsoever. Then they whacked at it with trekking poles, but that only scraped up the bark. Finally they decided that the only alternative was to pull down the tree.

  The guide removed the haul line from the bear bag and threw it over a short branch halfway up the tree. By pulling on each end of the line, they planned to wedge the dead tree against a sturdy live tree that was situated well away from the tent. They figured that this would avoid damage to the campsite.

  Now the plan was to put two people on each end of the rope, pull as hard as possible until they heard the wood crack, then let go and run away from the falling tree. But somehow our hero missed this memo. On the count of three, they began to pull on the rope with all their might, and as they strained the tree began to shift, and suddenly—CRACK!

  Everyone began to run. Well, almost everyone. Our hero hid behind the target tree, covered his ears, closed his eyes, and crouched down dead in the path of the falling tree. The birch bounced and landed less than a foot away from him! The guides were mad, of course, but everyone else was laughing too hard to be angry.

  That was one of the many highlights of that ten-day camping trip in the Adirondacks. An observer told our hero, “When we get home, I’m telling the Darwin Awards about this!” And he did.

  Reference: Matt Monitto

  DARWIN AWARD WINNER: TREE TROUBLE

  Not all trees go down peacefully. For example, in 2002 an English tree trimmer decided to save time (again, the notorious time-saving shortcut) and toss the pruned branches of a fir directly into a fire he built near the base of the tree. Predictably, the tree caught fire, putting an end to further time-saving innovations.

  Reference: Darwin Awards 3: Survival of the Fittest

  (Plume, 2004)

  At-Risk Survivor: A Killer Serve

  Unconfirmed Personal Account

  Featuring a student and a tennis ball machine

  1990s, SWITZERLAND | During a training lesson on a plush tennis court in Gstaad, a high school student named Elbrus (son of Russian nouveau riche) decided to check out how a tennis ball machine works. Since you’re reading this here, you already know the machine was on and working; in other words, shooting balls. Elbrus stuck his nose in front of the machine to inspect that complicated device. Before anyone could react, the next ball struck him right in the face, breaking his nose and knocking him out! It was his lucky day. The machine was not set to a maximum power—otherwise it would have killed him.

  Reference: Anonymous

  At-Risk Survivor: An Un-Fun Whirlwind

  Unconfirmed Personal Account

  Featuring weather-related machismo

  1999, NEVADA | Roofing vacant homes in Sun Valley was the sweetest commute imaginable. I’d wake up, make breakfast, climb a ladder, and BAM! I was at work. Two things Sun Valley has: sand and dirt. Front yards: sand and dirt. Backyards: sand and dirt. Between homes: sand and dirt. Guess what the roads are made of. Yeah.

  I wondered, “Has anyone ever died inside a Dust Devil?”

  Dust was so prevalent that it was constantly being exchanged by dust devils. These tiny tornadoes were always wandering aimlessly about, coming tantalizingly close but never engaging me. You see, I’ve always been a reckless sort. Personal risk is something I will wager for the prospect of fun. My idea was simple: jump into the first devil of formidable size; not some weak little twister that could only get me dirty. I wanted a contender.

  A month passed. My Mexican helper cried out, “Miguel! Look! Look!” And there it was. A monster. My monster, with a thirty-foot footprint, rising hundreds of feet into the air, heading straight for us.

  “I’m goin’ in!”

  To which Joaquin replied, “Nooo, Miguel, noooo.” At this point I must tell you, Joaquin was a very reluctant accomplice.

  Down the ladder I went, two steps at a time, and as I ran closer and heard the roar I must say I had second thoughts. But stupidity got the best of me, so eager was I to interact with this behemoth. In I rushed.

  Instantly all the air was sucked out of my lungs. My eyes were filled with high-velocity sand and what little breath I could draw was just detritus from the tornado. As the twister pulled me toward its center, the feeling of being planted firmly on the ground was diminishing, and something wanted my body to spin.

  The violence was so intense that I wondered to myself, “Could one of these kill someone? Has anyone ever died inside a dust devil?” When it finally released me, I went down onto my hands and knees, choking and gagging, and kissed the ground. Joaquin rushed to my side and frantically communicated that he thought I was a goner. To which I gasped, “I’d like to do that again.”

  My idea was simple: jump into the first devil of formidable size.

  Joaquin just shook his head and muttered, “Estupido.”

  Reference: Anonymous

  From dust we came, and to dust we shall return.

  —Ecclesiastes 3:20

  At-Risk Survivor: Medieval Mayhem

  Unconfirmed Personal Account

  Featuring explosions, weather, and women

  AUGUST (VARIOUS YEARS), PENNSYLVANIA | Every summer, the Society for Creative Anachronism holds a two-week-long “war” in a cornfield in Pennsylvania. The Darwin Awards team loves SCA members for their welcoming enthusiasm and their passion for medieval history and arts both fine and martial. But in any large organization, there are always a few outliers. And at an event the size of Pennsic, which attracts over ten thousand attendees from around the world, there are bound to be some potential Darwin Award winners running around. For example:

  A knight fell “dead” (i.e., passed out) on the battlefield after a minor body blow. When he came to, he revealed that his appendix had been removed just last weekend, and he was still stapled shut from surgery. Ladies, protect your fighters! Hide your knight’s helmet if he intends to endanger himself.

  Fighters have two neurons—one is lost and the other is out looking for it.

  A woman was taken to the camp’s medical facility with heat exhaustion verging on heat stroke. Attempts to lower her temperature failed. Finally the EMTs removed her clothing to apply ice. Beneath her elaborate historic dress, they found that she was wrapped neck to ankles in plastic wrap, in order to lose weight. Removing the plastic wrap brought her temperature under control. Remember: Your date wants to stroke you, not plastic!

  When the damp weather made it hard to get a campfire started, a knight suggested using a capful of white gas. His squire heard “cupful” and poured on two. The fumes became a situation. The knight, a real-life munitions expert, said, “We’ve got to burn it to defuse it!” He lit a piece of paper and kicked it into the pit. WHOOMPH! A fourteen-foot column of whi
te-hot fire was the result. An actor in a nearby play glanced offstage, did a double-take, and hollered, “Fire!” to the crowded theater. The mushroom cloud could be seen a mile away. The squire was restricted from using accelerants henceforth.

  The munitions expert said, “We’ve got to burn it to defuse it!”

  Reference: Wendy “Darwin” Northcutt

  Reader Comment

  “Three reasons to love the SCA!”

  SCIENCE INTERLUDE BATTY BEHAVIOR

  By Cassandra Brooks

  Fellatio is surprisingly rare in the animal kingdom. Humans do it, of course—though it’s still illegal in some states. And bonobo chimps, our close African ape relatives, do it—though really, what won’t they do? But in the wee hours of the night, researchers happened upon wild female fruit bats regularly performing fellatio during mating.