The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool

by Wendy Northcutt

  “To save time—those fateful words.”

  * * *

  To save time (those fateful words) the neighbor had placed the shredder at the base of a great oak tree, where he could drop branches directly into the hopper. He intended to cut off the top third of the oak, which had been killed by lightning.

  With the shredder running wide open, the neighbor climbed his ladder to the first tree branch, stepped off the ladder, slipped—and fell. The paramedics found him very dead, half in and half out of the hopper, one leg shredded to the hip.

  Not married, no kids, removed self from the gene pool.

  Reference: Eyewitness account of an M.D. who practiced

  emergency medicine for thirty years

  Darwin Award: Stubbed Out

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  17 APRIL 2006, ENGLAND

  There’s always someone who thinks good advice doesn’t apply to him. For example, if a doctor advises that you are going to be covered with a flammable medical treatment, most people would take this advice on board and not strike a match until the flammable material has been removed.

  Philip was in the hospital to treat a skin disease, said treatment consisting of being smeared in paraffin-based cream. Philip was warned that the cream could ignite, so he definitely should NOT smoke. However, Philip, sixty, knew better than his doctor. And he just had to have another cigarette.

  Smoking was not permitted on the ward, but Philip took this setback in stride and sneaked out onto a fire escape. Once he was hidden, he lit up…inhaled…and peace descended as he got his nicotine fix. It was only after he finished his cigarette, at the moment he ground out the butt with his heel, that things went downhill.

  The paraffin cream had been absorbed by his clothing. As his heel touched the butt, fumes from his pajamas ignited. The resulting inferno “cremated” his skin condition and left first-degree burns on much of his body. Despite excellent treatment he died in intensive care.

  Using the Darwin checklist (criteria outlined on Chapter 8):

  Reproduction—he may already have children, but he won’t have more.

  Excellence—this one I’ll remember!

  Self-selection—he was warned that paraffin and smoking don’t mix.

  Maturity—at sixty he was old enough.

  Veracity—major UK news carriers covered the story.

  This ticks all the boxes, and though one feels sorry for the family, his death serves as a warning to others. If a doctor tells you not to smoke, there’s a very good reason.

  Reference: The Mirror, Yorkshire Today, The Guardian

  Reader Comments:

  “Up in Smoke”

  “You Light Up My Life”

  “Another smoker goes down in flames.”

  “He suddenly had this burning desire for a smoke.”

  “Dying for a cigarette.”

  Darwin Award: Going to Seed

  Unconfirmed

  1999, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

  Darren was dumb even for a junkie, but what he lacked in IQ he made up in creativity. In the supermarket, he noticed a bag labeled BIRDSEED 100% POPPY SEED. A hundred percent poppy seed equals a hundred percent opium! Figuring he was onto something good, he seized his chance to circumvent the stranglehold of the international drug cartels. He bought a bag of birdseed, boiled it into a thick black paste, and proceeded to inject the paste into his vein.

  Nothing happened, so he did it again.

  An hour later he was brought unconscious to the emergency room, as sick as it is possible to be. His chest X-ray showed thousands of tiny seedlike objects scattered throughout his lungfields. The working diagnosis was miliary tuberculosis, so called because the TB deposits resemble millet seeds. Little did the medical team realize the X-ray revealed actual seeds!

  Only two weeks later, after he recovered from life-threatening septicemia and multiple organ failure, did the true poppy seed story emerge. Darren survived but subsequently died of a garden-variety overdose.

  Reference: Eyewitness account by MedicineMan

  Darwin Award: Pining Away

  Unconfirmed

  Rare Double Darwin!

  Three hale and hearty young soldiers had finished their basic training. Before heading out to their respective assignments they decided to spend their few days of leave with one’s grandmother, who lived in the town where they had completed basic training. The men descended upon Grandmother, who filled them with home cooking and gave them soft beds to sleep in.

  Grandmother had a swing job to make ends meet, so the privates were left alone late into the night. They wondered how they could repay her for her kindness. A plan began to coalesce from their late-night discussions.

  Grandmother had three children. To commemorate the birth of each child a pine tree had been planted in the front yard. In the fifty years since the last tree was planted, the pines had grown considerably, and the middle tree now blocked the view from the living-room window. The privates decided they would cut down that tree, letting the sun and the view into the room.

  * * *

  “A case of beer went into the planning.”

  * * *

  A case of beer went into the planning.

  To keep the fifty-foot tree from crushing the house the privates reasoned that they would tie a rope to the top of the tree and pull the rope away from the house as the tree was cut.

  The middle pine, the doomed one, was slightly closer to the house than the others. Two privates climbed an end tree, wound a rope through its upper branches, and threw the rope to a private in the middle tree. He tied the rope around the trunk. By this device they could pull the rope from the ground. The middle pine tree would fall away from the house, and the privates were also clear of the path of the falling tree.

  Climbing a pine tree is very sappy work, and scrapes and gouges are inflicted by the natural roughness of its bark. But the hale and hearty privates completed the preliminaries without complaint. The middle tree was lassoed and levered by the rope running through the end tree.

  So far, so good.

  Two privates were situated on the ground, each straining to pull the tree away from Grandmother’s house. The third private revved his thirty-horsepower chainsaw and started to cut. Lo and behold, the tree actually fell away from Grandmother’s house! However…

  The rope-pulling privates had wrapped the rope around their waists, not considering that the falling pine weighed several tons. As the middle pine tree fell, both privates were ripped off their feet and smashed through the branches of the end pine tree. At the height of their acceleration they broke through the top branches of the tree and were briefly airborne before being jerked toward the earth when the middle tree hit the ground. The privates entered into Darwin history, either on the way up through the branches or on the way down to the ground.

  The event spoke for itself.

  Reference: Eyewitness account of the attending physician

  Reader Comments:

  “Can’t see the forest…”

  “Sometimes the bark is worse than a bite.”

  “This is what happens when soldiers don’t have officer supervision.”

  Darwin Award: Into the Abyss

  Unconfirmed

  An enterprising lumberman had felled a large tree and needed to haul it up a steep embankment. So he jacked up the rear end of his pickup and swapped one of the rear tires for a bare rim. He attached one end of a rope to the rim and the other end of the rope to the felled tree. He put the pickup into gear, expecting the rim to act as a makeshift rope crank that would pull the tree up the embankment, saving him lots of sweat.

  * * *

  “A great idea? Not if you’re reading it here!”

  * * *

  * * *

  Readers point out that unless the truck had a differential lock, this could not happen. The differential gearing on the rear axle would spin the other wheel but not the one with the load. It’s the same when you put one rear wheel in a ditch. If th
at wheel has no grip, power does not go to the wheel still on the road. Agricultural and off-road vehicles often have differential lock, but there is no mention here.

  Join the Debate! www.DarwinAwards.com/book/differential.html

  * * *

  A great idea? Not if you’re reading it here! You see, the tree vastly outweighed the truck. The man was standing with one foot on the ground and the other foot on the accelerator. When he gunned the engine, the tree acted like an anchor and the truck yanked itself backward. The open door rammed into him, and he was swept over the embankment along with the pickup.

  When the dust settled, our lumberman had entered the great beyond. But his escapade served as a warning to the next lumberman, who cut up the tree where it lay and carried it off.

  Reference: Another brilliant submission from the files of a thirty-year veteran of the ER, who says, “You cannot make this up!”

  “If all else fails, Immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”

  —John Kenneth Galbraith

  Darwin Award: Big Bang Theory

  Unconfirmed

  OCTOBER 2006, OKLAHOMA

  A patient at the local clinic sustained serious internal injuries from a fishing accident, including a ruptured eyeball and total hearing loss in one ear. Both legs were amputated midthigh. How did the normally mild sport of fishing become so dangerous?

  The man had been standing at the end of a dock with a bucket of dynamite, two-inch chunks, each fused and capped. He took a chunk, lit the fuse, cocked his arm for the throw…and dropped the chunk into the bucket of dynamite!

  Instantly recognizing the serious situation he was in, the man dove off the dock. But water is incompressible. It transferred the force of the explosion, in line with the blast, against his body.

  Besides his other injuries the force also damaged both gonads. One doctor was heard to remark that the gene pool was safe, as this patient had lost his balls.

  Reference: Eyewitness account by Mike Andrews

  At Risk Survivor: Hedge Your Bets

  Unconfirmed

  2007, ONTARIO, CANADA

  Recently a patient was rushed into the hospital, needing a surgeon to reattach the tips of his fingers to his left hand. While taking the patient history it was found that this bright chap had got the idea of holding his lawn mower sideways and applying it to his hedge. He was holding the mower deck trimming the hedge, and things were going well until the weight of the mower got to be a bit much. He readjusted his grip on the mower deck—and that was when the blade bit him.

  When the reconstructive plastic surgeon was almost finished with the complex job of sewing the patient back together, another patient came in with the same injury! On questioning him it was found that he, too, had been using his mower to trim his hedge. Apparently he lived near the first patient. He saw his neighbor trimming his hedge with the mower and thought it was a bright idea.

  Often fact is so much weirder than fiction.

  Reference: Personal account by Northern Scout, whose friend is a plastic surgeon with expertise in reconstructive surgery

  * * *

  “He saw his neighbor trimming his hedge with the mower and thought it was a bright idea.”

  * * *

  Darwin Award:

  A Highly Improbable Trajectory

  Unconfirmed

  A rare nonfatal Darwin Award. Nobody dies!

  In a suburban ER the first patient of the evening was a young man suffering from a gunshot wound. His story? “I was at a party and went outside to take a piss. Somebody did a drive-by and shot me.” He was examined and a small-caliber entry wound was found at the anterior base of his penis, exiting the midshaft, in and out the right testicle, and into the right thigh where the bullet lodged.

  A highly improbable trajectory for a drive-by.

  The nurse picked up his white jeans, which had been cut off and thrown aside. Inside the waistband were unmistakable powder burns. She said to him, “You had a gun down your pants!”

  At first “Billy the Kid” denied it, but he finally admitted to shooting himself while playing quick-draw with a friend. The reason for the attempted deception? He was on parole for a weapons violation.

  The nature of the injury effectively removed him from the gene pool.

  Reference: Anonymous eyewitness account

  At Risk Survivor: Tales from the Finnish Forest

  Unconfirmed

  JULY 2004, FINLAND

  I accepted a post as general practitioner for a small village in the Finnish forests. In Scandinavia, Finland is the butt of jokes concerning mosquitoes, trees, and excessive alcohol consumption, so I can’t say I hadn’t been warned. In defense of the patients, their government had just halved the taxes on alcohol, but nothing could have prepared me for the stories behind the wounds I treated.

  CASE 1: A young male I’ll call Pekka came in on a Wednesday, as the damages from a weekend of heavy partying began to bother him. Lacerations and abrasions covered his entire backside, from his ankles to the top of his head. But Pekka’s main concern was a dislocated thumb. It was sticking out at a ninety-degree angle from his palm and colored a nice shade of purple. I ordered X-rays. Luckily for Pekka he had no fractures, and we reset his thumb joint.

  How had these wounds occurred?

  Pekka’s friend was driving him home from the local waterhole. As they sped along somewhat faster than the speed limit, as one does when one lives in the middle of nowhere, Pekka realized that the driver was as drunk as he was! He decided to take action and get out of the car. While the driver was preoccupied with a sharp bend in the road, Pekka opened the passenger door and quit the car.

  Pekka was a regular customer over the summer, coming in when the anesthetic effects of a weekend’s libations began to wear off. He had his cast replaced, and the thumb reset, and reset, and reset yet again. I am sure he’s still out there working toward a Darwin Award!

  CASE 2: A middle-aged woman came in, complaining of a horrible headache. Two days earlier she had been driving to work when she suffered a “blackout” and woke up upside down. Her car was now resting on its roof. She extricated herself and walked (!) to work. But the headache had grown steadily worse. She thought it might be whiplash.

  To demonstrate that the pain was worse when she moved her head, she suddenly started shaking her head vigorously back and forth. The nurse and I both jumped to intervene and immobilize her until we could fit a collar and have the madwoman transported by gurney to radiology. She had a fractured cervical vertebra, which luckily had not been displaced even though she’d done her very best right there in my office! She, too, lived to tell the tale.

  Reference: Anonymous eyewitness account

  Personal Account: Missionary Kid

  Unconfirmed

  INDONESIA

  Darwin says: I have become very fond of these lived-to-tell-the-tale narratives. Many people have survived a brush with death, and their stories make vivid cautionary tales for the younger readers.

  I was a missionary kid, nine years old and fascinated with fireworks. My favorite was the Roman candle. You hold one end of a cardboard tube in your hand while the other end shoots pretty colored balls into the air. Then I had a “bright” idea. Wouldn’t it be cool to see that stuff shoot out the end of a Coke bottle?

  I was nine years old. No sooner said than done! I pulled out my pocketknife, split some Roman candles in half, and poured their phosphorous goodness into a Coke bottle. Then, with naive confidence, I lit the match. I still have nightmares about that match at the mouth of the Coke bottle, and I’m forty-one now!

  * * *

  “Then I had a bright idea.”

  * * *

  Witnesses said it was the loudest explosion they’d ever heard. The explosion burned off my eyebrows, singed my hair, and peppered me with glass shrapnel. I couldn’t hear anything, but apparently I was screaming hysterically and hopping on my one good foot until I collapsed and was carried to the hospital. I spe
nt several hours in surgery, having glass picked out of my body and the ten-dons above my ankle reattached. They had been severed completely in two.

  The top of the Coke bottle was found in the street, fifty feet away. To this day an occasional piece of glass surfaces through my skin! Among my missionary kid friends I am a legend in stupidity for that brilliant event.

  Reference: Personal account by Chris Harper, M.D.

  “He who hesitates…is sometimes saved.”

  —James Thurber

  SCIENCE INTERLUDE: LIFESTYLES OF THE SLIMY AND CONTAGIOUS

  By Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew

  Internet surfers and tabloid readers are fascinated by the rich and famous. This tale concerns a young biochemist fascinated with the slimy and contagious! Dr. Herbert Boyer was investigating a common bacteria identified in 1885 by pediatrician Theodor Escherich, who was studying the tragically high rate of infant mortality due to diarrhea when he isolated a rod-shaped microbe in a residue we need not dwell on. The bacteria he discovered now bear his name: Escherichia coli, or E. coli for short.

  You may recognize E. coli from the news. Hardly a month goes by without a health advisory issued by the CDC about a new outbreak. Beef, spinach, lettuce—any number of innocuous foods sitting in the crisper of your refrigerator may harbor the killer. There are hundreds of strains of E. coli. Most are harmless. But some strains produce potent poisons with the power to cripple their host and bring on the kind of misery that any dehydrated tourist bent over a Mexican toilet can understand. And a few strains are so deadly they could be classified as biological weapons! Still, there’s a kinder side to this ubiquitous microbe, a gentler side, a side that serves humanity. Odds are good that one day the humble E. coli will serve you too.