The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool

by Wendy Northcutt

  Darwin Award: Pierced!

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  JANUARY 2008, PENNSYLVANIA

  A twenty-three-year-old man with various body piercings decided to have some fun at work. He wondered, “What would it feel like to connect the electronic control tester to my chest piercings?” Several coworkers tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to wire himself up to the electronic device, but he ignored their pleas.

  * * *

  “What would it feel like to…”

  * * *

  He proceeded to connect two alligator clips to his metal nipple piercings, one on each side, and hit the test button….

  His coworkers were still trying to revive him with CPR and rescue breathing when the police and rescue personnel arrived. They were not successful.

  Reference: The Boyertown Area Times, PA. January 10, 2008.

  Vol. 150, Number 32. berksmontnews.com

  Reader Comments:

  “I would not even try this with my pierced earrings.”

  “Shock to the heart, and you’re to blame….”—Bon Jovi

  “All charged up.”

  Darwin Award: Barn Razing

  Unconfirmed

  14 JANUARY 2007, WEST VIRGINIA

  Raising a new barn is an endeavor that brings a community together. Demolishing a barn is another question. A trio of friends set out to dismantle a dilapidated structure one bracing winter afternoon. Speaking of bracing…

  It was all fun and games until one industrious fellow fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post. Carrying the weight of a full barn roof, those wooden beams were all that stood between the demolition worker and structural collapse.

  The roof succumbed to the pull of gravity, and the ill-fated lumberjack had only a brief moment to contemplate the approach of his deadly problem. As a consolation prize, the deceased was indeed successful at demolishing the barn.

  Reference: Hampshire Review

  Reader Comment:

  “Gravity hurts. Gravity + Wood hurts more.”

  Darwin Award: A Prop-er Send-off

  Unconfirmed

  BROOME, AUSTRALIA

  When you work as a diver on a pearl farm, there are many ways to “buy the farm.” Our head diver, Mitchell, known as Sharky, was not afraid to take risks to get the job done. He was a loose gun in a company of cowboys. Sharky seemed destined to make an original exit.

  * * *

  “Instead of following standard procedure…”

  * * *

  A near miss happened in Roebuck Bay. He miscalculated the amount of fuel needed for the air compressor that pumps air to the divers below. Instead of following standard procedure—bringing everyone up and refueling during a surface interval—he surfaced alone to top up the fuel tank while the compressor was still running.

  The deck was unsteady, and naturally he spilled some petrol. The compressor had been running for hours. Its red-hot exhaust ignited the spilled fuel, and the flames followed the fuel into the tank. The brand-new dive boat was fully kitted out for the pearl farm, including oxygen for resuscitations. The resulting mushroom cloud explosion from the oxy bottle startled observers all the way back in town, five kilometers away.

  Luckily Sharky jumped back in the water before the big explosion. He and his crew were picked up by another dive boat.

  Despite this incident Sharky was promoted to skipper of a larger vessel. However, the skipper still found excuses to don the old dive gear. One such excuse was a mooring rope tangled around the propeller. Instead of asking an outfitted diver for assistance, Sharky chucked on his dive gear, started the compressor, clipped on a dive hose, and jumped off the back of the boat. But he neglected to take the boat out of gear….

  The spinning prop entangled his hose and started reeling him in. His “lifeline” pulled him through the prop, and he died on the way to the hospital. Sharky didn’t have any children (that he knew of), but he did have a wicked sense of humor. He died doing what he always did…having a go.

  Reference: Eyewitness account by Anonymous, who says,

  “I hope he forgives me for submitting him for a Darwin Award!”

  Darwin Award: Crushing De’feet

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  28 NOVEMBER 2006, AUSTRIA

  A man who had been reported missing was found the following morning in a trash compactor, victim of an industrial accident. Once the videotape from a monitoring camera was reviewed, all became clear.

  * * *

  “He used his foot to press the boxes into the hydraulic compactor.”

  * * *

  He worked for a parcel delivery service in Hall in Tirol. He had loaded the hydraulic press with empty boxes and started it up. At that point the longtime employee walked to the edge of the filling hole and used his foot to press the boxes farther into the hydraulic trash compactor.

  His foot was seized by the press, and he was drawn into the chamber and crushed. He was not discovered until his colleagues needed to use the press again the next day.

  Reference: tirol.orf.at

  Darwin Award: Chemistry Went to Her Head

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  2 FEBRUARY 2008, BULGARIA

  It was a cold but sunny February afternoon. Anna, a biology teacher from Sofia, was driving two friends home from a memorial service. Suddenly the vehicle stopped. Bystanders saw all three occupants dash from the car to a nearby manhole and start pouring down liquids and powders from various bottles and jars.

  Apparently, the biology teacher had been performing chemistry experiments in her free time and had some leftover noxious chemicals. It is still not entirely clear what the chemicals were, but two of the bottles were labeled diethyl ether and methanol, both highly flammable liquids. The former is also used as a sedative, so one explanation for their actions is that they felt dizzy from the ether vapors and thought it was a good idea to pour them in the sewer.

  * * *

  “Tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might first appear.”

  * * *

  As it turns out, a good idea it definitely was not. The cocktail of flammable substances in the enclosed space of the sewer caused an explosion so powerful that it launched the manhole cover into the air, decapitating the (briefly) surprised Anna. Left without a head on her shoulders, she decided it was time to kick the bucket.

  The other two people were not unharmed, but were alive. They were taken to the hospital with burns on their faces. They may not regain their eyesight, but hopefully will be able to speak clearly enough to tell their children that tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might first appear.

  Reference: focus-news.net

  “Darwin Award contenders would do well to remember the wise words of Brooke Shields:

  ‘If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.’”

  Darwin Award: Silage Spreader

  Unconfirmed

  1992, UK

  I am an injury lawyer, and for many years I represented the National Farmers’ Union Mutual, an insurance company specializing in (yep) farms. Farmworkers do the most insane things that never ceased to amaze me, but this one takes the biscuit.

  I was investigating a fatal accident on a farm in Hampshire. The deceased, an experienced hand, drove a silage spreader hitched to a tractor. Molasses was added to the spreader by parking it beneath a molasses tank and opening the tap. The silage was mixed by three large steel augers rotating in the belly of the open-topped spreader. The tractor was then driven into the fields, and the feed mix merrily flung far and wide from the spreader.

  To access the molasses tap one climbs a ladder fixed to the tank. The subsequent inquest made it clear that our man, finding he had parked a mite short and could not reach the tap, decided not to get down and move the tractor five feet but rather to teeter along the edge of the open spreader hopper (a metal rim some three inches wide) wearing wellies covered in the usual farm muck
, so he could save himself twenty seconds of precious work time.

  * * *

  “So he could save himself time…”

  * * *

  Needless to say, time being so dear, he did not bother to disengage the PTO shaft of the tractor, which meant he was doing his balancing act above three bloody great steel augers rotating below him. Pity the poor workmate who eventually wondered why the tractor had been sitting there for an hour chugging gently away, put two and two together, and took a peep into the hopper.

  Reference: Eyewitness account by Mike Clarke

  Reader Comments:

  “Going down on the farm.”

  “A sticky situation.”

  “All life is an experiment.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Darwin Award: A Breathtaking View

  Unconfirmed

  1989, SOUTH AFRICA

  Downtown Johannesburg is continuously growing with the construction of modern new buildings. One such building was designed with a steel framework, intended to be clad in glass as a final touch.

  On the eighteenth floor an engineer was inspecting the framework. He asked one of the workers to stand on a scaffold that was projecting through an open space where the glass panel would soon be mounted. With the worker acting as a counterweight, the engineer walked out onto the scaffold, checked the exterior, and came back in to continue his inspection.

  After the engineer left, curiosity got the better of the worker. He walked out on the scaffold to see what the engineer had been looking at…. Fortunately the falling worker did not take out any pedestrians!

  * * *

  “Curiosity got the better of the worker.”

  * * *

  The worker removed himself from the gene pool out of sheer stupidity. But one does wonder whether that engineer is blithely continuing to ask trusting people to act as counterweights without explaining his reason, and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake!

  Reference: Eyewitness account of a person

  who was on lunch break when she saw the man fall

  Reader Comments:

  “Curiosity killed the cat!”

  “Uhhh what was he looking at?”

  “When engineers assume others are thinking the same thing.”

  Darwin Award: Breathless

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  2007

  An experienced forty-seven-year-old rescue diver was filming an underwater video of a wreck forty-four meters below sea level. He was in deep water, nine meters deeper than the recreational diving maximum, which warrants special training and extra safety considerations. To keep the audio track clear he turned off the alarms on his dive computer. His buddy, working on the other side of the wreck, did the same.

  Defeating the safety…harbinger of so many Darwin Awards.

  * * *

  “The bends” are a painful and occasionally fatal condition caused by nitrogen bubbles surging into the bloodstream and tissues due to a too-rapid ascent, but they can be avoided if a diver follows the dive table limits and makes a decompression stop while ascending to allow blood gas levels to normalize. Air embolism is damage to the lungs due to a diver holding his breath on ascent. The volume of air doubles every ten meters one rises.

  * * *

  Sixteen minutes into the dive he was alone and out of air—a situation that should never sneak up on a diver. But he had turned off the safety alarms and swum out of sight of his buddy. The diver made an emergency ascent up the anchor line. At eighteen meters the divemaster tried to assist him, but the panicked diver refused to take an alternate air source. He continued his rapid flight to the surface, where he lost consciousness and could not be revived.

  * * *

  “The experienced diver deliberately disregarded two basic safety rules.”

  * * *

  The cause of death: “Air embolism due to rapid ascent.”

  Was it an accident? This experienced diver deliberately disregarded two basic safety rules: Pay attention to your gauges and stay within reach of your buddy. If he had attended to his gauges (and not turned off the alarms) he could have made a controlled ascent, including a decompression stop for safety. If he was near his buddy, they could have shared air as they both made a controlled ascent. Either precaution would have saved his life.

  Reference: Alert Diver magazine, “Breathless on the Bottom,” March/April 2007

  At Risk Survivor: He Kicked the Bucket

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  26 JANUARY 2007, TEXAS

  In a world full of wonders man invented boredom. So work time becomes playtime. If you work in an office, you reproduce your naughty bits on the copy machine. If you work for an arc welding company? A plastic bucket, welding materials, and a single spark can combine for a playdate with a bang.

  “I was on the computer when I heard the boom,” said a resident of the trailer park adjacent to the welding shop. “It shook my house. The whole neighborhood could feel it!”

  * * *

  “Just for kicks, they attempted to blow up a bucket.”

  * * *

  Just for kicks a thirty-year-old welder and four coworkers had attempted to blow up a plastic bucket. Our man placed a striker, a spark-generating device used to start a welder’s torch, in the plastic bucket and sealed it. Then he filled the bucket with acetylene, an explosive gas used for welding. The plan was to toss the bucket in the air and watch it explode when the striker sparked.

  Before that happened, however, our Darwin wannabe inadvertently kicked the plastic bucket, and the striker struck a spark. BOOM. The explosive force turned the lid of the bucket into a whirling saw that flew through the air and struck the man in his right arm, nearly severing it. He also sustained lacerations to his right leg.

  No one else was injured in the blast, and no charges were filed, as it was felt that the perpetrator of the incident had already been sufficiently punished.

  Reference: Galveston County Daily News

  At Risk Survivor: Flyswatter

  Confirmed True by Darwin

  APRIL 2004, CALIFORNIA

  One spring morning when a bug crawled across his desk, an adult education teacher gave twenty-five students an impromptu and involuntary lesson in safety—during his safety class. You see, Teach had an unusual paperweight, a 40 mm shell he had found on a hunting trip. It made a unique conversation piece. Using opaque reasoning, he assumed that the ordnance must be inert. But this particular ordnance was the teacher’s ticking ticket to fame.

  Back to the spring morning when a bug crawled across his desk. Should he squash it with a tissue? Sweep it out the door? Leave it to pursue its happy existence and continue with his lesson? No, the teacher picked another alternative. He hefted the “inert” artillery shell and slammed it onto the short-lived insect.

  * * *

  “He assumed the artillery shellmustbe inert.”

  * * *

  The impact set off the primer, and the resulting explosion caused burns and shrapnel lacerations on his hand, forearm, and torso. No one else in the classroom was hurt. To the teacher’s further consolation his actions did succeed in one respect. That bug was eliminated.

  Reference: cnn.com, San Mateo Daily News

  At Risk Survivor: Caulker Burner

  Unconfirmed

  SEPTEMBER 1999, SCOTLAND

  The Ferguson shipyard at Port Glasgow uses a plasma cutter to cut steel for boats according to plans. For smaller holes the plasma torch just cuts out the hole. But for larger holes it is programmed to leave sections of uncut steel to make sure that no one can accidentally fall through.

  Once the steelwork is positioned on the ship, a caulker burner uses an oxyacetylene blowtorch to burn through the six-inch sections, thereby creating the properly sized hole in the steel.

  Enter our hero. Liam was a caulker burner, and he had been tasked with the job of going onto the ship and cutting away these sections. The piece in question had been designed to allow a large exhaust pipe t
o come through the deck.

  * * *

  “He decided to stand in the middle of the hole he was burning out.”

  * * *

  Liam began his task of burning away the steel. But Liam had decided to stand in the middle of the hole he was burning out, which led to a rather nasty fifteen-foot fall onto scaffolding below. He escaped with a few broken ribs and a month off work. Luckily for him, neither the blowtorch nor the large steel plate fell on top of him, therefore denying him a gloriously well-deserved Darwin Award.

  Reference: Greenock Telegraph and the eyewitness account

  of E. Buchanan, a twelve-year veteran of the shipyards

  At Risk Survivor: The Turn of the Screw

  Unconfirmed

  WESTERN AUSTRALIA

  The Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter uses a piece of heavy machinery called a screw feeder, a large cast-iron tube with an Archimedean screw inside. As the screw turns, it transports chunks of ore along its length. One of the drawbacks to the design is that it can and does jam, if ore gets wedged between the edge of the screw and the casing.