2011 Darwin Awards

2011 Darwin Awards

These Annual Honors are given to the persons who did the human gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

You may recall that last year's winner was killed by a Coke machine that
toppled over on him as he was trying to tip a free soda out.

This year's winner was a genuine Rocket Scientist...no jive! Read on...and
remember that each and every one of these is a true story. 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. The resulting explosion and fire burned his house
down, killing both him and his sister.

*Semifinalist #2

*Three Brazilian men were 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 Virginia 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
concrete," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was
"Major trauma."

*Semifinalist #4

*A man in Alabama died from numerous rattlesnake bites. He and a friend had
been playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend -
no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalized but lived.

*Semifinalist #5

*Employees in a warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak.
Management ordered people to evacuate 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 seeing 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 ''especially bright'' by
his peers.

And now the winner of this year's Darwin Award; as always, awarded
posthumously;

*THE 2011 WINNER*!

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. 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 1967 Chevy Impala 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 that could be determined are that the operator of the Impala hit
the JATO ignition at a distance of about three 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
five 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 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.

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.