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Thread: 2011 Darwin Awards

  1. #1
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    2011 Darwin Awards

    The Darwin Awards - New Ones !


    The 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 he 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.

    Really.....we can't make this stuff up.





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  2. #2
    NeoGen's Avatar
    NeoGen is offline AMD Users Alchemist Moderator
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    What?? Applying a jet engine on your car does not work? They do it all the time in the cartoons!

    Man, that was a very entertaining read with a perfect topping in the end... He must have been inspired by the Jetsons cartoons, with their flying cars!

  3. #3
    AMDave's Avatar
    AMDave is offline Seeker of the exit clause Moderator
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    Someone pulled your leg.
    The JATO was 1995 and was confirmed Urban Legend
    http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html
    http://www.snopes.com/autos/dream/jato.asp
    Funny as heck though Movie version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92NgQxg8BQ

    There are only three so far for 2011 and voting is still in progress
    http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2011.html
    Last edited by AMDave; 11-07-2011 at 12:25 PM.
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  4. #4
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    Damn, laughed my ass off with the JATO powered car. Too bad it isn't true. Or should I say lucky it isn't true?



  5. #5
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    Sounds stupid enough to let Mythbusters try it to prove it can't be done/to prove that it actually works (till the fuel runs out)


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