It's that time again... The 2006 Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual
honor given to the person(s)
who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most
extraordinarily stupid way.
Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which
toppled over on top of him
as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.
This year's winner was a real rocket scientist .... really!
And 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. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing
both him and his sister.
Semifinalist #2
Three Brazilian men were flying 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 Reston VA, man was found dead after he tried to use octopus
straps to bungee
jump off a 70 foot rail road 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 ground," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death
was
"Major trauma."
Semifinalist #4
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend
were playing
a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a
future Darwin Awards
candidate - was hospitalized.
Semifinalist #5
Employees in a medium sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a
gas leak.
Sensibly, management evacuated 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
the sight of 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 'bright' by his peers.
Now ladies and gentleman, the winner of this year's Darwin Award:
The 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 Chevy Impala out
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 as best as
could be determined
are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a
distance
of approximately
3.0 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 5
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 an additional
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; however, small fragments
of bone, teeth and
hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were
removed from a piece of
debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel. Epilogue: It has
been
calculated that this
moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420 mph, though much of his
voyage was not on the ground.
