The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (18 page)

 

“Some people just don’t realize there
is
such a thing as going too far.”

“I guess ‘no warrant needed’ on this one.”

“Sounds like one of our Lil’ Darlins’.”

 

 

1 NOVEMBER 2009, BELGIUM | Police received a desperate call from a man who had been attacked on a motorway near the town of Liege. When the policemen arrived, they found Thierry B., thirty-seven, lying dead on the ground, his body stabbed, his car burning. Witnesses had seen a big truck driving away.

But there was no evidence of fighting or struggling around the body—only the knife wounds on his shoulder and neck. Puzzled, inspectors analyzed Thierry’s cell phone calls. He had recently reconnected with an old friend, a fact that intrigued Inspector Clouseau. I mean, Commissioner Lamoque. Childhood friend, lost sight of for ten years, back in touch? Lamoque invited the forty-two-year-old friend in for a chat about the roadside aggression.

Turns out, Thierry was aggrieved regarding insurance money he felt he was owed but was never paid, after his restaurant burned two years before. He had asked his old friend to bring him a knife and a jerrican of fuel, and leave him alone on the motorway: a man with a plan to get the insurance money one way or another.

The “victim” then set his car on fire, called the police, and stabbed himself, accidentally cutting an artery in his own neck. By the time his simulated act of violence was over, he was over too, face against the ground ten yards from his burned car. Roll credits on this little drama.

Reference:
La Dernière Heure
(Belgium)

 

“Mock aggression mocks death.”

“Faking it.”

“They’ll probably raise his rates.”

“Objection! How do we know this was not murder or suicide by persons unknown? L. Ron Hubbard, anyone?”—Conspiracy theorist

 

 

2003, IRAQ | A group of marines obtained some surplus parachutes that had been taken out of circulation. The silk chutes were good for nothing more than providing shade in Iraq—or midsummer mischief. To begin with, the marines popped two chutes and competed to see who could run one hundred meters fastest while dragging a chute, but in short order they moved on to more daring adventures.

The most prominent idea floated was either to jump off the top of the barracks or paraglide from a truck driven along the beach. Obviously jumping off a building wasn’t wise, and the long drive to the beach precluded immediate gratification. But why not deploy a canopy, like a drag-racing parachute, behind a car while driving?

With proper planning, this might have caused no more damage than a missing bumper, but without proper planning it almost provided one lance corporal with a premature death. You see, in the interest of
saving time,
the marines attached the chute to the driver instead of the car. He buckled in, and the chute was tossed out of the sunroof of the Eclipse.

The first two runs were a “failure” because the chute didn’t catch enough air. After a brief reconnoiter the men held the chute open behind the Eclipse while the driver, now pumped full of adrenaline, revved the engine and popped the clutch. The stretch of road was no longer than two hundred yards, but it was the longest drive ever taken by that marine.

The canopy quickly expanded to its fullest, the loose cords pulled taut, and the driver was lifted dramatically off his seat. He found himself suspended in the cabin with only the seat belt preventing him from being yanked through the sunroof. What with being pulled in different directions, the cord lacerations, and the fear of crashing into barriers dead ahead, he had had enough. However, in his position against the roof of the cab, he couldn’t do much about the situation. The young man realized that he had a legit chance of being the next dumb marine to win a Darwin Award.

After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to stretch his limbs far enough to depress the clutch and pull the emergency brake. The car stopped suddenly—not to the sound of screeching tires, but to the sound of cracking fiberglass. More on that in a moment.

With the car at rest, the marine expected to slide down to his seat and beat a hasty retreat from that death trap. Instead he remained inexplicably pressed against the roof. He struggled with the seat belt, released the five-point parachute harness, and finally slithered out of the car, breathing a prayer of gratitude.

The small crowd rippled with the nervous laughter of people who had narrowly survived a runaway roller coaster. Observers had seen the parachute sway violently from side to side behind the small car. At the very instant the driver had pulled the brake, the chute had caught on a concrete Jersey barrier next to the buildings.

It was a gut-wrenching moment. If he had braked a second later, the marine would have been crushed between the opposing forces of the moving vehicle and the stationary parachute. The loud cracking fiberglass noise? That was the sound of the cords compressing the sunroof and breaking the spoiler loose from the trunk.

A sailor who witnessed the stunt from the E-club came running out with an expression of disbelief. “Are you trying to get a Darwin Award, marine?
Why
did you do that?”

The marine answered, in the most matter-of-fact voice, “We got bored.”

 

Reference: Anonymous

 

 

JULY 2009, IOWA | A doctor at the University of Iowa’s oral surgery clinic relayed the almost unbelievable story of a patient he had treated in the emergency room. As you will soon find out, it took a medical miracle to prevent this man from taking home the grand prize.

The man, in his late twenties, and his wife were driving down the highway when they were involved in a one-car accident from which the wife emerged unscathed, while her husband sustained two broken legs, multiple rib fractures, a broken arm, a broken collarbone, and the worst facial trauma the fifty-five-year-old oral surgeon had ever seen. “We put his forehead back together like a puzzle, intermixing pieces of bone and metal plates.”

Wondering how there could be such a fantastic difference in their injuries, Doctor decided to ask Wife a few questions.

She said that the couple had been arguing about the man’s reckless habits, specifically his love for “street skating.”

In an activity almost too absurd to exist, the participants get a vehicle going at a good speed, sometimes up to thirty mph, open the door, hang on for dear life, and drag the soles of their feet on the pavement.

The wife began the discussion in the car that day by using her sane mind to tell her Evel Knievel-wannabe husband that he was going to get killed by willingly jumping out of, hanging onto, and dragging his feet alongside a moving vehicle. Nettled, Husband set out to prove to Wife that this activity was, in fact, not dangerous.

Traveling at sixty mph—in a car he himself was driving—he opened the door, got a good grip, and hopped out, forgetting that he was traveling at double or triple the “normal” speed for this asinine stunt. His feet immediately caught the pavement and were pulled out from under him, but he did not fall from the car quite yet. He held on long enough for the out-of-control vehicle to roll into a ditch and for him to come into face-first contact with a telephone pole, stopping the argument faster than an auctioneer could spit out, “ICanSayIToldYouSo.”

Miraculously this champ will live to fight another day with a fully functional—or at least as functional as it was prior to the accident—brain, as he sustained no lasting head injury.