The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (21 page)

The dynamite exploded! Shrapnel hit the rancher squarely in the head. The man was airlifted to the hospital, where he passed away.

Oddly enough, the Box County Sheriff’s office refused to confirm the circumstances, saying they were “still looking into it” and the dynamite exploded “for some reason.” But the first medical teams on the scene reported that the man shot the dynamite from forty yards. And, frankly, a man oughtn’ta.

 

Reference: Ogden
Standard-Examiner
,
Deseret News
,

The Tremonton Leader
,
standard.net

 

“What gets into a guy’s head to make him shoot at a high explosive . . . I guess the answer is shrapnel.”

 

 

1 JANUARY 2010, THE NETHERLANDS | Every now and then a completely new window into the world opens before our eyes. Here we have rural Dutch families enjoying their traditional winter sport,
carbidschieten
, or carbide shooting. This diversion involves a ridiculously dangerous machine akin to a potato gun, designed to hurl projectiles from the mouth of a metal milk can.

Carbide shooting, that wacky Dutch New Year’s celebration, begins with moistening calcium carbide (Ca
₂
C) and placing it in a large milk container. The damp Ca
₂
C emits acetylene (C
₂
H
₂
) gas that builds up inside the closed container. Then a spark is supplied, causing the pressurized gas bomb to
blow the lid
(or packing) off the milk jug.

Our nominee, a fifty-four-year-old male, was having the time of his life—right up until the moment he poured a container filled with
liquid oxygen
over a fire to “flare it up.” The container obligingly exploded. He cashed in his chips, having ended with a flair.

 

Reference:
www.nu.nl

 

“Proof that Dutch should stick with gasification instead of trying oxyfuel.”

 

 

AUGUST 2008, THE NETHERLANDS | A thirty-three-year-old man was carpooling to work in Hindeloopen when he mentioned to his colleagues that he was carrying a self-made bomb. The driver immediately stopped the car and ejected the lunatic.

Outside the car, the lunatic—er, bomb maker—tried to disarm the device in an attempt to wheedle his way back into the vehicle. There was nothing to fear, everything was perfectly safe . . . until the bomb builder crossed the detonator wires. The dastardly device exploded, blasting away several of his nonvital body parts.

Police describe the hapless carpool driver as “shaken but unharmed.” The bomber could be described as “shaken and unarmed.”

 

Reference:
spitsnieuws.nl

 

“Disarmed.”

“The malice of inanimate objects!”

“That was a really bad commute!”

 

 

AUGUST 2006, KARELIA, RUSSIA | Shiver me timbers! A man SIA | Shiver me timbers! A man from Logmozero, a village located on a lake of the same name in northwestern Russia, was brought to the attention of police when concerned neighbors realized he was using a World War II aviation bomb as an anchor for his boat. Bomb experts said the twenty-five-kilogram curiosity was in working order and easily could have been triggered by an incautious action—such as weighing anchor—sending shrapnel flying five hundred meters from the epicenter. The detonator was missing and a metal hook had been
hammered into the device
by the owner, so that he could attach an anchor chain to it!

Reference:
englishrussia.com

 

 

7 NOVEMBER 2008, MALAYSIA | In the town of Batu Berendam, in the state of Malacca, Mohd H. was killed by an explosion at a petrol station while filling his van’s tank with compressed natural gas. What made the normally routine process of fueling a vehicle go so badly wrong?

The answer begins with another kind of fuel: cooking gas.

In most Malaysian households, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is purchased in tanks for use in the kitchen, instead of being drawn from a pipeline to the house as is common in America. The problem was that the man had converted his van to use cleaner-burning compressed natural gas (CNG) by hooking up an LPG
cooking gas tank,
rather than having the vehicle properly converted.

LPG tanks and CNG tanks are very different. LPG is a liquid while CNG is a compressed gas. CNG tanks must be able to contain one hundred times more pressure than LPG tanks.

Mohd’s desire to economize on fuel was driven by practical reasons. The self-employed electrician ran a family business involving the repair and resale of secondhand electrical appliances. This business required frequent travels to Singapore and Johor, and much would be saved by converting the van to use a more economical fuel. Since twenty-five-year-old Mohd was knowledgeable about machinery, he decided to do it himself.

Somehow, the electrician managed to drain the fuel, remove the old tank, and weld a new tank into place without incident. No doubt pleased by his handiwork, he filled the tank with gas and turned the key. . . .

The LPG tank had been installed beneath the driver’s seat, and the ignition system triggered an explosion that shattered the front portion of the vehicle and blew out two of its doors, killing the unwitting creator of the car bomb.

 

Reference:
The Malaysian Insider