The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (23 page)

We took him to the operating room to clean his wounds and complete the amputation. As we removed the stub of his finger, I confided my grave concerns about his future to the attending physician. He looked at me, puzzled. I asked, “How is this man going to be able to drive
without his left middle finger?”

 

Reference: Erika Mitchell, MD

 

 

 

1970s | Thirty years ago, my college installed new granite tables in the chemistry lab, and somehow a bet got started on who could scratch the tabletop first. The bet went uncollected for a couple of years: Those granite surfaces were pretty sturdy. Then along came my friend, “Mass Destruction.”

Armed with an explosive blasting cap and a ball-peen hammer, he was determined to win that bet. Placing the cap on a table, he swung the hammer and hit it squarely. The hammer exited the lab at a high rate of speed over his shoulder. By some fluke, nobody was injured. Mass Destruction did win the bet—the granite was cracked through!

Here is the explanation of how his nickname came about. Earlier that year he had been analyzing an organic sample when the professor came by and casually asked where he was in the procedure.

“I’m nitrating the unknown.”

“You didn’t get a reaction at the last step?”

“Nope.”

It turned out that the professor had added too much denaturing agent to the unknown (glycerin) so it was not identified at the proper stage. Mass Destruction was now casually stirring 250 ml of nitroglycerin on an ice bath! The professor encouraged him to keep stirring—gently—while he evacuated the other students and called the bomb squad.

After the bomb squad had made all the needed arrangements to dispose of the nitroglycerin, they graciously allowed Mass Destruction to push the button on the detonator.

 

Reference: Anonymous

 

 

 

26 NOVEMBER 2009, DARWIN, AUSTRALIA | Perhaps you wouldn’t think twice about bringing a pen or pad of paper home from the office, but an explosive? For six months, a Darwin resident had stored this pilfered “office supply” in his home. Ever since the device had been brought home from work, it had just sat there doing nothing. It seemed so uneventful that the twenty-nine-year-old man admitted to police that he had
driven over it three times
in his motor vehicle, to see what would happen.

Against the odds, nothing!

Bored, he finally contacted Northern Territory police to have the explosive removed from his possession. The officers confirmed that the device was, indeed, a badly crumpled detonator. “It goes without saying,” Superintendent J. Emeny contradicted himself, “that any kind of explosive device has the potential to cause serious injury and should be left alone.” He added that the man’s decision to drive over the device was “risky.”

 

Reference:
abc.net.au

 

 

SUMMER 1969 | For the youngsters in the audience, caps are tiny explosive charges sold for use in toy guns. Squeeze the trigger and a striker hits the cap, making it explode with a pop.

I had a pack of caps that were individually “printed” on adhesive-backed paper. Having experimented with using a hammer to detonate them, in true dumb-kid fashion I moved on to supersize it. I stacked the caps an inch and a half high, knelt down on the sidewalk, and hit the stack with a two-pound ball-peen hammer.

The resulting explosion kicked the hammer back clear to my shoulder, missing my fragile young face by inches. No harm except for a bruise on the shoulder and ringing ears, but an alarming near-miss nonetheless.

Sometimes I wonder how any human male survives childhood.

 

Reference: Anonymous

1967, PENNSYLVANIA | I was nine years old. Fireworks were illegal in our state, but you could buy rolls of caps. A “friend” showed me how to make a decent firecracker out of them. Take a straight pin and load the caps onto it by pushing the point through the center of each powder-loaded circle, folding the paper accordion-style. Fill the pin about half full, then pull the caps off while keeping them as tight together as you can. Wrap the wad in a tissue, twist one end to make a wick, and light the wick for a nice little bang from your homemade firecracker.

Kids all know that bigger is better. I figured I would use a large pin to make a large firecracker. There was a hatpin in Mom’s sewing box and I started loading that colossal pin with a roll of caps. There is no telling how long I worked on that firecracker. I probably had two inches of caps stacked up by the time I was ready to pull them off and wrap the wad in tissue.

I gave the wad a tug, but it wasn’t sliding off the pin. I tried harder, still no luck. The head of the pin didn’t give me much to hold on to, so I put the pin between my teeth and gave a big tug . . .

That stack of caps exploded with the sound of a shotgun shell. I was standing there with black powder all over my face when my folks and brothers ran into the room. Although my ears were ringing and my lips were tingling, I was required to explain what I had done. Once they stopped laughing, my folks checked to be sure all my parts were still intact.

Fortunately they were!

 

Reference: Ross Pavlik

 

 

 

Sunday morning I went to the kitchen to make tea, put the kettle on, prepared the cups, and while waiting for the kettle to boil I thought I’d fill my lighter. I got the lighter fuel out, but it was a bit low and quite cold, and it didn’t pour well. When this happens, I usually run hot tap water over the can to warm it, but as I already had hot water in the kettle, I decided to steam it for a minute or two.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Wish I had! But I had not yet had my tea, so . . .

I balanced the can on top of the kettle, leaving the kettle lid open. Then I got distracted and the next thing I heard was the sound of the kettle boiling furiously. I turned around just in time to see the fuel container disappear into the mouth of the kettle.

I thought,
Oh dear me!
(or words to that effect) and rushed over to switch off the kettle. I pressed the switch and the gas can let go with a mighty
BANG!
The kettle was instantly transformed into bright yellow, lethal plastic shrapnel.

A few moments after the explosion, I regained my senses sufficiently to realize I was suffering from a deep gash in my thumb, a couple of possibly broken ribs, and one little finger swollen up like a Newmarket sausage. The microwave had a bloody great dent in the side and the kitchen looked like Beirut.

My wife trots to survey the damage, and she says, “If it was the friggin’ gas can that did it, where is the friggin’ gas can?” At this point I hadn’t realized that the can had left the scene of the crime. I looked left—not there. I looked right—not there either. I looked up.

“I think it went thataway!”

There was a neat 50mm hole punched straight through the suspended ceiling. I moved the ceiling panel and found a ragged 75mm hole in the plasterboard above. With the aid of a flashlight, I could see the scorched remains of the can jammed up in the joists, minus top and bottom but otherwise intact.

All the while, I had been bleeding copiously over the remains of the kitchen. I put a Band-Aid on my thumb and had a look at my ribs, which were not broken but sported a kettle-lid-shaped bruise. When I realized that I wasn’t seriously damaged and that the house was not in flames, I looked around and saw the funny side and p***ed myself laughing. My wife, however, was not amused.

No sense of humor, some people.

 

Reference: Barry K.