Darwin Awards: Chlorinating The Gene Pool

Greetings all!

Recently a friend mentioned Darwin Awards, and since we were talking about the recent climate changes, I thought he was referring to something scientific. In fact, he was talking about the awards given posthumously to people who take themselves out of the genetic pool.

Of course, I was intrigued! I googled “Darwin Awards,” and the first hit in the search results was exactly that, “Darwin Awards. Chlorinating The Gene Pool.”

Home page at https://darwinawards.com/ summarizes it nicely: “Natural selection deems that some individuals serve as a warning to others. Who are we to disagree?” 

Image from https://darwinawards.com/

The site is pretty funny, “In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival… The dark humor, engaging stories, and mordant social commentary have made the Darwin Awards one of the most popular humor sites on the web.” The site founder does warn that some people might be offended.

One of the 2018 winners is from the entry “ Mind The Cone Zone”: (8 March 2018, New Jersey) A Wanaquer man died in a vehicle fire after he drove around barricade cones and onto live power wires in Franklin Lakes. A good son, Anthony G. was en-route to his father's house to shovel the driveway.  After the second nor'easter storm in a week, hundreds of thousands were left without power. Utility crews worked overtime to deal with downed trees and electric lines. Traffic snarls and frustrated motorists were everywhere. Anthony did not want to lose time to a detour! According to police, our winner simply navigated around bright orange traffic cones warning motorists of a hazardous downed wire on Route 208. Responding to calls, officers arrived at 9AM to find the vehicle fully engulfed in flames. A live power line was sputtering in the roadway near the vehicle. The fire totally gutted the car, and the driver was pronounced dead at the scene. Ironically this Darwin Award winner was employed as a New York City electrician.

Another featured category is At-Risk Survivors:  “The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate sacrifice, but we salute their spirit and innovation.”

Here is a 2009 At-Risk Survivor from “Locker Room Humor”: (17 July 2009, Germany) Unexpected odds and ends are always turning up in train station lockers, but this is the oddest yet. After a night spent carousing with friends, squeezing into the Ludwigshafen train station locker had seemed like "an amusing idea" to the man. He shut himself in a suitcase locker for fun, but the laughter faded as the oxygen supply dwindled. His companions were unable to open the locked door and free the 20-year-old. With time running out, police broke open the door and dragged the groggy prankster to safety.

What did you think? Drop me a line!