Its not our fault that we did not get a Darwin. There was a very large old barn on the family property of my high school friend. His dad wanted to get rid of it. My friend and I were sure that the building was so rickety, that by simply knocking out a few supports that we could easily reach from the outside, the whole thing would topple and we would have the great sport of watching it fall. Armed with an axe, we began chopping out the supports. Soon we had removed all the supports that we could reach from outside with almost no apparent effect on the barn. We then “reasoned” that it would be OK to go just a little way inside and chop and we could just jump outside before anything happened. This also had little effect on the structure and soon we weren’t even bothering to run outside. We spent every night for a week after school on this project with no success.

Finally on Saturday morning we were sure that we were down to the last possible support. This one, of course, was as far into the barn as we could go. While we were chopping away, my friend’s dad came out to see what we were up to. Horrified by what he saw he ordered us out of the barn. Too late! At that exact instant we heard a loud crack and the entire building fell in on us in less than a second. The only thing that saved us was some previously fallen debris prevented the roof from going all the way to the floor. We had to crawl out on our bellies while breathing the dust cloud. We were unharmed but I am not sure what it did to the lifespan of my friend’s dad

Submitted on 05/28/2009

Submitted by: David Myers
Reference: Personal Account

Copyright © 2009 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Well, there ARE safer and more effective ways to bring down a barn (like from the top down)! An amusing PA! Thanks, David!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
"Its not our fault that we did not get a Darwin" - well it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying! Thanks, David!