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The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate Darwin Awards sacrifice. Nevertheless, we salute the spirit and innovation of their misadventures. |
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He welded a pipe closed on one end. Taking every precaution one can take when one is illegally creating high explosives, Sam was smart enough to let the metal cool before he put the gunpowder in the pipe. When he was done packing the powder, he realized that he had run out of welding rod. And so he set the half-finished pipe bomb on the scrap metal pile for later. Pipe bombs, like any other half-done task, have a tendency to stay undone for a great deal of time. That's what happened with Sam's project. He simply forgot about the pipe bomb for six long months, summer and fall. A few days before hunting season, Sam was loading his hunting gear into his pride-and-joy Ford Bronco, when he noticed that a shaft was cracked. Being an expert welder, Sam knew he could fix the cracked pipe himself. I hardly need to say more. Sam reached into his scrap metal pile, pulled out a pipe, pulled down his welding hood, and struck an arc. He remembers a loud bang and not much else. Shrapnel embedded itself up to the rafters of the third floor of his house! Another piece of shrapnel blew through Sam's welding hood, missing his empty skull by half an inch. I still have the photographic evidence. No good ever comes from the phrase, "Well, I was building a pipe bomb."
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Visit the Darwin Awards Giftshop Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection
Hardback. 240 pages. Autographed.$15 A fresh collection of magnificent misadventures! Lust, Vanity, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, and Wrath extract an evolutionary toll on the wicked. Salute the owner of an equipment training school who demonstrates the dangers of driving a forklift by failing to survive the filming of his own safety video. Witness the man who becomes a victim of his own strange passion for jumping into rivers. Heed the honest bricklayer who loses a battle of wits with 300 pounds of tools. This book includes more History of the Awards, Gordon's Law, and 10 discussions of evolution, including speciation and the role of verbal memes in civilization. Autographed by Author! |
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