The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool (25 page)
Read The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool Online
Authors: Wendy Northcutt
Tags: #Humor, #Form, #Anecdotes, #General, #Stupidity, #Essays
Did you know that deer bite? They do!
I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab hold of that rope, and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like a horse; it does not just bite and release. A deer bites and shakes its head, like a pit bull. They bite HARD and won’t let go. It hurts!
The proper reaction when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and wrenching away. My method was ineffective. It felt like that deer bit and shook me for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.
I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I learned my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up and strike at head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned long ago that when a horse strikes at you with its hooves and you can’t get away, the best thing to do is make a loud noise and move aggressively toward the animal. This will cause it to back down a bit, so you can make your escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer. Obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a child and turned to run.
Reader comment: “Roping a deer (or grabbing a wounded deer by the horns) may seem outrageous, but it has been done! And the deer don’t like it at all. This kind of foolishness happens frequently. How do I know? I live in north-central Montana, and I tried to rope a deer myself once, but I missed. Thankfully. Deer are savage animals when trapped.”
The reason we have been taught NOT to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer are not so different from horses after all, other than being twice as strong and three times as evil. The second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down. When a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately depart. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What it does instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you, while you are lying there crying like a baby and covering your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck, and the deer went away. Now I know why people go deer hunting with a rifle and a scope. It’s so they can be somewhat equal to the prey.
Reference: Numerous Internet sources, none with attribution
FAQ
FAQ: Why is it called the Darwin Awards?
Sorry you’re dead, but thanks for not reproducing! Here’s a Darwin Award for your noble sacrifice.
—Wendy
The Darwin Awards are named in honor of Charles Darwin, a scientist fondly referred to as the father of evolution. The premise of the Awards is that the human species is still evolving. How do we know? We observe that people sometimes die due to their own brainless calculations. We hypothesize that there was something genetic behind the idiocy, something that would have been passed on to offspring. And we conclude that the next generation is one idiot smarter. If the human race is growing smarter over time, Charles Darwin would call that evolution!
FAQ: Is
this
a Darwin Award? The Rules.
People confide the most astonishing stories and ask, “Is
this
a Darwin Award?” There are more Darwin Awards and At Risk Survivors than I can possibly chronicle. Decide for yourself using this handy Field Guide to Identifying a Darwin Award.
Field Guide to Identifying a Darwin Award
To win, an adult must eliminate herself from the gene pool in an astonishingly stupid way that is verifiably true.
Reproductive dead end: Out of the gene pool
The Darwin Awards poke ironic fun at the self-removal of incompetent genes from the human race. The potential winner must therefore render herself deceased or, more happily, still alive but incapable of reproducing (nudge, wink). If someone does manage to survive an incredibly stupid feat, then her genes ipso facto have something to offer in the way of luck, agility, or stamina. She is therefore not eligible for a Darwin Award, though sometimes the story is too entertaining to pass up and the At Risk Survivor earns an honorable mention.
Excellence
The true Darwin Award winner exhibits an astounding lack of judgment. We are not talking about common mishaps like breaking a leg while skiing. The final fatal act must be of truly idiotic magnitude, like sledding down a ski run on foam protective padding you recently removed from the ski towers.
The Darwin Award winner overlooks risks that are seemingly impossible to overlook. Baking bullets in an oven, driving while reading, using the butt end of a loaded rifle as a club, taking the batteries out of the carbon monoxide detector because the alarm keeps going off…. that sort of thing. “What were they thinking?”
Self-selection: The candidate caused her own demise.
Nobody can give you a Darwin Award. You have to earn your own by showing a gross ineptitude for survival. A driver hit by a falling tree is a victim of circumstance. If you roped the tree to your pickup…you are a candidate for a Darwin Award.
However, if you are intentionally attempting to win, you are disqualified! I do not want to encourage risk-taking behavior. Most extreme sports accidents are also disqualified, because the person made a willing trade-off between risk and reward.
Maturity: The candidate is not a kid, or otherwise handicapped.
Nobody laughs when a child dies. Anyone below the age of sixteen does not qualify. A child does not possess sufficient maturity and experience to make life-or-death decisions, and the responsibility for her safety still resides with her guardians. Similarly, the death of a person with physical or mental handicaps is not amusing if it results from an innate impediment, rather than a poor decision. Those who lack maturity are not eligible for an Award.
Veracity: The event is true.
If it happened to you, you know it’s true. Otherwise, rely on reputable newspapers (not
Weekly Whirled News
) or other published articles, confirmed television reports, and so forth. Responsible eyewitnesses are also valid sources, particularly if there are several independent confirmations. Be warned, though! What your brother says is probably true. What your brother said his friend’s boss said is not reliable! Nor is a chain e-mail or a doctored photograph. The use of your own “bullshit radar” is highly recommended. It’s probably more accurate than you realize. Also a quick reality check with www.Snopes.com can sort the wheat from the chaff, the legend from the likely.
FAQ: I already have kids. Am I safe?
Yes. You passed your genes along. You’re safe!
The broader question is whether a person with offspring can win a Darwin Award. Our community engages in interminable and ultimately inconclusive discussions about what it means to be out of the gene pool. What if the winner has already reproduced? What if the nominee has an identical twin? Old people aren’t going to have any (more) kids—are old people disqualified? What about cryogenics: frozen sperm and eggs? If cloning humans becomes possible, will Darwin Awards cease to exist?
And the answer is…I don’t know. These questions are vexing. But if you no longer have the physical wherewithal to breed with a mate on a desert island, you are eligible for a Darwin Award.
FAQ: Sometimes the winners are still alive?!
True. Some aren’t dead. Some are sterile! Men who carry a loaded gun in the waistband of their trousers, men who survive an amorous encounter with a vacuum cleaner or porcupine—a few lucky “winners” are out of the gene pool, yet still alive to collect their Awards in person.
Also you will read another type of story in the book. Darwin Award winners are (whistle) out of the gene pool. But the At Risk Survivors engineer incidents that are not quite fatal—through no fault of the perpetrator! They illustrate the spirit of a Darwin Award candidate. Be careful not to stand too close to an At Risk Survivor!
FAQ: How do you confirm the stories?
The words
Confirmed True by Darwin
indicate that a story is backed up by reputable media sources, or multiple eyewitness accounts. Usually I have read the news report with my own eyes. You can check up on the veracity yourself. Find the story on the Darwin Awards website: Newer stories have a link to media references and the original submission. Search the Slush Pile and the Reject Heap for confirmation. If all else fails, search Google.
www.DarwinAwards.com/book/search.html
All the Darwin Awards and At Risk Survivor stories are believed to be true. None set off my sensitive “Bogus Detector,” but sometimes sufficient supporting documentation is lacking. Instead of tossing out a perfectly good escapade, I label these “Unconfirmed.” Many a time a reader will e-mail me the confirmation I need. If you know an “Unconfirmed” story is true (or false),
please contact me!
www.DarwinAwards.com/book/contact.html
When reading the stories, be aware that I do change names and obscure details in the At Risk Survivor stories, in order to provide a measure of anonymity for the innocent—and, for that matter, the guilty. This is to satisfy the legal beagles. Aww, puppies are so cute.
FAQ: Have you ever been wrong?
Once or twice a day! Sometimes I’ve been spectacularly wrong. The guy who wanted to see what it felt like to be shot with cigarette butts, and was killed by three butts to the heart? I was fooled by bogus media references! It’s a hoax, a legend, completely fabricated. It took a
MythBusters
researcher’s inquiry for me to realize that I’d been duped! The “urban legend” about the woman who submerged in the ocean to pleasure her man? Oops! Turns out it really happened. The books capture the stories to the best of my current knowledge. The latest scoop is on the continually updated Darwin Awards website.
FAQ: Where do you get your stories?
From you! So keep a sharp lookout in your neighborhood.
Every Darwin Award begins its life as a submission to www.DarwinAwards.com. Nominations come from around the world. Volunteer moderators review the submissions while chanting, “Death. Excellence. Self-selection. Maturity. Veracity.” Is it a potential Darwin Award? Is it an At Risk/Near Miss? The best submissions are promoted to the Slush Pile:
www.DarwinAwards.com/slush
Readers rate the Slush Pile stories on a scale from 0 to 10, and I review the Slush Pile stories with the highest vote. Five to ten stories per month strike me as ludicrous enough to be a Darwin Award. I refer to the rules, moderator comments, and my own intuition when deciding whether a story makes the cut. I rewrite the dry news reports as amusing one-page vignettes, and they go into the permanent archive.
But that’s not the end of the process! It’s a new beginning. The Darwin Awards website has a vast audience. Approximately one million (1,000,000) visitors read ten million (10,000,000) stories each month. Believe you me, I hear about mistakes. Readers send corrections and confirmations and snarky comments about typos. The Darwin Awards stories are continually updated, and sometimes disqualified, based on community comments.
The stories in this book have been scrutinized, and they are accurate to the best of our knowledge. But due to the dynamic process described above, they are not guaranteed to be entirely accurate. They are a snapshot of the state of human evolution at the time of this writing. As you read the tales contained herein, keep in mind the care with which each gem was culled from dozens of competitors and honed to its current form.
Your vote counts! Visit us at:
www.DarwinAwards.com/slush
FAQ: How many submissions do you get?
Monthly Submissions and Slush Pile Stories
We get two hundred to four hundred submissions per month. About forty go into the Slush Pile, and I pick fewer than ten per month to write into vignettes for the archive.
A particularly sensational story is often submitted hundreds of times. The most recent avalanche was in April 2008: A priest went aloft in a lawn chair tethered to hundreds of helium-filled balloons, à la Lawn Chair Larry. He has not been seen since. As the joke goes, he “ascended to heaven.”
Another popular incident happened in May 2005. Two Star Wars acolytes constructed realistic “lightsabers” by filling fluorescent tubes with gasoline and lighting them. They survived through no fault of their own!
FAQ: What is the History of the Darwin Awards?
The origin of the first Darwin Award is obscure.
Did the collective processing power of connected computers that formed the early Internet give rise to an electronic consciousness, and were the Darwin Awards this artificial life-form’s first attempt at humor? Less fanciful information recently came to light.
Google’s Usenet archive contains the oldest known citation, an August 1985 mention of the fellow who crushed himself beneath a Coke machine while trying to shake loose a free can—a true story! The second mention, five years later, is the man who strapped a JATO rocket onto his Chevy. The JATO Rocket Car is the most popular Darwin Award of all time—although it is an Urban Legend. The author of that Usenet posting was Paul Vixie.
Greg Lindahl said, “Everybody knows who Paul Vixie is; he maintains BIND, which holds the Internet together.” Greg e-mailed Paul, and Paul, a consummate packrat, produced a 1991 e-mail from Charles Haynes. Charles said that he had heard the term from Bob Ayers: “We sit around talking about Darwin Awards after a hard day’s rock climbing. I wonder why….”
My involvement with the Darwin Awards began in 1993. The tongue-in-cheek poke at human evolution tickled my scientific funny bone. I wanted more! Sadly, I could only find five, and tracing the Darwin Awards to their lair proved fruitless. So I began writing new vignettes for my website. I sent out newsletters, encouraged submissions, discussions, and voting. My hobby became a consuming passion. I assumed the alter ego “Darwin” and debated philosophy with readers. These conversations led to the refinement of the concept of a Darwin Award.
I let the Darwin Awards grow under the guidance of my audience. I pruned stories when they told me my judgment was flawed; for instance, if the deceased was the victim of a bizarre accident rather than his own poor judgment. We argued fine points such as whether offspring or advanced age rule out a candidate. And through the years I protected my audience from submissions that would make a hardened criminal cringe.
