Comments on: Darwin Award Nomination

By: A&W

A&W — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:38:12 +0000

That must have been megashark II, czI don’t remember it

By: Shawn Smith

Shawn Smith — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:20:15 +0000

Here are some links for the Wikipedia entries on Mythbusters coverage of the myths mentioned: JATO Powered Impala Lawn Chair Balloon Dynamite on Ice under a Ford Explorer and a Dog. And I was wrong about the JATO story being in Slate. I read it in Wired.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:50:59 +0000

So they were too busy fighting to notice their environment. Not unlike Mega-shark and Giant octopus who hated each other so much, they didn’t notice the ice age falling around them… egad, that was a terrible movie

By: Julie Stahlhut

Julie Stahlhut — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:49:50 +0000

When my husband and I were dating in the mid-1980s, he lived in an apartment on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston. From his living room window, we once saw a bunch of young guys brawling on the streetcar tracks. We immediately dialed 911, and got put on the infinite hold that often swallowed up 911 calls in Boston in those days. Fortunately for the idiot pugilists, a cabbie who was driving by swerved toward the tracks and blared his horn. They quickly dispersed before anyone had a chance to get knocked unconscious and left in the path of a speeding Green Line train.

Ain’t no idiot like a fightin’ idiot.

By: Geds

Geds — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:39:09 +0000

But when the dynamite blows up the truck, there is this gas tank thing… Have you see a Ford Explorer burn?

Oooh, that’s a really good point. As I recall, they drained their test vehicle of all fluids so as to avoid contaminating the lake (y’know, any more than necessary) if it actually went through the ice. That particular modification to the scenario would change things drastically, though.

I would highly doubt that your average ice fisherman drives out on a lake with no gas in the car…

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:55:55 +0000

Geds: But when the dynamite blows up the truck, there is this gas tank thing… Have you see a Ford Explorer burn? I have no doubt whatsoever it would melt though a few feet of ice over the next half hour or so.

I used to have bubbles on the right side of my car from driving bout 50 feet around a burning truck on the Mass Pike.

By: JefFlyingV

JefFlyingV — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:49:38 +0000

Back in 2001, Indiana, 2 men were fishing with dynamite. The boat they were in floated over the submerged stick of tnt and killed one of the men. Seems that was worthy of the award at the time.

Who can forget the father that played a trick on his family at the south rim of the Grand Canyon? From: “Over the Edge: Death In Grand Canyon” pps 16&17.

There seems to many traditions that can be given the award, but the Wisconsin fighters deserve a special award that would have the added prestige of enhanced stupidity.

By: Geds

Geds — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:26:56 +0000

You know, I think the one I was actually thinking of was the one where the guys go out on he lake in their brand new pickup truck, and their dog, and done TNT, and the guy lights a stick and throws it to blast a hole (for fishing) into the ice.

Adam and Jamie did that one, too. It was in one of the Alaska specials. I forget how it turned out, though.

Oh, wait. I think they figured out that a dog could, theoretically, have done the fetch and return with the dynamite. But then they discovered that if the ice is thick enough to support a Ford Explorer than it’s gonna take a lot more than a single stick of TNT to make the truck go under.

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:13:01 +0000

Oh, yeah. The wording sucked. But note the time I posted. I get points for using punctuation, I do.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:06:23 +0000

Probably more like “rolling around on the ground drunk trying to fight” is more like it.