The Darwin Awards

[samchmbrln]

This is stupid...............



"Back in 1973 I was attending Santa Barbara City College's Marine Diving program, at the time America's only academic professional diver training program. Although the event happened in the year prior to my joining the program, the instructors were very adamant about it never happening again. I also recall the reading about it in the Santa Barbara News Press at the time.
Fire Breather

Professional divers are not known for thinking too hard about the hazards they face daily while working under water. Darwin is constantly weeding out any diver who pushes over nature's limits and anyone who thought about the risks they were taking would obviously choose another line of work. Diving is a very macho profession and there is an almost an innate need to show your friends how tough you are. However, the saying in the profession is that, "There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old, bold divers," and Darwin's selection process begins early in a diver's training.

In the Spring semester of the Marine Diving Program students are introduced to welding on dry land in preparation to their learning underwater welding later in the course. One day before the first day of welding class, and before the instructor showed up to put a stop to the festivities, a group of students were gathered around one of the welding tanks that (most of them) would soon be learning to use.

A welding rig consists of two tanks, one of oxygen and the other of acetylene, an adjustable pressure reducing regulator, a flashback arrestor, and a torch with valves that control the mixture of oxygen and acetylene coming out of the torch's cutting tip. A single spark and this mixture bursts into a flame that can be adjusted to be hot enough to cut through steel.

Before the first class where he would learn the purpose each of these parts of the played in the process of safe welding, our award winner decided that he was going to show off his ability as a fire-breathing diver trainee. Putting the cutting tip into his mouth, he released the torch's valve to breath in the flammable mixture of acetylene and oxygen. Striking a match, he exhaled the his lung full of gas over the open flame. Needless to say the results were everything he could have hoped for, the ball of flame that shot from his mouth was worthy of a carne sideshow fire breather.

If he had stopped at this point he would have been a local hero and there would be no story, but sometimes you really have to work at being stupid. Of course, he had to do it again. However, this time as he stood there with his lit match, he held his breath a bit too long and he felt the sudden urge to take a quick inhalation before expelling his lung full of flammable gas. If he had waited until after class to do his stunt, he would have learned the purpose of a flashback arrestor. Flames follow the flow, which in this case was into his mouth, down his wind pipe and into his lungs. Natural selection wins again."

Taken from http://darwinawards.com

[The Duck]

Excellent, very funny

[londonsean69]

Some of these things are soo stupid you can´t help but know they are actually the result of some mental deficiency.

Look here

[dreammermaid]

I bought one of the Darwin awards books once. Some things were so outrages that people unsuccessfully tried it just makes you wonder.

[Freeflow]

Following on from the other thread about selection [and I didn't get a single red blob over the cat!] I think that the idiot gene is being allowed to prosper because of our unwillingness to let planks die of stupidity.

I've seen it enough in teaching diving [usually macho blokes], but in all walks of life there are the WTFWYT [what the .... were you thinking] moments, when people were saved who should know better.

True story time.

In about 1996 out company [then known as Eagle Star] had it's high flying top dog graduate trainees go on a team building course. The last task of the day was fire walking, but because of the faffing about earlier the coals had got a little hot.

High flyer top dog etc no 1 walks over the coals, and has burnt feet. Then nos 2 to 11 follow on, and 4 end up with a stay in hospital because of burns. Well done team!

They should have sent us engineers on the course.

'The next task is fire walking'

'OK mate, you first...'

[AliJ]

Originally Posted by Freeflow

Following on from the other thread about selection [and I didn't get a single red blob over the cat!] I think that the idiot gene is being allowed to prosper because of our unwillingness to let planks die of stupidity.

I've seen it enough in teaching diving [usually macho blokes], but in all walks of life there are the WTFWYT [what the .... were you thinking] moments, when people were saved who should know better.

True story time.

In about 1996 out company [then known as Eagle Star] had it's high flying top dog graduate trainees go on a team building course. The last task of the day was fire walking, but because of the faffing about earlier the coals had got a little hot.

High flyer top dog etc no 1 walks over the coals, and has burnt feet. Then nos 2 to 11 follow on, and 4 end up with a stay in hospital because of burns. Well done team!

They should have sent us engineers on the course.

'The next task is fire walking'

'OK mate, you first...'

What happened to the good old fashioned "Get stuffed! I'm not doing that" philosophy.

Ali

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by AliJ

What happened to the good old fashioned "Get stuffed! I'm not doing that" philosophy.

Ali

I guess, working for Eagle Star they all thought "when I get burnt feet I can claim off the company's insurance and make a packet....."

Chris

PS ho ho ho "team building" FFS... Tarquin has an MBA does he... PMSL....