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Table of Contents

Praise for The Darwin Awards

Delightfully funny... If you are not yet aware of The Darwin Awards, you should probably be pitched out of the breeding population... Taken together they constitute a delicious sermon in support of common sense.

The Baltimore Sun

Hilarious... A book often is defined as good by saying you cant put it down. With The Darwin Awards you can. Then pick it up again. And again.

The Flint Journal (Michigan)

A warning to all dimwits.Salon.com

One of the drawbacks to not teaching the theory of evolution in schools is that some people wind up learning the stuff the hard way... Dar win-worthy departures are sent in from people all over the world... Fatal stupidity knows no boundaries.Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Doh!Creative Loafing (Atlanta)

WENDY NORTHCUTT is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology. She started collecting the stories that make up The Darwin Awards in 1993, and founded her award-winning website, www.Dar winAwards.com, soon thereafter. She is the author of The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection.

To my sister Elizabeth, who encouraged me to blaze
my own path. To my parents, because the apple doesnt
fall far from the tree. And to Jacob, who appreciates
my oddly successful impetuousness and provided
clever chapter titles.

Warm thanks to editor Mitch Hoffman and agent
Andrew Stuart, whose expert hands helped shape this
book, and to my Philosophy Forum members for their
stimulating conversations.

And to Ian.

Whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed law of gravity, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species

The Darwin Awards: What Are They?

Darwin Awards illustrate Mark Twains observation, Man is the only animal that blushesor has reason to.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Most of us know instinctively that the phrase trust me, light this fuse is a recipe for disaster. Darwin Award winners do not. Most of us have a basic common sense that eliminates the need for public service announcements such as, WARNING: COFFEE IS HOT! Darwin Award winners do not. The stories assembled in this book show that common sense is really not so common.

There are people who think its practical to peer into a gasoline can using a cigarette lighter. There are people who throw beach parties to celebrate an approaching hurricane. We applaud the predictable demise of such dare-devils with Darwin Awards, named after Charles Darwin, the father of evolution. No warning label could have prevented evolution from creeping up on the man who electrocuted fish with household current, then waded in to collect his catch without removing the wire.

Darwin Awards show what happens to people who are bewilderingly unable to cope with obvious dangers in the modern world. The terrorist who mails a letter bomb with insufficient postage wins a Darwin Award when he opens the returned package. As does the fisherman who throws a lit stick of dynamite onto the ice, only to see his faithful golden retriever fetch the stick. As does the man caught stealing from a church.

Darwin Award winners plan and carry out disastrous schemes that an average child can tell are a really bad idea. They contrive to eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an extraordinarily idiotic manner, that their action ensures the long-term survival of our species, which now contains one less idiot. The single-minded purpose and self-sacrifice of the winners, and the spectacular means by which they snuff themselves, qualifies them for the honor of winning a Darwin Award.

RULES AND ELIGIBILITY

To win, nominees must significantly improve the gene pool by eliminating themselves from the human race in an astonishingly stupid way. All races, cultures, and socioeconomic groups are eligible to compete. Contenders are evaluated using the following five criteria:

The candidate must remove himself from the gene pool.

The prime tenet of the Darwin Awards is that we are celebrating the self-removal of incompetent genetic material from the human race. The potential winner must therefore render himself deceased, or at least incapable of reproducing. If someone does manage to survive an incredibly stupid feat, then his genes de facto must have something to offer in the way of luck, agility, or stamina. He is therefore not eligible for a Darwin Award, though sometimes the story is too entertaining to pass up and he earns an Honorable Mention.

Enigmatic philosophical questions: If an identical twin dies in a manner that qualifies him for a Darwin Award, is he still eligible, despite the surviving replica of his genes? Should we logically give Darwins to those who accidentally kill their own children? Suppose a Darwin winner is reincarnated, can he be nominated again in his next life?

Heated philosophical discussions have sprung up around the reproduction rule. If a person or group gives up sex, are they eligible for a nomination since they are no longer willing to breed? Must the candidate be utterly incapable of reproduction? Can the elderly be ruled out because they are too old to have an impact on the gene pool? Should those who already have children be banned from winning?

These are complicated questions. For example, frozen sperm and ova are viable decades after the donors demise, and sheep and humans can be cloned from a single cell. It is almost impossible to completely eliminate an individuals genes. And it would take a team of researchers to ferret out the full reproductive implications, a luxury the Darwin Awards lacks. Therefore, no attempt is made to determine the actual reproductive status or potential of the nominee. If he no longer has the physical wherewithal to breed with a mate on a deserted island, then he is eligible for a Darwin.

The candidate must exhibit an astounding misapplication of judgment.

We are not talking about common stupidities such as falling asleep with a lit cigarette or taking a bath with a radio. The fatal act must be of such idiotic magnitude that we shake our heads and thank our lucky stars that our descendants wont have to deal with, or heaven forbid breed with, descendants of the buffoon that set that harebrained scheme in motion.

The Darwin winner is seldom a copycat. The death under consideration must reflect a unique manifestation of the grave lack of sense and misapplication of judgment indicative of a genuine cleansing of the gene pool. Using bullets as fuses, reenacting the William Tell stunt, and bungee jumping with rubber bands are all worthy Darwin Award activities.

Oscar Wilde said, To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness. If you fry yourself along with your parents while rewiring their outdoor hot-tub during a thunderstorm, you may be eligible for a Darwin Award.

The candidate must be the cause of his own demise.

The candidates own gross ineptitude must be the cause of the incident that earns him the nomination. A hapless bystander done in by a heavy anvil dropped from a skyscraper is an unfortunate tragedy. If, however, you are smashed by the anvil you rigged above your own balcony to kill those squawking pigeons, then you are a Darwin contender.

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