Whereas on the one hand we celebrate ingenuity, brilliance and creativity via awards, on the other hand we examine the execrable and the imbecilic at the other end of the spectrum. There are ‘awards’ that examine and call out outrageous litigation, awful cinema, strange remarks made by those in public life and more. There are also the Darwin Awards that ‘celebrate’ stupidity; people who by their idiotic actions, rule out the perpetuation of their own lineage. Innovative, isn't it?
Charles Darwin propounded the Theory of Evolution, which envisaged progress by the natural extinction of the weakest links. The Darwin awards celebrate such natural selection and are ‘presented’ for instances of extreme stupidity that renders a person incapable of reproducing – you know, because their own stupidity killed them!
Qualifications
To qualify for this award, the actions of the individual should either render them sterile or dead (in either case being unable to reproduce). They should display astoundingly stupid judgement, be the cause of their own misfortune and be of sound mind (genuine insanity would be a disqualification).
Wayne Roth decided to casually pick up a cobra and proceeded to be bitten by the poisonous reptile. He later said “I’m a man, I can handle it” to explain why the hospital was unnecessary for him and proceeded to die; thereby protecting the world from any more such acts of macho idiocy!
Matthew decided to go skiing at 3 AM when he crashed into a lift tower and perished. Ironically his ‘sled’ consisted of a length of foam he had stolen; foam meant to protect people from crashing into the ski lift tower precisely as he had. Truly, one of life's strange occurences!
A 19-year-old pushed his girlfriend into the freezing Havel River and then jumped in to push her in again. She could swim and managed to survive. He could not. He lost consciousness, went into a coma and died a couple of months later; ironically on Valentine’s Day, from irreversible brain damage. Perhaps said brain damage predated his icy river plunge?
An Austrian man was returning home after an evening spent getting very high. He decided to get in through the kitchen window, but got stuck with his head in the sink. He then switched on the hot water tap and proceeded to drown by virtue of a series of incredibly dimwitted choices; considering that his house keys were in his pocket. His body was discovered by the apartment manager who was understandably surprised to find a pair of legs sticking out of the window!
A Sao Paulo farmer wanted to remove a beehive from an orange tree. He therefore fixed a plastic bag over his head to protect himself from bee stings. His wife found him dead a few hours later. It wasn’t the bees that killed him; he did himself in by asphyxiation thanks to the ‘protective’ plastic bag. Bees Score 1, Humans 0.
In 1996, Prakash and Suresh got drunk and decided to say happy New Year to a tiger in a Calcutta zoo – by garlanding him. Shiva the tiger as not amused when Suresh tried to place a garland around his neck and attacked him. Prakash tried to ‘save’ his friend by kicking the tiger. The tiger was even less amused and decided to send Prakash one step closer to Nirvana by lunging at his throat and killing him.
This was a case of the little death leading to actual death. A Russian couple was in the backseat of a car close to a lovely lake, when their feelings got the better of them. The rocking motion that ensued pushed the car – which was in neutral – into the lake; drowning the loving couple.
His last words were probably the equivalent of ‘hold my beer and watch this’. A Singapore teen leapt over a footbridge railing intending to land safely on the parapet below and thereby creating a fun snapchat video. The parapet was not designed for over-enthusiastic snap-chatters and the teen plunged four floors to his death when the flimsy gypsum gave up an unequal struggle with human folly.
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